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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Six Day War Caused Sexual Impotence, Price Hikes
The Associated Press looks at the lingering psychic wounds in the Arab world from the 1967 Six Day War: Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for “everything” — from “price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence.” “A military defeat, that could…
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Don’t Worry, Ahmadinejad Only Wants Israel ‘Wiped From the Pages of Time’
Bintel Blog reader James Holstun objects to an earlier post of mine in which I quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Holstun writes: I know that this is a widespread accusation — it’s on THE WEB, after all, so it must be true! But people…
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Bintel Brief: Rabbi Irwin Kula Answers Your Questions
Last month, we re-launched the Forward’s famed Bintel Brief advice column with the legendary Dr. Ruth Westheimer answering readers’ questions. Now, Rabbi Irwin Kula is taking the Bintel Brief reins as our next guest advice columnist. Kula, president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, is the author, most recently, of “Yearnings: Embracing…
The Latest
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Trading Feathers for a Yarmulke
Back in March, I wrote an article about how a Native-American memory site was staging an exhibition devoted to Anne Frank. The display, at the Bosque Redondo State Monument in New Mexico, offered a chance to talk about the Jewish-Indian relationship more broadly, from 17th-century interactions with converso settlers to the Native-American embrace of the…
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The Rebbe and the Shoah
There have long been those within ultra-Orthodox Jewry who regarded the Holocaust as divine punishment for what they saw as the sins of the Jews: Zionism, liberalism, irreligiosity, religiosity they disliked, etc. Most recently, former Israeli chief Sephardic rabbi, Mordecai Eliyahu, placed the blame for the Nazi genocide on Reform Judaism. According to a respected…
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In Other Jewish Newspapers
The Washington Jewish Week looks at the identity struggles of would-be converts to Judaism who have Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. “I felt the decision to convert would have been a rejection of myself,” one eventual convert recalled. “‘Why couldn’t Judaism accept me and my commitment to it without a conversion?’ I would ask myself.”…
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Editors Come and Go, but Peres Keeps on Running
By now you may have heard … I am leaving the Forward next month to become the managing editor of JTA. This isn’t the time for any long goodbyes. I just wanted to say this: When I started working here nearly seven years ago, Reform Jews didn’t spend their conferences davening and trying on tefillin,…
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A Merger Between the House of Lauder and the House of Bronfman
It was just a few weeks ago that The New York Observer was describing the battle for the World Jewish Congress presidency as a silver-spoon slugfest between Ron Lauder and Matthew Bronfman. Well, with the election just a few weeks away, the presumed rivals announced today that they are running … together!?! See the full…
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Bintel Brief: Dr. Ruth Says ‘Staying Married While Having Extramarital Affairs Is Not a Viable Option’
Dear Dr. Ruth, What would you say to a married woman whose husband has not slept with her in over 15 years? The couple is relatively healthy and in their late 50s. The lack of sex began because of diabetes-related impotence on the part of the husband, but he has learned to overcome this handicap….
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The Battle of Newton: Dershowitz vs. Chomsky
Last month, far-left icon Noam Chomsky spoke about Iraq to students at Newton South High School. He came at the invitation of the Massachusetts high school’s Social Awareness Club. The choice of speaker sparked no small measure of outrage (which isn’t surprising, given that it sometimes seems as if the famed MIT linguist never met…
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Everyone’s a Critic (and a Therapist)
On Tuesday, as part of its spin on the Tikkun Leil Shavuot — the all-night study session traditionally observed on Shavuot eve — the JCC in Manhattan screened a number of episodes of the hit Israeli television series “Bitipul,” or “In Treatment.” (The JCC defines “study” broadly.) The series was presented by psychologists Jill Salberg…
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