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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You’re Never Too Old To JDate
One minute Bea Slater was buying a filet at her New Jersey supermarket, and the next she was getting a call that she’d be featured in a print ad for JDate, the online dating service for Jewish singles. Slater is 90. She’s also my grandmother. Before she knew it, she was wearing a royal blue…
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Let’s Bring Back “Never Again!”
In Jewish teachings we learn, “from generation unto generation we shall remember.” We Jews are blessed with a long memory. It is precisely our memory that today acts as the “canary in the mine” against the evil of mankind. It is this memory that has led Jews and Jewish organizations to be that canary in…
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No, Parents Don’t Cause Drug Addiction. Stop Blaming Yourselves.
I served as a congregational rabbi for 35 years. My wife and I raised two children who are now adults. We provided them with a good Jewish education, Jewish camp and a kosher, observant home. Both our children, in large part, have not embraced Judaism. Is it our fault? Some might say we should have…
The Latest
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WTF: Is The Tide Pod Challenge Kosher?
Q: Is the Tide Pod Challenge kosher? A: … NO! There is an explicit biblical commandment against doing stupid s–t that endangers your health. Genesis 9:5 states, “But for your own life-blood I will require a reckoning: I will require it of every beast; of man, too, will I require a reckoning for human life,…
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Where Do Silent Orthodox Women Stand In The #MeToo Era?
Now that the world is facing a whole new revolution — the #metoo initiative, the equal pay initiative, the I-can-do-it-all feeling that women all across the country are experiencing right now, I wonder about my role as a frum, Orthodox woman – one of the many women whose voices are silenced. In the ultra-Orthodox community,…
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Let’s Take Back ‘Jewess’ From The Anti-Semites
Ever since I heard the word “Jewess” a year ago, I’ve become obsessed with it. I was watching the pilot of “Broad City,” where Abbi and Ilana post an ad on Craigslist that says, “We’re just 2 Jewesses tryin’ to make a buck.” Before, I had never noticed the word. Suddenly, it was everywhere. It’s…
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When Jewish Children’s Books Try To Be Diverse — And Fail
“Imagine a world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book,” is the opening salvo of We Need Diverse Books, an organization that makes the case for greater inclusion of marginalized groups and scrutinizes existing books for their failure to recognize the experiences of oppressed people, such as people of…
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Having One Child Isn’t Easy When You’re Ultra-Orthodox (And Everyone Has So Many)
I am standing outside my daughters Israeli Beis Yaakov elementary school, excited to hear about how her first day of first grade went. Another father stands at the gate – the only dads who came a bit too early. Upon discovering our daughters are in the same class, we chuckle. In a school with more…
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I Don’t Believe in God, But I Still Want a Jewish Community
Amy Goldin’s parents believed that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” As an adult, she didn’t think much about religion until pregnancy led to a sudden and unexpected yearning for her newborn son to have a bris – and, down the road, a bar mitzvah. Together with her wife, a lapsed Catholic who agreed…
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This 89-Year-Old Furrier Knows The Secret To A Long Life
Every morning, Leonard Kahn takes the Q train around the corner from the Upper East Side apartment that he shares with his wife Talia, rides it down to the 34th Street/Herald Square stop and walks the two blocks to Mink Mart, where he works as a furrier. On his way home at night, he stops…
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My Japanese Daughter’s Coming of Age Ceremony In Jerusalem
Miriam wiped the sweat off her brow in layers of heavy silk kimono woven with delicate pastel and bright red flowers. I could barely recognize my twenty year old daughter out of her baggy sweater and modest, flowing skirt. Here she was, dressed for her Seijinshiki, the Japanese Coming of Age ceremony, clip-clopping in her…
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