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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New Israeli Mikvah Ruling Deepens Jewish Communal Divide
Last February, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that State run Mikvahs, which operate under the supervision of Orthodox rabbis, can no longer prevent Reform and Conservative converts from using them as part of their conversion process. On July 25th, the Knesset overturned the Supreme Court’s ruling and passed a law forbidding non-Orthodox converts from using the…
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Books Amazon is Opening Brick and Mortar Bookstores; Our Sages Would Approve
At a pivotal moment in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp is seen lugging around heavy, expensive, newly purchased books. When his cousin Joachim wonders why Hans doesn’t simply borrow books from the local library, Hans explains that there is no substitute for the purchased book: Hans “loved to mark [his books] and underline…
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Congressman Nadler: Trump is a Fascist
At the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish roundtable on Tuesday, Congressman Jerrold Nadler told those assembled that the Trump campaign had passed the line into fascism. Nadler said that he had been a very active antiwar protester in his younger days, “but always felt that people used the word fascist too loosely.” “However,” he added, “this…
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Serving Kosher Food to the Hungry DNC Masses
Though food options abound at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Mordy Siegal is committed to providing convenient kosher food to the hungry masses. At the Wells Fargo Center, Kosher Grill is humming. Proprietor Mordy Siegal of Chicago said the stand, offering Polish sausages, hot dogs and other meat entrees, fed 10% of the entire…
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Summer Slide? Not When You’re Armed with a Bag of Books
When I was ten years old, I learned about the educational summer slide which disproportionately impacts low income students who often lack age-appropriate books at home. As an avid reader myself, I was upset to learn that this loss of educational skills over the summer adds up over the years and can significantly disadvantage these…
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Discover 10 Farm Candy Delights in NYC’s South Street Seaport
Picking my ten favorite products at Farm Candy is like asking a kid to pick out only one piece of candy at It’s Sugar. When children read our sign and come running excitedly into the store, they quickly learn we are not a “candy store,’ but a store that creates candy from the earth, products…
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Daddies Can Read to Their Children, Too!
I’m a young father, raising my (currently 1-year-old) son in Yiddish. I speak, read, and sing to him exclusively in Yiddish, while my wife uses primarily English. It’s been a wonderful experience, but it’s also been strange and complicated, for many reasons, and not least of all because of my gender. As I explained in…
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A Tale of Two New York Billionaires
Both Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg are Manhattan billionaires, but they share little else in common. This week, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent and former Republican, will endorse Hillary Clinton and speak at the Democratic National Convention. Though they are from different political parties, Bloomberg and Clinton are both strategic and…
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Singing is Just the Beginning
In the spring of 1947, a small group of Hazzanim joined together to lay the foundation for a cantorial association designed to address the immediate and anticipated future concerns of practicing cantors in North America. Their most pressing objective was to professionalize the Cantorate. In doing so, they had to establish the Cantor as a…
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Running on Camp Time
Between the ages of nine and twenty-one, I spent ten summers living on ‘camp time.’ On the first evening of every camp summer, staff and campers would reset their watches in a private daylight-savings plan. By shifting the time back by an hour, Shabbat would end at a reasonable time in the summer for small…
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A Black American on Making All Lives Matter
In these noxious political times, it’s worth revisiting the words of Israeli philosopher Martin Buber, who warned against the objectification of human beings. He writes in his classical work I and Thou that people are not, “dot[s] in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose…
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