Demystifying a Genius: Pianist Glenn Gould — His Life, Music and Love The life of the brilliant, eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who died October 4, 1982, at the age of 50, gets sensitive, nonjudgmental treatment by Canadian filmmakers Peter Raymont and Michele Hozer in their revelatory documentary, “Genius Within, The Inner Life of Glenn…
On Sunday morning, I woke up feeling refreshed and energized, grateful that Yom Kippur was done. “Okay, kids,” I said. “Let’s go outside. We need to build the sukkah today.” My son Jeremy asked: “Why do we have to build a sukkah?” “We need to build the sukkah so we can eat in it,” I…
How should Jews respond to an angry movement whose candidates include full-throated supporters of Israeli West Bank settlements; others who would end foreign aid, including to Israel; one who excoriates church-state separation as a Nazi invention, and others who urge setting aside such divisive social issues to focus on fiscal conservatism and radical government cutbacks?…
Each year, during Kol Nidre, Sinai Temple in Los Angeles pauses in its prayers for a fundraising appeal. A few members rise to address the congregation, asking for donations while speaking about how the community has supported them through good times and bad. It’s a typical fundraising pitch for an American synagogue: Give because you’re…
The nightmare that began for Rabbi Bryan Bramly when he was arrested in his synagogue parking lot last March for the alleged rape of a 7-year-old did not end when the case against him collapsed on September 15. Bramly, who was the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Sholom of the East Valley, a Conservative congregation…
Guidelines announced by the New Israel Fund detailing who can qualify for its grants have left the organization?s critics and grantees alike wondering exactly what they will mean. The confusion was compounded by NIF?s claim that the principles reflected in the new guidelines are not, in fact, new at all. That hardly satisfied the right-wing…
The unconventional family outings of architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with their 11-month-old son took them to blighted California neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. There they purchased signs from homeless people for $2 to $3 apiece. ” photo-credit=”Image by SHULIE SEIDLER-FELLER” src=”https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/675x/center/images/cropped/sukkahcity2-092210-1425715762.jpg”] With those signs in mind, they decided to…
The cost of fraud still hobbles victims of Bernard Madoff?s $65 billion Ponzi scheme: Howard Schupak, 62, for example, doesn?t know if he and his wife can ever retire from managing their New York-based building-supply company. He and others who suffered Madoff losses say that the man in charge of recovering and distributing their money…
Jewish day schools in the Modern Orthodox world are among those now taking significant steps against child abuse, a new survey by Yeshiva University shows. The survey, the first of its kind, indicates that about 65% of the schools that responded have staff who, in the past five years, have been trained to deal with…
After the last several months, it should be clear that the controversy over the Park 51 Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is about more than sensitivity to the families of the 9/11 victims and the sacredness of the site where their loved ones were murdered. In places as far from Lower Manhattan as Murfreesboro,…
This is the first of three excerpts from Forward staff writer Gal Beckerman’s new book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry,” published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on September 23. Before Meir Kahane became the right-wing extremist banned by the Israeli Parliament for racism, he was a…
