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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Offbeat Israel: Shas and Shekels, Crocs and the Fast
Four American ultra-Orthodox Jews met today with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. They were activists from the strongly anti-Zionist sect Neturei Karta, which maintains contacts with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (members of the group famously visited Tehran in 2006). Haaretz reports on the meeting with here. Is it a proposal to ram religion down people’s throats?…
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Fasting While Pregnant?
Of the four fasts commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, Tisha B’Av is the only one in which traditional rabbinic authorities don’t widely exempt pregnant and nursing women. In the following video, posted Tuesday on Web Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Brovender — who is not a medical doctor — states that “there is…
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Mikveh = Quiet Time
Three days before my wedding last month, my friend and fellow Sisterhood contributor Debra Nussbaum Cohen accompanied me on my inaugural visit to the mikveh. While I’m not particularly observant, I have long been inspired by the Jewish ritual bath as a metaphor for renewal — an opportunity for a fresh start, in whatever area…
The Latest
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A Money-Laundering Rabbi’s Brooklyn Mea Culpa
Every variety of fedora and yarmulke was on display as men poured into the central building of the Vizhnitz Hasidic community for a hastily arranged “legal symposium” Tuesday evening in Borough Park — the heart of ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn. As we reported in this week’s Forward, the symposium was a part of an effort by some…
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In New Memoir, Chabon Skewers Circumcision
The best-selling, Pulitzer-winning, famously Jewish author, Michael Chabon, is ready to tell us how he really feels about a particular halakhic ritual. Page Six reports that in Chabon’s forthcoming memoir, “Manhood for Amateurs,” the author passionately indicts the practice of circumcision, writing: Mutilation [is] the only honest name for this raw act that my wife…
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Supporters of Disengagement Rethink Their Stance
It has been the big question Israeli politicians and analysts have been asking ever since the 2005 disengagement. If Israel could turn the clock back and rewrite the past, would it have left Gaza? According to a new poll, the public hopes not. Research by the public opinion company Maagar Mochot found that some 68%…
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The Triathletes Leading the Pack
We Jewish women tend not to be known for our athleticism (my junior high yeshiva basketball team’s championship record in the prep school league notwithstanding. Go Rams!). So it was particularly exciting to see so many Jewish women participating in the New York City Triathlon on Sunday. Yes, I said triathlon! As in a Lance…
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Help! I’m Sick of Overparenting My Kids
Dear Bintel Brief: I want to be a Free-Range parent, I really do. I want to let my kids have the same kind of fun I had as a child. But I am so paranoid it is ridiculous. When I was in third, grade I used to walk a few blocks up the street to…
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In The White House, Women Earn on Average Less Than Men
There’s nothing more unsettling than the public discussion of money, and how much or little of it one makes. Not long ago, competitive salary analysis among urban professionals was a brutal sport. The fangs of the once-well-paid have retracted in these tough times, though, as the employed are simply ecstatic to have a place to…
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WikiHome for the Jews: Where To Go and Where Not to Go
Visitors to the main page of the English language Wikipedia today were treated to a short history of New York’s Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue. Every day Wikipedia features a short article that they think might interest their readers which, on the English site, is always an article in English. There are however 267 different languages…
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The Daily Show with Jonathan Leibowitz
Jon Stewart a relic of antisemitism? Ron Rosenbaum thinks so. “Dear Jon Stewart,” he writes in Slate, “I want you to change your name. Back to Leibowitz.” He is referring to Stewart’s birth moniker, Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. Many of us have stories about how our family names were hacked into Americanized semblances of the original…
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Opinion The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us
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