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
-
Accepting Transgender Jews Can’t Just Come From the Top
Both as a transgender Jew and a member of the board of Keshet, a national organization working toward inclusion of LGBT Jews in the Jewish world, I am delighted and heartened by the Union of Reform Judaism’s to making Reform Jewish congregations and institutions safe for and inclusive of transgender Jews. While other movements have…
-
One Woman’s Investigation of Religion in Public Schools
One of the events that Linda K. Wertheimer reports on in her new and comprehensively researched book, “Faith Ed: Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance,” happened on a school field trip to a mosque in 2010. Two hundred students in Wellesley Middle School’s sixth grade visited a mosque in the Roxbury section of…
-
Baby Hitler and Other Moral Questions for GOP Candidates
What if Baby Hitler were wearing a hat with bear ears? I’m curious to know what Jeb Bush might do if Baby Hitler were actually wearing one of those fuzzy bear hats. Or if Baby Hitler had just tasted a lemon and were making a funny face. What would Jeb Bush do then? Would he…
The Latest
-
5 Questions for Reform’s Daryl Messinger
(JTA) — Last week was a big one for Daryl Messinger. A resident of Palo Alto, California, and an active board member of several organizations, Messinger was installed as chair of the Union for Reform Judaism, becoming the first woman to hold that post. And she chanted Torah for the first time — in front of…
-
How Veterans Stories Transformed My Son
I am sitting in my office, in Bethesda, Maryland, when my millennial son Benjamin calls, from northern California, to talk about Jewish veterans of World War II — specifically about the latest Bernie, Harry, or Murray war story he has just transcribed. Read: Portraits of Our Fallen Although the hushed, cubicle farm where I spend…
-
Legendary Producer Barbara Gaines Awarded for LGBT Work
It took all of five seconds for the former executive producer of the Late Show with David Letterman to get the hundreds gathered to honor her rolling in the aisles with laughter. “I’m Barbara Gaines and welcome to my Bat Mitzvah,” she said. “I don’t [know] what’s stranger…the fact that I’m wearing my father’s tuxedo…
-
At Long-Last, Giving Salomé a Voice
Water runs over the curves of Salomé’s bare skin. Alone together in an underground prison, John the Baptist baptizes the Judean princess. Instruct someone to imagine Salomé in the nude, and this is probably not the scene that comes to mind. But South African playwright and director Yaël Farber’s take on the biblical story doesn’t…
-
7 YA and Romance Novels for Jewish Book Month
After all the noise surrounding the Nazi Romance book this summer, I looked closer at my own reading list. I could tell someone what books were awful in their treatment of Judaism and Jewish people, but could I recommend books that were wonderful? I couldn’t. A little ashamed, I set off to read books where…
-
Does the Hebrew Language Have a Gender Problem?
Beneath the rocky alps and the bright blue sky in Salzburg, Austria this summer, fellows at the Eighteen:22 conference for Jewish LGBTQ leaders sat around at the Schloss Leopolskron, the site where “The Sound of Music” was filmed, addressing each other by their preferred gender pronouns PGP, like he, she, and the non-binary, they and…
-
The Rise of Cheeky Yiddish Leisurewear
I totally need a “Totes Koshe” t-shirt. The saucy line of $48 sleeveless tees, designed by Alice Blastorah and Shiran Teitelbaum of Unkosher Market, boasts the following: “Our fabric is sourced and sewn in Los Angeles with 100% cotton and 100% chutzpah. Deal with it.” A seamless weave of in-your-face Jewish attitude AND 100% cotton?…
-
Why Donald Trump’s ‘Neurotic’ Woman Matters
A brief list of coded words you should not be using to describe women: Hysterical (not like, “Oh my God, that’s so funny, it’s hysterical!” but the antique mythical disorder where a uterus floats around a woman’s body and she can’t control her emotions because of it). There’s also shrill, bossy, emotional, high maintenance, etc….
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
News Why Zohran Mamdani believes he’ll win over Jewish voters, as Israel critic surges to second behind Cuomo in NYC mayoral race
In Case You Missed It
-
Books How Jews shaped the Western – and how the Western shaped Jews
-
Culture Cardinals are Catholic not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
-
Fast Forward Halal restaurant opening in Congress is like ‘Muslim conquest of Jerusalem,’ says GOP congressman
-
Fast Forward Germany formally classifies far-right AfD party as extremist, in blow to Nazi-linked populist movement
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
