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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This Israeli bachelor found community and love by hosting huge Shabbat dinners
Hosting any Shabbat dinner is an achievement. There are guests to be invited. A menu to plan. Food to buy, and cook. A table to set. A house to clean, before and after. And most of this happens over the course of a busy work week. It’s a lot of work, which means what Yaniv…
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This Moroccan salmon is a big hit dish at L.A.’s lively Israeli Shabbat scene
It’s like the Bachelor, but louder, more heymishe and with hummus. While the TV series puts one man in a mansion with a bunch of women and conjures up lots of tears and arguments, Yaniv Cohen’s real-life series of massive Shabbat dinners fed tens of thousands of people over the years. This Moroccan-style salmon is…
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Preparing an Auschwitz survivor for her final resting place
While survivors and world leaders commemorated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz last week, I attended a very small, very private ceremony. As a member of a hevra kadisha, or burial circle, I helped prepare and dress an Auschwitz survivor, Suzy Rosenberg, for her burial in a small village by the Mediterranean Sea…
The Latest
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The Orthodox intimacy coach, talking about sex on Instagram
Sitting in her living room in Hillside, N.J., talking into an iPhone, Bracha Bard-Wigdor, 32, is schooling Orthodox Jewish women about sex. Instagram is her platform. No filters. “It is not O.K. for our children to be learning that men are predators, animals, that they have sexual urges they can’t control as boys,” she said,…
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Pride And Anxiety: 23 American Jews on choosing to wear their Jewishness
A middle-aged man tattooed a Star of David on his forearm. A secular man put on a kippah outside of synagogue — for the first time in his life. An Orthodox woman chose to wear a headscarf instead of a wig — to ensure that her identity is clear. A Jewish Sunday school teacher designed…
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For National Bagel Day, Forward staffers share their favorite spots
Bagels: we wait on line for them, we spend entire Sundays enjoying them, we gobble them on the subway in our darkest hours while strangers wrinkle their noses at poppy seeds cascading to the floor. Bagels are central to American Jewish life. Scratch that, they’re central to American life. Actually, this year scientists uncovered Bronze…
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When the tuition bills add up, some Orthodox consider aliyah
The numbers were not adding up for a New Jersey Orthodox couple in their early 30s with five children. She is a lawyer, he works in tech — two well-paying jobs. They still qualified for income-based assistance from their local yeshiva, so tuition for the three school-age kids totaled $40,000. But they knew that if…
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The hoops that Jewish converts have to jump through are getting impossibly high
It happened when we were newcomers. When my husband and I moved to a new area, we were eager to become involved in the Jewish community. After a few months of testing out a new synagogue, we decided to join. For us, the act of joining the synagogue was us formally declaring that we are…
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How to light a Yahrzeit Candle
Judaism provides several rituals to guide families through the difficult days and months after a loved one’s death. During shiva, the first seven days after a funeral, mourners gather in their homes with friends and family. For the next thirty days, a period known as sheloshim, they avoid parties and public entertainment. Even after these…
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Thousands gather to celebrate women’s Talmud study in Jerusalem
“Come in”: There’s Room Now for Women Too in Talmud Learning Ilana Blumberg On a cold night in Jerusalem, more than 3300 women and men gathered for the first public celebration of women’s Siyum HaShas. The seven-and-a-half-year global cycle of daily Talmud learning came to its close for the thirteenth time since the practice began…
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In Jerusalem, Haredi women venture into Talmud
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — The scene: A classroom in a building next to Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue. About twenty women in headscarves and wigs sit poring over texts. One, in the back row, is nursing an infant under a cover. At the front of the room sits Rabbi Refoel Kreuzer, looking more like an absent-minded professor than…
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Yiddish World Psychologist, writer and Yiddish culture activist Michael Fox has died
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