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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To Save the Country, the Senate Must Vote on Judge Merrick Garland
The pursuit of justice is a fundamental Jewish value and a prerequisite to the world we strive to create. Last week, as a part of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)’s #DoYourJob campaign, I spoke out with other leaders of faith-based organizations about the need to give US Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland…
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Giving Students Hope, One Pencil at a Time
I was surprised to learn, while volunteering as a teaching assistant for severely underprivileged students at St. Louis Aim High, that the students I was trying to tutor did not have even the basic tools to succeed and excel in school. In August 2013, I co-founded Performing for Pencils, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides…
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Bringing the Joy of Hockey to the Developmentally Disabled
This piece is part of a series of perspectives from Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award Recipients on their experiences in philanthropic work. As an avid ice hockey player, I believe in sports as a vehicle to help everyone gain confidence and learn about teamwork and commitment. As my Bar Mitzvah approached, I thought about what…
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Fire, Fire! The Challenges of ‘Kid Brain vs. Adult Brain’
Last week, I was invited to read a Yiddish poem at the first of our library’s “Favorite Poem Community Readings.” The event, which happened last night, is part of a national, decades-long peace initiative called the Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans are asked to transcend divisive cultural boundaries by reading each other their favorite…
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Walking Through Schindler’s List
Of course I have seen Schindler’s List, the 1993 Holocaust movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Who hasn’t? Well, my 18-year-old daughter, Esther. So, we huddled on the bed in our tiny hotel room in Amsterdam, next to one of the many canals, and watched it on our laptop computer. After being in Krakow, watching this…
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A Road to God, Paved With Sick Beats
I was 16 when I first posted a video of myself beatboxing to Chris Brown and T-Pain’s “Kiss Kiss” on YouTube. Few things embarrass me more than watching the video or knowing that thousands of people have watched me attempt vocal percussion when I should have just moved on. And yet, 8 years, 171 videos,…
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Channeling The Power of Faith to End Gun Violence
Rabbis are part of a growing group of American Faith Leaders who have witnessed with anguish our communities being devastated by suicides, homicides, unintentional shootings, and mass shootings. We have consoled families and buried their loved ones. We have seen how the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our society are disproportionately affected by gun…
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ZOA President: We Are Not Conservative, But We Are Usually Right
Daniella Greenbaum (“Why the AIPAC Haters Have it Wrong,” 07/12/16) makes several unsubstantiated, inaccurate allegations about ZOA. ZOA is a 120-year old rational-centrist pro-Israel group. Being the only major group to have accurately predicted that the Oslo Accords and the Gaza withdrawal — and that dealing with Arafat and Abbas would never lead to peace,…
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My Saddest Day in Israel Came at the Western Wall
The Kotel (the Western Wall), located in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, is unquestionably the holiest place in the world for the Jewish people. The remaining piece, the retaining wall of the Second Temple, is the place toward which Jews have prayed for as long as there have been a Jewish people….
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Growing Jewish Values At Abundance Farm
The posts on The New Spirituality blog are responses to Rabbi Sid Schwarz’s lead essay in his book, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Jewish Lights). In that essay, which was posted on this site on May 5, 2016, Schwarz argues that any organization that hopes to speak to the next…
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The Dead Don’t Lie
We visited the dead in Stoczek. The dead don’t lie. Stoczek is the Shtetl where Esther was born and the place from which Sam was taken to the Death Camp Treblinka. There are enough ghosts here to compete with Hogwarts. Grzegorz Maleszewski took us to Stoczek. Our first stop was the vacant lot that once…
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