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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Be ‘Naughty’! Shop At Stores That Don’t Only Embrace Christmas.
As you’re doing that last-minute Hanukkah shopping, the Liberty Counsel, a relatively small Christian Right organization best known for defending Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, has a few ideas for you. For several years the Liberty Counsel has prepared a “Naughty or Nice” list of retailers who celebrate the “holidays” in general (naughty) and those who…
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What Do We Want for Hanukkah? Gifts That Make Us Chuckle
Let’s face it: This holiday season, in a time of Marie Kondo-style downsizing, most of us don’t need much of anything. Instead of investing in the latest tech gadget or toy, let your gifts at least be funny. And if not funny, then at least cute. Here are eight ideas for your family, friends, frenemies…
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Roy Moore’s Defeat Was Definitely Not A Hanukkah Miracle
As the internet celebrated the victory of a non-alleged pedophile in Alabama, many on social media reveled in the idea of the election as a Hanukkah miracle. Sure, it was a triumph of good over evil. And yes, the victory of Doug Jones was a small repudiation of our assaulter-in-chief. I am more reluctant to…
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The True Story of Hanukkah Is Not The Miracle of Oil. It’s Something Far More Insidious.
Why do we light Hanukkah candles? We tell our children how to light and when to light but we don’t tell them the real reason we light. Most people believe that we light Hanukkah candles because a single pot of oil – which was meant to last one day to light the Temple’s Candelabra –…
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How To Teach Your Toddler About Hanukkah — When Their Teacher Is Talking About Christmas
How much would you pay for Hanukkah guilt? No, not gelt, the gold-covered chocolate coins strewn about on this Festival of Lights, but actual guilt. You know, the Jewish kind. I asked myself this as I stood in a packed Judaica store on the Upper West Side, one of the dozens of New Yorkers who…
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8 Ugly Hanukkah Sweaters That Will Light Up The Holiday
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, everyone wears (or knows the joy of wearing) Ugly Sweaters in honor of the holidays. After all, what better way to show off your love of holiday season (and to hide the extra poundage you’re bound to gain) than to proudly proclaim it in vaguely inappropriate epigrams like,…
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An Israeli Pop Up Shop Just In Time For Hanukkah
What happens when a young, entrepreneurial New York-based fashion maven becomes enamored with Israeli fashion? You get an Israeli pop-up, just in time for the holidays. Beged — which literally means “clothes” in hebrew — will be open to the public for the entirety of Hanukkah, from Wednesday, December 13 to Wednesday, December 20. Located…
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I’m Jewish – Wish Me a Merry Christmas Anyway, Dammit
Every year, conservatives declare there’s a war on Christmas if a manger is barred from a federal building or if there is no Christmas tree in their kid’s school. The outrage is even often focused on the Starbuck’s audacity to celebrate the holiday by printing offensive cups – this time depicting a lesbian couple. The…
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Orthodox Women Win Battle Against Modesty Signs
Today, once again, Israel’s secular courts came to the rescue of Jewish women. In a dramatic hearing at the Israeli Supreme Court, three judges ordered the city of Beit Shemesh to remove all signs limiting the freedom of dress or movement of women in public spaces. In the culmination of a five-year battle begun by…
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Why I Stopped Waiting For My Bashert And Started Looking For A Life Partner Instead
“When we meet him, how will we know he’s our bashert?” This was one of the questions I asked my teachers during my early teenage years. As an adolescent in a yeshiva high school, there was no topic more fascinating than bashert – the Jewish concept of soulmate. Though we students were from modern Orthodox…
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Why I Wouldn’t Have Been A Maccabee
Today’s Hanukkah is a breezy holiday of lights, dreidels, latkes, Maccabeats videos and gifts for the little ones. Yet its origins are, without question, rooted in a story of bloody violence, which we often gloss over: The story of the victory of the Hasmonean Jewish militants against the Seleucid Greeks. Later on, after the Hasmonean…
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