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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Was Esther’s Cousin Mordechai An Ancient Refugee?
We do not tend to think of Mordecai as a displaced person, but perhaps we should. His family, we are told, had been exiled from Jerusalem (Esther 2:6) by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Mordecai himself embraces this placelessness. Out of home in the world, the man refuses to come indoors. King Achashverosh cavorts in lavish…
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I’m A Progressive Mexican Jew. Is There Space For Me In J Street?
I was not very excited to go to Washington DC: recent news from the capital was bleak, to say the least, and the idea of spending my time visiting sites felt like treason. In this country ruled a man who called us rapists and who was building a wall to keep us outside. Sure, I…
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Channeling Queen Esther’s Diplomacy In The Age of Trump
The story of evil trying to triumph over good is a story the Jewish community knows well. Every Purim, we remember the heroic actions of Queen Esther, who took a stand against evil and reversed the plot of a man who planned to persecute and annihilate the Jewish people. Her quiet diplomacy helped her husband,…
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6 Things I Learned When I Quit My Job And Moved To Israel
This piece was contributed by Masa Israel Journey — for more information, click here. If you swiped through my Instagram to February 2015ish, or browse that far back on my Facebook page, you’d probably think, “damn, this girl had the time of her life.” In the year or so following my college graduation in December…
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Normalizing Cultural Anti-Semitism
Instinctual fear jolted through me when, while waiting at a Chicago bus stop, I happened to glance at the elementary school and find a trio of kids staring back, giving a Nazi salute. They were only 6 or 7 years old, so after the initial dread passed I realized that there was no way they…
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What Judaism Can Teach Us About Getting Older — And Potty Humor
I never quite feel like I’m the right age. My congregants consistently tell me that I’m too young to be a rabbi. When I watched the standup comedian Robert Klein began one of his sets with a song about colonoscopies (below), I also felt be a bit out of place. When the rest of the…
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Shimon Peres’s Daughter On Building A Pluralistic Society
A version of this piece originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian Jewish publication. “If a society uses language that doesn’t have gendered forms, is that society more egalitarian?” The question from Professor Tsvia Walden, psycholinguist, peace ambassador and daughter of the late Shimon Peres, met with a thoughtful silence from the cohort of 14-year-olds at…
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Why Iranian-American Jews Must Fight for Syrian Refugees
“Ana Surya,” said Maryam, a girl no older than ten, with her hand out. It was night in Taksim Square, Istanbul, as she guided me while holding my hand to her widowed mother, who was breastfeeding her newborn child on the streets. They were a Syrian Kurdish family that had fled Khobani. The mother told…
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27 Years Ago, My Synagogue Was Vandalized By Skinheads — Here’s What I’ve Learned Since Then.
The telephone woke me at 5:00 a.m. It was the police -– never a good omen. But this wasn’t about family or property, it was my synagogue. “Graffiti,” the cop told me. “In black spray paint. All along the outside wall. You better get down here, Rabbi.” I put on my glasses, sat up in…
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The Secret Jewish History Of The Civil War
Local communities in both the North and South mobilized efforts to organize and equip the armies of the Civil War. In August, 1862, the Jewish community of Chicago met in a series of meetings at the Concordia Club to organize a Jewish company for a new Illinois regiment to be comprised of German and Scandinavian…
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Understanding Our Reactions To Trump’s Second Refugee Ban
Everyone uses doublespeak to talk about the Executive Order on Immigration. Liberal groups talk about the discrimination inherent in bill. Conservatives speak about the need to protect our nation from the threat of terrorism and the loss of life that could come with it. Both arguments are basically disingenuous and until we start saying what…
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