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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The Barack Obama Standard
Many a critical eyebrow was raised after erstwhile President Barack Obama accepted $400,000 from Cantor Fitzgerald to speak at a health conference. That’s a lot of money for a single speech, and from Wall Street, no less. Fox Business News chided Obama questioning whether he is “Wall Street’s Newest Fat Cat” — recalling Obama’s own…
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The Life Affirming Gift Of Unapologetic Love
Roxanne was happily married to Benjamin Hart, a successful stock broker and a golfing buddy in my group of friends. Ben’s parents had escaped the Holocaust, and they had shortened their name from Hartstein when they arrived in America. Roxanne Hart had worked as a hair dresser before she married Ben, and although he made…
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What Mothers Really Need On Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is traditionally a day of flowers, gifts, breakfast in bed or dinner out. Or at least that is how it is in the popular imagination. While mothers everywhere no doubt appreciate the attention and gratitude, what they could really use is some help. Yet it’s a sad reality that the U.S. has the…
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Why Are So Many Rabbis Fleeing The Pulpit?
A few weeks ago, I came across a fellow rabbi who possesses the total rabbinic package: she is a compassionate caretaker, has good mind for Torah, speaks strong Hebrew and is a great leader. If there was such a thing as finishing at the top of your rabbinical school class, she had done so. Every…
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The Extremists Among Us
This past March at the second annual “Ambassadors Against BDS” conference at the UN, South Carolina State Representative Alan Clemmons called me anti-Semitic. I was there with ten other J Street U students to discuss progressive, pro-Israel and anti-occupation alternatives to BDS. Hundreds of people in attendance stood up and applauded Clemmons’ accusation, and then…
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Tel Aviv Councilman: What I Learned Talking Sexual Identity With Orthodox Educators
For too many years, the LGBT movement in Israel and the Orthodox religious institutions were considered to be rivals in a battle over the nature of the Israeli society. The thriving Israeli LGBT community, which I have been privileged to be part of for the past two decades and lead for several years, has never…
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Apartheid Bulldozed My Muslim Neighbors Out Of Existence — We Must Not Let That Happen Again.
I grew up on the southern tip of South Africa, not far from where the waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. As a child, I spent most of my weekends in my grandparents’ small store, located in a crowded and ethnically diverse marketplace in District Six, a Cape Town neighborhood long ago destroyed….
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Keeping Kosher Down South — But Not Necessarily By Choice
On the way home from the health clinic yesterday, my cabbie declared how much he loved his lord and savior. While delivering his Sermon on the Mount, he resembled the star of the 1971 movie Shaft—a leather cowboy hat, a skinny beard and moustache and exclaimed, “you should get in touch with Jesus to avoid…
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It’s Not All Politics In Israeli Films
The 5th annual Israel Film Center Festival launches this May with a diverse selection of Israel’s latest hit films. The focus of this festival is Israeli stories beyond the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout the years, many of the films highlighted in this festival have not necessarily been featured in the top international festivals,…
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I’m Secular Now. Are My Religious Zionist Rebbes My New Villains?
My rebbes are Rabbis Yehuda Amitaland Aharon Lichtenstein, of blessed memory, the roshei yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, located in Gush Etzion, a cluster of Jewish settlements located in the Judaean Mountains of the West Bank. I studied Talmud from them over 40 years ago, but have since left the derech (path); I no longer…
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What It’s Like To Be A Token Jew
Editor’s note: this piece, originally titled “Jews in Exotic Lands,” ran as a feature in the now defunct JPSP Magazine in 1970. The article profiles Bob Rubin, one of the few Jews of Stillwater, Oklahoma; his son, Mark Rubin (who still resides in the South), has transcribed the piece for digital publication and added a…
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