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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‘My mother lived for six years on a ventilator’
A few days ago, I texted a much beloved colleague to hear how her father was faring; he had been stricken by Covid-19 a few weeks before and had been intubated and placed into a medically-induced coma. An ebullient, vivacious whirlwind, she had recently become engaged to her soulmate and had left our store to…
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‘Mom’s kitchen smelled of fresh cooking and cigarettes,’ an ode to my first-generation mom
I’m a baby-boomer. American-born Mom was the child of Polish Jews scrapping by through the Great Depression in the land of plenty. They lost everything. Nothing went to waste ever again. We barely threw out a garbage bag once a week. Mom was a true-blue American tomboy, loving baseball. Her favorite times of year were…
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‘My mother and I went grocery shopping holding hands.’
This year the question of ‘Why is this night different than all other nights?’ left me in silence. We all knew the answer to that question. I feel dumb founded and at loose ends! I am living housebound because of this deadly virus. I have been ordered to wash my hands, to keep six feet…
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‘Let us each find a way to remain committed to sustaining the Jewish people’
In this new era of virtual reunions, my rabbinical school classmates recently started a Whatsapp group. Ten weeks ago, we started with personal news, some joyous and some sorrowful. Conversation was lighthearted, rabbis in the field enjoying some rare moments of social connection. Little did we know, little did all of us know, how quickly…
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‘After enduring two months of cabin fever together, we are an even tougher couple than we were before’
When asked about the long term goals for their kids, many adults will think of coming-of-age benchmarks: Applauding as they receive a college diploma from a dream school, celebrating as they land a dream job, and walking them down the aisle to marry a dream life partner. These are all extensions of a more fundamental…
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‘Without emptiness, where would we find room to grow? Without hollowness, how could we breathe?’
It seems like every year, as the annual cycle of Torah reading reaches Leviticus; the third of the five books, congregational rabbis tense up. By now, we’ve finished investigating the human psyche courtesy of the rich characters that inhabit Genesis and we’ve emerged with bated breath from the adventures of the Exodus. Suddenly, our focus…
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Poem | Jewish Penicillin
you have to pass the torch the doctor said to the sole family chef who uncharacteristically was in a hospital bed instead of caring for someone else who was with the calendar marching loudly towards rosh hashana and family expectations she said, appropriately, there’s no one to pass it to but then began the same…
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‘Normal’ life is usually not easy to start with for people on the autism spectrum — and this pandemic is making it even worse
The global coronavirus pandemic ravaging the world has taken the lives of many. But in addition to the massive loss it’s left in its wake, it has also illuminated exacerbated many preexisting conditions. Mine is one of them. As a public service during this pandemic, the Forward is providing free, unlimited access to all coronavirus…
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Sitting shiva via Zoom, it turns out, has its upsides
Last week, we buried my father in the Long Island cemetery plot that had been waiting three decades for him to arrive. When I recall my mother’s 1990 funeral, in the pre-COVID era, I can still feel the love that came from the crowd surrounding us, and the support I drew from the Hebrew prayers…
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‘Moses was only 80 when he confronted Pharaoh’
I failed my driver’s test on my 17th birthday. My parallel parking was perfect, so I assumed I had passed, but when the DMV examiner dropped me off, he told me I had forgotten to turn on my blinker. I stayed home the rest of the day, too embarrassed to have my father drive me…
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‘By learning how to keep loving camp, I learned how to keep loving my broken, messy, beautiful country’
In February 2020, rising Counselors In Training at URJ camp Harlam attended the RAC’s L’Taken Social Justice Seminar, the Reform movement’s flagship social justice program that takes high school students to lobby on Capitol Hill. Dear Camp Harlam L’Taken Participants of 2020, Just a few weeks ago, in another world, I was sitting with you…
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