This article is part of the Forward’s partnership with Shomrim, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in Israel. Click here to see the original, Hebrew version. Several Israeli soldiers and police officers have been spotted recently with a surprising emblem adorning their helmets or flak jackets: the skull worn by the Marvel comics character “The Punisher” –…
This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. I was thrilled when our synagogue assigned bnei mitzvah Torah portions and our twins got “Toldot,” the coming-of-age story of the first biblical twins, Jacob…
The Jewish community in Bergen — Norway’s second largest city — was decimated during World War II, when Nazis murdered 750 of Norway’s 1,700 Jews. But now Jewish life in Bergen has returned — officially. Bergen Jews created a new organization, Det Jødiske Samfunn i Bergen, last year, and the city recognized it in December….
I was standing on the sidewalk waiting my turn at Tacos La Guera, a street vending stand that sets up each evening between a Whole Foods parking lot and the four lane cacophony that is Lincoln Boulevard. “How many tacos?” a young man named Rafael asked me, pressing a 12-inch chef’s knife against a massive…
(JTA) — You could call it bashert: 15 years after a landmark decision in Judaism’s Conservative movement that paved the way for gay and lesbian students to enter its rabbinical schools and for rabbis to perform same-sex weddings, it would seem like destiny that two Conservative rabbis would wed. Of course, it happened at Camp…
Rabbi Tom Gutherz of Charlottesville’s Congregation Beth Israel hates the story about how he and his members left via the back door that Shabbat morning in 2017 as white supremacists marched on the streets out front. It’s technically true. The synagogue had started services an hour early so they’d be done before the “Unite the…
Jacob Frey, the Jewish mayor from Minneapolis, breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday as he was declared the winner in a tough re-election bid after a rocky first term in which he gained national attention over issues related to police reform. In his victory speech, Frey attributed his win to the support from a…
In the dark days of the Cold War, photographer Bill Aron, the son of a Russian émigré to Philadelphia, traveled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, Leningrad, and Minsk, he took portraits of refuseniks— Soviet Jews who were demanding their freedom— as well as photographs of the Jewish synagogues and those worshipping there. Starting Nov….
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt told a jury in Charlottesville Wednesday that she was shocked by the extent to which antisemitism defined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. “There was a great deal of overt antisemitism and adulation of the Third Reich throughout the evidence I looked at,” said Lipstadt, an expert witness in a case…
Sam and Frieda Weinreich are thriving. Sam is 102-years-old and Frieda is 97. They have been married 75 years. If they are not the oldest Holocaust-surviving couple in the United States, as local Memphis news reports claim, they are certainly in the running. Frieda is tiny, like you could put her in your pocket. But…
This article originally appeared in Haaretz and was reprinted here with permission. Gefilte fish-loving gangsters who trade in horseradish meet in a parking lot for a deal that goes awry. That’s the plot of the new video by pop duo Vibers, updating the old Yiddish classic “Chiribim, Chiribom” to 2021. Vibers (“women” in Yiddish, usually…
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