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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History repeats itself: A Holocaust survivor reflects on the election
Fear gripped me, as it did many Americans, on election night 2016. As I began to feel tightness in my throat and heaviness in my chest, memories of my adolescence in Nazi-occupied Hungary returned. I don’t recall any time in my life when I was not aware of antisemitism. I grew up in a village…
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I’m a secularist. But my brother’s illness saw me lighting Shabbat candles.
In the first few days of my brother’s illness from COVID, I tell work friends on Zoom that he is sick. I am in lockdown on a different continent, and unsure what I can do. My colleague messages me that he will say a mass for my brother down in El Paso with his fellow…
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The problem with online services
By all accounts, the transition from in-person to virtual High Holiday services because of the COVID-19 pandemic was a huge success. Record numbers of people viewed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, albeit online. Synagogues worked tirelessly to make liturgy and music appealing and catchy in what was for many a new medium. While donations…
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A Jewish cemetery in Hungary, restored by a Christian
I found the Tállya cemetery, located kilometers away from the village of Tállya, in northeastern Hungary, by chance. I am a Christian scholar researching Jewish culture, and I have been photographing Hasidic pilgrimages in nearby Kerestir, Olaszliszka and Sátoraljaújhely and elsewhere for years. I often visit the area, and discovered the cemetery thanks to a…
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Engage with those with whom you disagree — it’s the Jewish way
I had no idea writing a short piece about persuasion would prove so challenging. How tough can it be, I thought, to share my thoughts on helping others embrace an idea using facts, logic and passion. Indeed, I mused, is there any other acceptable way to convince someone of a new perspective? Not bribery. Not…
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I thought Trump was for me. Now I’m organizing against him.
In 2018, I ended my support for Trump after a series of conversations with Sarah Silverman on Twitter. She was thoughtful and respectful and, as we spoke, my views began to shift. Eventually, I realized that this American Trumpism was wrong for America. I began to see how hateful MAGA was and I looked at…
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Two steps forward, one step back through history
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What if he was wrong? I majored in history and went on to graduate school to study it even more. As taught, history was the story of human progress. Over that long arc, oppression, discrimination, poverty, war,…
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As the Peace Corps turns 60, we must revisit its lessons
In the early hours of October 14, 1960, 60 years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy arrived at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Union to spend the night, having debated the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, earlier that evening. Despite it being 2:00 a.m., some 10 thousand students stood assembled waiting for him. Kennedy had not planned to speak,…
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In Bereishit, Creation draws us deeper.
Rashi famously suggests that if the Torah is primarily a book of laws — after all, it contains hundreds of laws — then the Five Books of Moses should start with the first law given to the whole people of Israel (in Exodus 12:1-2, we are told: “This month [Nissan] is the first of the…
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Making a new home with the Challah Boys
I’m a Jewish woman living in the South, brought here by happenstance from San Francisco, California to Greensboro, North Carolina, a city populated by folks with soft, lilting accents and a hospitable way of welcoming my son and me to the area. Soon after we arrived, the wintry weather showed up, with 12 inches of…
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A pandemic Simchat Torah done safely
From the start of the COVID-19 High Holiday season, I dreaded Simchat Torah. I knew that Rosh Hashanah in lockdown wouldn’t be an issue for me. Being a rabbi has its perks — I’m familiar with the prayer service, amused by my own off-key singing and accustomed to blowing the Shofar for my family every…
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