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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A Trip to Israel, 10 Years and 70 Pints of Blood in the Making
The distance between Tel Aviv to New York City round trip is approximately 11,100 miles, as the crow flies. A free ticket on El Al will set you back 1,400 frequent flyer points. So how long would it take to earn a flight by accruing frequent flyer points in increments of 20? Well, blood donors…
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Maccabiah Update: A Softball Miracle and Misplaced Nostalgia
Congratulations Team USA! The American delegation to the Maccabiah is delivering the goods. Yesterday, American pole-vaulter Jillian Schwartz set a new Maccabiah record, reaching 4.24 metres. She broke the record set just a few minutes previously by Israeli national champion Morin Azizi. Obviously, Schwartz won a gold medal in the process. There was another gold…
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Agriprocessors: Execs Await Trial, Workers Stage a Play
An Iowa judge recently postponed one of the trials for top executives at the Agriprocessors kosher meat company. The executives were charged with nearly 10,000 separate child labor violations after the company was the subject of a massive immigration raid last May. This postponement means that the full story of the underage workers arrested during…
The Latest
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The Only Thing Offensive About ‘Brüno’
I saw the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie “Brüno,” and unlike some others who’ve seen it, I thought it was hilarious with a capital “h.” On Tuesday’s episode of The View, Barbara Walters expressed her distaste for the way Baron Cohen, as Austrian gay fashonista Brüno, makes fun of unsuspecting people by asking them outrageous…
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Maccabiah Speed Dating?
The Maccabiah, widely dubbed the Jewish Olympics, officially got underway today following last night’s grand opening ceremony at the Ramat Gan Stadium. Americans can be proud that the loudest cheers at the ceremony came when Olympic gold medal swimmer Jason Lezak entered the stadium, and lit the Maccabiah torch. And if you’re rooting for the…
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Amos Gitai Finds Inspiration in Josephus
Opening this year’s ongoing Avignon Festival in southeastern France, “The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness” is a production inspired by Josephus’s “War of the Jews,” conceived and staged by Israeli director Amos Gitai. Gitai’s uncompromising films include “Kadosh” (1999), “Kippur” (2000), “Alila” (2003) and “Free Zone “(2005). Possibly misleadingly,…
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Men’s Torah Commentary ‘Steals the Spotlight’
It hasn’t been long — just the last dozen years in human time, but a blink of an eye in the long arc of Torah interpretation — that women have published scholarly commentaries on the Jewish Bible. Now there’s a new book in response, “The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary”, edited by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin and…
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Help! My Daughter Is Seeking an ‘Open’ Marriage
Dear Bintel Brief: In 1995 one of my six daughters, married for the first time. We thought at the time that she was truly getting married, and I liked her young man. For maybe a dozen years before her marriage she had been leading an unconventional, “new-age” lifestyle in the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps…
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What Rabbi Eliyahu’s Comments Say About Men
Debra’s point in the previous post that Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu’s statements regarding modesty says “far more about the way the rabbi views men than it does women” warrants further discussion. The view of men that I think Debra is suggesting Eliyahu’s statement implies – that they are likely to be aroused by the slightest…
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J Street and the Israel Project: A War of Words
The Israel Project and J Street are now officially at war. The two groups have been trading barbs in Jewish media outlets in recent days over leaks from the Israel Project’s (TIP) “message guide” on what to say when talking about Israel. Columnist Doug Bloomfield reported in the New Jersey Jewish News about the manual…
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Mme. Veil Gets the Wax Treatment
The French lawyer and politician Simone Veil (born 1927), profiled in The Forward last November on the occasion of her election to the Académie française, keeps going from strength to strength. Her latest honor is to have her wax effigy displayed at Paris’s Musée Grévin, as of July 9. The typically imperturbable Mme. Veil, who…
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