Our Forward 50 issue identifies the people who we feel are interesting, influential and important in the Jewish world. But although it?s people who make culture, it?s what they make, not who they are, that matters. Below is a new annual feature, the Forward Fives, celebrating the cultural insights, experiences and productions of the past…
It?s five months before my 48-year-old, tree-hugging, hippie sister?s wedding, and my mother and I are in my girlhood bedroom in Wilmington, Del., talking about tradition, family and, most important, bridal wear. ?People ask me what Beth is going to be wearing, but I don?t know,? Mom says, as she smoothes plastic over her mother-of-the-bride…
It wasn?t all that difficult to be a vegetarian while I was on a ?young journalists? exchange in Israel in 1990, during the first intifada. Eating was largely a free-range affair, and the meatless choices ? at least if one also ate eggs, cheese and fish ? were numerous and good, far more varied than…
Leaflets mailed to homes in heavily Jewish districts of Canada?s major cities last November struck with uncharacteristic ferocity at the political party that Canadian Jews have long favored. Canada?s Liberal Party, the Conservative Party broadsides charged, had ?opposed defunding Hamas and asked that Hezbollah be delisted as a terrorist organization.? The Liberals had ?willingly participated?…
Neil Diamond, the well-known crooner, and Allan Rich, an accomplished lyricist, are hoping their newly recorded songs, ?Cherry Cherry Christmas? and ?Make It Christmas,? become hits even as the men have been busy with their own December tradition of lighting Hanukkah candles. A number of Jewish songwriters are trying to do what many of their…
Abby Sher lost an aunt and her father before she was bat mitzvah age, and became obsessed with preventing others? deaths. She began picking up sharp objects in the street to prevent cars from running over them. And she found solace in repetition, so she prayed and prayed, and prayed and prayed and prayed. In…
I?d come to realize that making lists and repeating things were a large part of being Jewish, too. There were lists of things we could and couldn?t eat; lists of prayers to say over and over and commandments to follow, the ten plagues that G-d sent down on the pharaoh so the Jews could get…
Last weekend, my 2-year old daughter, Hannah, lost one of her shoes. These were her favorite pair of shoes, and she refused to wear any others. My husband and I searched every nook and cranny of our house. We scoured our cars. We checked her stroller. We looked in the garage, in case they had…
Leaders in Washington and Jerusalem have publicly locked horns over the issue of West Bank settlements. And Israeli public opinion has largely viewed America’s new administration as unfriendly. But behind the scenes, strategic security relations between the two countries are flourishing. Israeli officials have been singing the praises of President Obama for his willingness to…
An Israeli organization handing out cash to soldiers for disobeying orders has been collecting tax-exempt donations from American donors in apparent disregard of United States tax law. The far right-wing group SOS-Israel and its leader, Shalom Dov Wolpe, a rabbi associated with the messianic wing of Chabad-Lubavitch, were in the news in November for rewarding…
Israel’s hawkish strategic affairs minister was met with a chorus of boos at the annual dinner of the Zionist Organization of America when he invoked his government’s recent partial moratorium on Jewish settlement expansions in the West Bank. The jeers continued even as Moshe “Boogie” Ya’alon, a former Israeli general and current senior Likud party…
