Scribe, the Forward’s curated contributor network, is a place for showcasing personal experiences and perspective from across our Jewish communities. Here you will find a wide array of reflections on Jewish issues, life-cycle events, spirituality, culture and more.
Community
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You say matzah — and matzo and matzuh and matzee and more
Readers respond to our editor-in-chief’s column about a Passover copy-editing conundrum
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Your Ultimate Guide To The Laws Of Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur Eve And Teshuva (Repentance) • The guiding rule in observing Yom Kippur is maintaining a balance between respecting the sanctity of the day and one’s physical health. • According to Shulhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law), the practice of doing Kapparot with chickens should be eliminated. • We must ask for forgiveness and reconcile with…
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The Loves We Lost In Vain
On October 6, 1973, the Yom Kippur War began. I was thirteen years old; still a child but old enough to form memories — of sirens so unexpectedly blowing, cars suddenly running along roads usually deserted to pedestrian synagogue goers and secular bike riders. Confusion. Should we turn on the radio? Should we descend to…
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713 Sephardic Jews Obtain Portuguese Citizenship
About 8,800 persons have applied for Portuguese citizenship since the start of a program that enables Sephardim from other countries who can prove their Jewish-Portuguese heritage to obtain nationality, and 713 have been successful in their effort. Only 1 candidate has so far been turned down. The program began in December of 2014, and applications…
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It Cuts Both Ways
A version of this piece originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. Many Jews are beginning to turn away from the centuries’ old practice of circumcision. What can we make of this shift, and how might we think about or navigate questions of morality with respect to Jewish ritual circumcision? Proliferation of debate regarding the…
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Is Man’s Search For Meaning Really Worth It?
A version of this article originally appeared in the Texas Jewish Post. I admit it. I am a “meaning-aholic.” I know that no such word currently exists in Webster’s Dictionary, but I think it’s high time that this word, or a word like it, found its way into the holy grail of English parlance. Ever…
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When The Muslim And Jewish New Years Collide
This year both the Jewish New Year and the Islamic New Year will fall on the same day. With both faiths beginning their days at sunset, the Islamic New Year will begin the evening of Thursday, September 21 and end in the evening of Friday, September 22 while [Rosh Hashanah](https://forward.com/schmooze/320610/rosh-hashana/ “Rosh Hashanah”) or the Jewish…
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This Year, We Must Address The Moral Crisis Of Our Jewish Generation
In early September as the new school year began for thousands of Jewish high school students, IfNotNow, a movement focused on ending the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation and a movement that I help lead, launched the #YouNeverToldMe campaign. As a generation, we were betrayed by the institutional Jewish world which told us…
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10 Ways To Lift Each Other Up In The New Year
For me, Tashlich, the Jewish custom of symbolically casting off one’s sins into a body of water, is the heart of the High Holidays. There’s something very empowering about tossing my rock, my sin, my guilt into the water and hearing it break through, sinking to where I will not find it again. It’s gone….
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This Year, I’ll Be Home for Rosh Hashanah
Judaism hasn’t always been an important part of my life. Over the years my Jewish Identity has changed more times than the Minnesota Vikings have changed quarterbacks. There was the Hebrew School phase, the Bar Mitzvah phase (aka the glory days), the summer camp phase (not really something you phase out of), among others. Admittedly,…
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The Tiny Israeli Diner Helping Patrons Overcome Poverty
Fifteen years of physical and emotional abuse finally forced Zahava to take her three young children, two of whom are legally blind, and leave her husband. This change was not easy as it was not the accepted solution in families from Georgia in the Former Soviet Union. The broken marriage left her to seek therapy…
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Swiping Left On The Almighty: How To Get Yuppie Jews Into Shul Again
Editor’s Note: The following piece is satirical. The people and communities mentioned are fictional, though the broader themes and probability analysis are rock-solid. I met Rabbi Zoe Ichinomiya-Brodsky on a muggy Labor Day weekend in Austin. She was struggling with the same two dilemmas she struggles with each year at this time: What to serve…
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