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Conservative Rabbis Can Get Kicked Out For Breaking These Four Rules
Once you’re a rabbi, you’re good for life — unlike a law or medical license, no central professional body can take the title away. And while you can get the title from a Jewish seminary, such as Hebrew Union College (Reform), Yeshiva University (Orthodox) or the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative), there are thousands of rabbis…
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New President At Chicago Federation Is Old President’s Son
One of the most powerful and well-compensated Jewish nonprofit jobs in the United States just got passed from father to son. Steve Nasatir has led the Chicago Jewish community for four decades from his office a few blocks from Millennium Park. The Jewish federation he runs gives out more than $200 million each year, and…
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With Intermarriage Endorsement, Rabbi Hopes To Start ‘Grass Roots’ Movement
A synagogue in Virginia has issued a statement in favor of Conservative clergy presiding at interfaith weddings even though the movement still officially bans the practice. In a Facebook post, the synagogue’s rabbi said that its board had voted to allow its clergy to marry a Jewish person to a non-Jewish person, but only when…
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When A Retired Rabbi Is The Elephant In The Synagogue
Some retired rabbis just can’t let go. There’s the rabbi who wants to marry the kid he bat mitzvah-ed, or the rabbi who thinks he could give a better Yom Kippur sermon than the next guy. Some may simply feel that the buck should still stop with them, even when they’re no longer officially in…
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Local Women’s Marches Worry National Leaders’ Troubles Will Sink Their Events
Multiple times over the past year, as leaders of the national Women’s March organizations became embroiled in controversy over their ties to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, many of the dozens of local Women’s Marches around the country have tried to do damage control. Some have done so by condemning the national…
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REVEALED: Secret ADL Memo Slammed Anti-BDS Laws As ‘Harmful’ To Jews
The Anti-Defamation League has emerged as a supporter of controversial legislation targeting boycotts of Israel. But internal ADL documents obtained by the Forward show that the organization’s own staff believed the laws could actually harm American Jews. In the summer of 2016, ADL staff wrote an internal memo arguing that legislating against the boycott, divestment…
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The Rise And Fall And Rise Of Jewish Comedian Leah Forster
Leah Forster is the Orthodox world’s favorite lesbian Jewish comedian. Admittedly, there’s not much competition for that title. But for nearly a decade, Forster was one of the most popular entertainers in the community, until she walked away from the business and her strict ultra-observant lifestyle. Now she’s making a comeback in both the religious…
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Sephardic Claim Unleashes Fierce Debate About Jewish Identity
Crypto-Jews. Secret Jews. Conversos. Marranos. B’nai Anusim. These are the terms used for Jews, mainly of Spanish descent, who were forced to convert to Catholicism or die during the period of Spain’s Inquisition. While many Sephardic Jews did convert, some continued to practice their Judaism in secret. Now, this 500-year history of hidden Jewish lineage…
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New England Police Pull Out Of Training Program In Israel
BOSTON (JTA) – Two New England police departments withdrew from a security seminar in Israel last week following a public backlash from pro-Palestinian activists. Members of the groups Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace are claiming the withdrawals in two liberal redoubts as a significant victory in their efforts to foil…
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Romemu’s New Yeshiva Adds Meditation To All Talmud All The Time
Wake up. For morning prayers, sit in silent contemplation. Have breakfast. Study Hasidic meditation. Study Kabbalah. Have lunch. Meditate. Study the Talmud. Do yoga. Have dinner. Chant the evening prayers. This is how students at a new summer program from Romemu, the congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, will spend their days. The six-week program…
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Inside The Evangelical Money Flowing Into The West Bank
When the first Christian evangelical volunteers descended on the religious West Bank settlement of Har Bracha about 10 years ago, offering to harvest grapes for the local Jewish farmers free of charge, not everyone welcomed them with open arms. After all, for generations Jews had been taught that when Christians go out of their way…
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