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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What Jews Should Watch For In The Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings
In the Torah, Jews are repeatedly commanded to prioritize the cause of justice, most famously in Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (“Justice, justice shall you pursue”). In modern America, perhaps no institution embodies this concept more than the Supreme Court, which makes crucial decisions about our nation’s moral and constitutional standards. For this reason, next week’s hearings on…
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Criticizing Melania Trump’s Cyberbullying Campaign Is Sexist
Pundits have made much of the fact that First Lady Melania Trump is campaigning against cyber-bullying — verbal abuse carried out via electronic means — at the same time that her husband Donald Trump is unleashing daily name-calling tirades on Twitter. Intra-family conflicts make for fascinating reality television story lines, all the moreso when it’s…
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We Asked 9 Historians: What Would Theodor Herzl Say About The Israel Of Today?
Earlier this month, longtime Forward subscriber David Kaplan asked us to tackle a simple question: “If Theodor Herzl came back to life, what would he say about the Israel of today?” We put eight esteemed historians to the task: Anita Shapira, Professor Emerita in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and the Founder of the…
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Why Sheldon Silver Is Headed To Prison
On July 20, Judge Valerie E. Caproni of the United States District Court in Manhattan sentenced former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to seven years in prison on his conviction in a second trial for using his office to benefit himself. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had vacated Silver’s previous conviction….
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The Answer To Keeping Kids On Birthright? Honesty
This past spring I accompanied my school’s graduating seniors on their trip to Israel. We arrived a few days before the U.S. opened its embassy in Jerusalem and the violent protests in Gaza. “I guess we didn’t pick a great time to come,” one of the students told me. I answered that it’s always and…
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How Israel’s Nation State Bill Empowers The Alt-Right
There has come to be an almost Henny Penny “the sky is falling” array of pronouncements in the media portending a deteriorating relationship between Israel and American Jewry. Writing in the Forward, editor-in-chief Jane Eisner has described the divergence of political, social and cultural values that divide the two communities, particularly in response to the…
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The Real Life Rabbi Who Almost Played One On The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — Until They Asked Him To Shave His Beard
Amazon’s Golden Globe-winning — and now Emmy-nominated — comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is coming back for a second season, and I couldn’t be happier. As a rabbi and pop culture vulture, you can imagine my delight when I was tapped to play “the rabbi” on the show. But alas, in a real life plot…
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How Israel’s Army Revolutionized Wartime Social Media
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg once said, “The question isn’t, What do we want to know about people?, It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?’” When it comes to the state of Israel and its representatives, there is a lot they want to tell about themselves. From PR crises like multiple wars…
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Majority Of Israelis And Palestinians Have Lost Faith In The Two-State Solution
A version of this article originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. Support for the two-state solution has declined among both Palestinians and Israeli Jews to its lowest level of support in two decades. Yet it is possible to increase support for the two-state solution by adding incentives for both sides. These are the main…
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Can A Gay Man Sexually Harass A Woman?
I came out as gay almost twenty years ago, and as a greying man now in my late 60s, I never dreamed that I could be threatening to women. Women who know me know that I am not interested in them as objects of desire. I am happily and monogamously married to my husband, and…
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The Jewish Case for Cynthia Nixon
The first time I heard Cynthia Nixon was running for governor of New York, I was unsure what to think. Previously, I knew her only as an actress from Sex and the City and as the mother of one of my classmates. Sure, I’d heard about her activism, but taking on Andrew Cuomo? Seemed like…
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