Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the robust lives of American Jews. Here there’s a little of everything about the multifaceted world of Jewish life. There are light-hearted Jewish celebrity stories and shocking Jewish celebrity news. Food is also plentiful,…
Life
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Abortion Stories: We Want to Hear from You
Last week, our own Larry Cohler-Esses shared his story of helping a close friend obtain an abortion in 1969, when it was still illegal and dangerous to do so. When Larry interviewed his friend decades later, she told him that “the experience for me was just an experience…I don’t believe it was life altering. I…
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Netanyahu Appoints Western Wall Deal Negotiator to New Post
TEL AVIV — David Sharan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.S.-born chief of staff, who is heading negotiations on an egalitarian Western Wall plaza, will be the Israeli Cabinet’s next secretary. In April, Netanyahu tapped Sharan to run reopened discussion on an agreement to expand the non-Orthodox prayer platform at the Western Wall, allowing progressive…
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WATCH: This Simple Animation Offers a Profound Message About Mikvehs in Israel
An Israeli art student’s short animation shows how a ritual meant to allow for physical intimacy between Jewish couples can actually drive them apart. The animation, created by Tiferet Sigala, a third year student at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, shows two women’s radically different experiences at the mikveh, as one scowling ritual…
The Latest
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This 25-Year-Old Sustainability Superstar is Shooting for Congress
Environmental advocacy pioneer Erin Schrode started her community involvement as a 13-year-old, when she co-founded nonprofit Teens Turning Green after discovering that many commonplace cosmetics contain cancerous and other harmful ingredients. Her work earned her wide recognition — CNN named her one of the “leading lights in the environmental movement,” and the White House featured…
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Orthodox Boxer Yuri Foreman’s Secrets of Success
I stood in a boxing ring at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn’s Dumbo, opposite Yuri Foreman, the onetime World Boxing Association super welterweight world champion. My left leg was forward; my knees were bent in a “boxing stance.” “One, two, slip, right upper jab, left hook,” Foreman directed, and I began the sequence, having learned what…
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Transcending Beauty: Israeli Pageant for Transgender Women Signals Desire for Normalcy
The 12 women posing for their photos in Eitan Tal’s Tel Aviv studio have quite diverse looks. Some have soft facial features while others show signs of the cosmetic and surgical interventions they have gone through. Yet not one of them looks like they have made an exaggerated effort to emphasize their feminine appearance. Natural…
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At a Chabad House, Looking for Love, Finding Myself
I was having Shabbat dinner with the Hasidic family who lives down the street, as I sometimes do. I like to meet new people and have new experiences, and in the sleepy, ocean-breezy, rather homogeneous neighborhood of Santa Monica, California, where I’ve recently relocated, dining with a deeply observant Hasidic family can feel like an…
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A Jewish Woman’s Emotional Hunt for Her Father’s Circassian Roots Leads to Israel — and the Golan Heights
Extending a welcoming hand in a warm, inviting gesture, Eleonore Merza says: Please, come in. In another minute she might have asked: Who wants coffee and who wants tea? It was a moment that fused a reenacted past with an imagined future, next to a mound of basalt stones in the Golan Heights. Merza, 36,…
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New PAC Has Message for Mediocre White Men — Don’t Run for Office
“People ask me sometimes, ‘When do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is when there are nine,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said. Yup, nine. Just all of them, that will be enough, thanks. That’s the chutzpah that makes RBG the…
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For the First Time, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Bares Her Deep Grief
Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for the first time publicly the depth of her grief following the death of her husband — at a commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Dave Goldberg, the 47-year-old CEO of Survey Monkey, died suddenly in May 2015 after sustaining a head trauma when he fell off…
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Why I Love Israel But I Am Not a Zionist
Last November, on tour for my book, I gave a talk at a temple in Cleveland, after which a man raised his hand: “What are your thoughts on Israel?” I hadn’t come to speak about Israel, so I kept my response brief. “I am not a Zionist,” I said. “And I don’t fetishize the idea…
Explore
Most Popular
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
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Fast Forward Alan Bergman, Oscar-winning lyricist and ‘father figure’ to Barbra Streisand, dies at 99
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