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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Louis Farrakhan Doesn’t Just Have An Anti-Semitism Problem — He Has A Slavery Problem
Louis Farrakhan is quite possibly the most popular anti-Semite in America. While neo-Nazis and white supremacists drummed up a mere few hundred people at their “national” rally in Charlottesville, Farrakhan’s recent rant in Chicago excited an adoring crowd more than three times that size. No antifa protesters have ever shut Farrakhan down when he calls…
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What We All Get Wrong About Israel
As an Israeli student at Columbia Law School, Barnard’s BDS vote didn’t surprise me. After all, how different could things be on the campus across the street? Throughout this past month at Columbia, we’ve seen both Israel Apartheid Week and the Gaza solidarity protest opposite a Holocaust commemoration. They are all reminders of how far…
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Teachers Can’t Hide The Occupation From Our Students
As Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) came and went, alongside the news of 39 Palestinian protesters killed along the Gaza fence (including 15 year old Mohammed Ayoub), I was once again forced to reckon with the version of Israel that I was taught as a student — and the perspective I offer my students as…
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Jewish Students At Barnard Were Key To Passing BDS Referendum
It is almost a rite of passage to stumble across your first protest around Israel and Palestine at Columbia University and Barnard College. I remember mine, six years ago, like it was yesterday. A group of students with Palestinian flags and signs stood on one side of College Walk, with a larger group of Jewish…
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This Is Not About Natalie Portman
Come on, folks. Since when is one actress’s discomfort about sharing a stage with Israel’s blood-stained prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, more newsworthy than the Israeli atrocities against Gaza that presumably spurred it? (And let’s face it, these are just the most recent horrors in Israel’s war on the 2 million inmates of the world’s largest…
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Three Generations Of Barnard Alumnae Respond To Student BDS Referendum
On the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, students at Barnard College passed a referendum, written by students from Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, calling upon the university administration to divest from eight companies that do business in Israel. However, on April 22, Barnard president Sian Leah Beilock stated that “Barnard…
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Helping the Israeli Disabled, One Gizmo at a Time
Just up the hill from the kibbutz swimming pool is Nadav Shadmi’s studio in an old chicken run, the rusted feed doors still visible in the wall. It’s most previous incarnation was as a storage space for the arts and cultural committee, and it took Nadav Shadmi months to clean it out, paint, and install…
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Lab-Grown Fish — Coming Soon To Your Local Supermarket?
A young, bearded Jew has only a tiny amount of fish, but thousands of hungry human mouths crying to be fed. You know what happens next: Amazingly, he miraculously multiplies the fish in order to feed the multitudes. No, this isn’t Jesus performing a biblical miracle in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Rather, this modern-day miracle…
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How I Learned To Love My Jewish Curls
A version of this article was originally published in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. I never really noticed my curly hair until we moved back to Australia. It was part of me, some days it behaved, others there was a lot of frizz, some products seemed to help more than others, but I didn’t spend a…
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Remembering My Father, Howard M. Sachar
Dr. Howard M. Sachar, Professor Emeritus of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and author of numerous works of Jewish, Middle-Eastern and European history passed away on April 18, 2018, at the age of 90 at his home in Kensington, Maryland. He was born to Dr. Abram L. Sachar and his wife, Thelma…
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Natalie Portman Missed An Opportunity To Speak In Support Of The Peacemakers
Dear Natalie Portman, I was looking forward to seeing you receive your Genesis Prize in our homeland, and disappointed upon hearing the news that you would not travel to Israel to receive what some call the “Jewish Nobel” because you found recent events there “distressing.” When one of the Children of Israel is crying about…
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