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.
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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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What My Child’s Innocent Explanation Of Waves Taught Me About ‘Truth’
I’d like to share a meditation you can practice while gazing at the waves. But first…a story. The story is about my children and the ocean. It is also a story about understanding the limits of our own understandings and learning new ways of looking at the world. Meeting the Sea The first time I…
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The Jewish Case Against Donald Trump’s Paris Climate Decision
Dear President Trump, As the Jewish festival of Shavuot came to a close, you announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. While you have spoken of your intention to withdraw since you entered the campaign for president, the timing of your announcement highlights how the decision is at odds with the values that…
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EXCLUSIVE: Israeli Police Broke My Arm, But They Can’t Stop Me From Resisting — Or Speaking Out.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 24, I woke up in the Palestinian village of Sarura, also known as Sumud Freedom Camp. Palestinian residents of Sarura had been displaced from their homes 20 years prior and a coalition worked to return those families to their community. For the past eleven days there has been consistent…
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What Judaism Teaches Us About Grief And Loss
The headline on a recent Forward interview with Sheryl Sandberg asks if Sandberg can help Americans learn to grieve. Sandberg has certainly done all of us a great service by opening up a conversation about the way American do –- and don’t –- deal with death, dying and grief. In the essay that follows this…
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How Hillel Breaks Down Barriers On Campus
In college, it was considered by the broad range of students who attended our campus Hillel entirely normal and comfortable to share a Jewish communal space amongst Jews of every level of observance and religious orientation – secular and religious, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, searching and settled Jews, affiliated and unaffiliated, Jews whatever their background….
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How Israel Beat Peanut Allergies
Allergy advocacy used to be easy. Given the potentially tragic consequences of , everyone assumed a simple formula: the more precautions the better. In wealthy countries like the United States, ever greater accommodations were made to ensure that allergy sufferers were separated from the foods that could do them harm. Nut-free schools went from unheard…
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An Iranian-American On Trump’s Recent Middle East Trip
President Trump has returned to the United States after his travels to Saudi Arabia, The Vatican, NATO and the G-7 facing a set of challenges that are making the headlines. Iran was front and center when the President Spoke in Riyadh. It was also quite interesting to see how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was…
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The Secret Jewish History Of New Zealand
This is the first of a series of posts on the history and lives of Jews in New Zealand. Future pieces will detail the Jewish communities that function today in the country as well as the interactions between indigenous Māori and Jewish settlers. Rumors swirled in Amsterdam in 1642 of “a large island in the…
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Is The Two State Solution Over? Thomas Friedman Says…Maybe.
A version of this piece originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian Jewish publication. If Israel and the Palestinians are to find peace, the initiative will have to come from them. They must own the process, or it will be doomed to fail, according to Thomas Friedman. “In the entire history of mankind, no-one ever washed…
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Why is Normalization Of Israel Stigmatized In Palestinian Society?
While Zionists around the world celebrated Israeli Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut, on May 2, Palestinians commemorated the Nakba, the resulting “catastrophe” on May 15. On June 5, Palestinians will also commemorate the 50th year of living under occupation, while for some Israelis it is the 50th year of the unification of what they describe as…
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5 Steps and an Unlikely Outsider Can ‘Save’ Conservative Judaism
Recently Dr. Roberta Kwall wrote an article entitled “Saving Conservative Judaism” for Commentary Magazine. Kwall writes “In short, the Conservative movement needs to return to [Solomon] Schechter’s mission of conserving Jewish tradition by focusing its educational and spiritual energies on enlarging and strengthening a root group of Conservative Jews who are drawn to tradition.” Kwall’s…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Film & TV How Leonard Cohen — and a Yom Kippur prayer — inspired a coming-of-age epic
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Opinion A year after Oct. 7, Israel has the chance to remake its future — for better or worse
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Opinion Campus protests defined the year since Oct. 7. Could they actually change U.S. policy?
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Special Report At the kibbutz hit hardest on Oct. 7, a wrenching debate over how to rebuild
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