Passover in the desert. Shavuot on the mountaintop. Sukkot on the farm. The three primary festivals of the Jewish calendar weave their rituals and stories around very particular settings. How would our understanding of Judaism change if we made these spaces, as well as these times, holy? This is the question that Wilderness Torah, a…
For years, environmental activists have told Israelis to blame the country’s water shortage on politicians, not just on low rainfall. Now, a committee of experts commissioned by politicians themselves has reached the same conclusion. The State Committee for the Investigation of the Water Shortage recently completed 18 months of deliberations, and concluded that the country’s…
How many ultra-Orthodox Jews does it take to fill out the U.S Census? Given the low response rates from Brooklyn’s Hasidic enclaves, the answer remains unclear. After the April 16 deadline to mail in the completed surveys, participation rates in communities such as Williamsburg and Boro Park hovered at around 40%, prompting Jewish leaders to…
Hundreds of young people, mostly non-Jews, milled around Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery on a sunny spring day, slightly unsure about what they were supposed to do next. Their schools had sent them there April 19 in response to an appeal by a number of Jewish and civic organizations. They had come to honor the late Marek…
Senator Schumer on the Bimah at Temple Emanu-El and on the Dais at St. Patrick’s A few hours after hearing New York Senator Charles Schumer address the crowd at the April 11 Temple Emanu-El Holocaust Remembrance Day Gathering, there he was, on the dais at St. Patrick’s Cathedral! The providentially titled “Do Not Quench the…
My six-year old son, Jeremy loves maps. He enjoys playing with Google Earth and finding our home and the homes of his friends and family. The other day, I was reading the weekly Torah portion and left my bible on the table. Jeremy picked it up and discovered that it contains maps. “Where do we…
With early spring sunlight spilling through the windows, chef and baker Erez Komarovsky is hard at work. Using quick, sure movements, he slices tart green almonds and then stirs them into goat’s milk yogurt. An oversized mortar and pestle on the counter holds lima bean hummus, which he has topped with toasted peanuts and sautéed…
During my first day in Rio de Janeiro, I stumbled onto Chai Delly, a part-kosher Copacabana takeout joint whose recent opening had eluded even my Jewish tour guide. On day two, TV channel-surfing led me to “Menorah TV,” a Jewish public affairs program with a “Hava Nagila” intro. And on day three, another tour guide…
In a tug-of-war over the question of how the Obama administration’s approach toward Israel is affecting the views of American Jews, Jewish Democrats and Republicans are each touting data seeming to point in opposite directions. Republicans say that polling shows Jews are turning their backs on President Obama and the Democrats, while Democrats argue that…
Reporter Josh Nathan-Kazis recently spoke with editor Jane Eisner and, via phone, with Washington-based staff writer Nathan Guttman about the murky story of Anat Kamm. A 23-year-old Israeli woman, Kamm is awaiting trial on espionage charges, stemming from allegations that she leaked classified Israeli military documents to a newspaper reporter. In this podcast, Forward staffers…
NEWS ITEM: Jewish delis are going out of business nationwide. New York City, which boasted about 5,000 such businesses in the early 1950s, now has approximately two dozen. We face a cause that’s almost lost, A gastronomic holocaust! The deli, home of gourmandise, Is tottering, upon its knees! This sanctum of the epicure No longer…
