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.
Community
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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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The far-right Noam Party poses a threat to the Israeli values that we hold dear
Billboards with the slogan “Israel Chooses to be Normal,” could be seen on the highway that runs through Tel Aviv during recent Israeli elections. These signs were sponsored by the extremist Noam Party. The billboards promoted a certain kind of “normalcy”—in particular, they wanted to “that my son marries a woman.” Noam’s campaign commercials added…
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What do Yom HaShoah and Earth Day have in common?
On Yom HaShoah, I often think of the death camp chimneys that the poet Nelly Sachs so vividly depicted: “O the chimneys/on the ingeniously devised habitations of death/When Israel’s body drifted as smoke/through the air.” But this year, I also thought of other chimneys— such as the smokestacks of factories, power plants, and automobile exhaust…
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My Jewish ancestors fled Spain, will returning feel like home — or just another diaspora?
When the government of Spain passed a law that offered citizenship to the descendants of Jewish people expelled 500 years ago by the Inquisition, half the people I knew sent me copies of news reports about it, or wrote and asked if I planned to pursue Spanish citizenship. No, I always said. It sounded like…
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How getting the COVID vaccine changed my approach to prayer
It’s the morning of my first vaccine and I double mask and jump in the subway to head to my appointment at Harlem Hospital. I get out of the subway and make a wrong turn, which leads to another wrong turn and worries that I will be late. I start to run, panting under my…
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The day my son’s ashes arrived in the mail
The ashes came to my home in Maryland from Southern California, shipped via special delivery by the aptly named funeral home Ashes to Ashes. They arrived encased in a rectangular, polished, dark wood box about the size of a loaf of artisan bread. I immediately opened it to make sure it was not empty. It…
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What voting in Israel during a gap year taught me about democracy
Gap years, and elections, are life changing. For a Jewish teenager, a gap year in Israel can change their perspective on all walks of life. From learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to realizing what living on a budget means, there are endless opportunities to learn and grow. And each experience is different. For some students…
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How Jewish community helped me grow through an adult autism diagnosis
For much of my life, I’ve seen myself as a schlemiel: the endearing Yiddish word for a socially inept person living a life patched by blunders and awkwardness. From my teenage years through college, I believed what I saw as my incompetence and lack of grace were residues of a bad personality. As it turns…
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What the pandemic taught me to love about Torah
Every year in the dead of the winter, when the Torah cycle entered Vayikra, or Leviticus, I used to release a huge sigh of frustration. One of my synagogue’s ritual directors used to call this book “the barbeque section of the Torah” because it is largely concerned with the why’s and how’s of animal sacrifice,…
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On the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary, honor the resistance you never heard of
April 19, 2021, is the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and a good time to take aim at the myth that Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter.” Warsaw stands alongside Auschwitz as a symbol of the Holocaust: As Auscwhitz is an eternal condemnation of the perpetrators and all they stood for, so…
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How I connected with others through the pandemic? A baking blog.
Stay at home orders came down like a hammer, just a week after I had come back from a quick 48-hour trip to Chicago. In that instant of curfews, toilet paper shortages and so much anxiety I decided that I would turn to the one thing that has proven over and over to relieve my…
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Will anyone donate a kidney to save my friend’s life?
The best way to introduce you to my longtime friend and colleague Chuck Winer is the story of his chance meeting with President Obama. When most people meet the leader of the free world, they simply shake his hand and rejoice at the great honor bestowed on them. Not Chuck. He seized the opportunity during…
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