Jews all over the world unfurled their holy scrolls to chant aloud the exact same section of the Torah yesterday, as they do every Shabbat. On October 27, it was the story of Abraham’s hospitality, and how he rushed to throw open his tent to three visitors who turned out to be angels. So it…
All over Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon, Jews are waiting to hear which of their friends were murdered this morning at a synagogue in the leafy neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, and which survived. “My friends have been killed and I don’t who they are,” said Harold Caplan, the treasurer of one of the three Jewish congregations…
A gunman shouting “all these Jews must die” killed at least 11 people and wounded several others at a Pittsburgh synagogue during Shabbat services Saturday morning before being captured alive. In what is thought to be the first-ever mass shooting at an American synagogue, a “bearded heavy-set white male” identified as Robert Bowers, 46, walked…
One of the U.S. charities that the Forward exposed as a funder of the online blacklist Canary Mission is trying to distance itself from the website, but alumni of its teen program say it isn’t going far enough. In a letter, senior staff of the Helen Diller Family Foundation acknowledged the foundation’s grant in support…
The surprise email from Rabbi Rick Jacobs, leader of 2.2 million Reform Jews, arrived in the inboxes of Temple Oheb Shalom’s members just before Shabbat. The Baltimore congregation was in crisis, less than two days away from deciding whether to fire their senior rabbi of nearly two decades for unspecified violations of the Reform movement’s…
For years, Beth Lesser and her husband had longed to care for foster children at their home in Greenville, South Carolina. But when she attended a training session for a child-mentoring program, Lesser found out that the largest state-funded foster care program in the area only works with prospective parents and mentors who are Protestant…
The head of Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis’ Jewish outreach around Miami attended a Republican protest outside a campaign event that included participation by two members of the white nationalist group the Proud Boys — and later caused a party leader to apologize. Miami-Dade Jewish outreach chair Corey Breier, who also donated $2,000 to the…
The Conservative movement’s central authority on Jewish law has announced that rabbis can attend weddings between Jews and non-Jews. The decision overturns over four decades of assumptions that the movement’s rabbis could be kicked out simply for being a guest at an interfaith wedding. Over the years, rabbis skipped out on countless weddings of close…
You can learn how to do pretty much anything on YouTube. There are tutorials for decorative fruit carving, moonwalking, building a turbo jet engine, preparing for the apocalypse and, of course, how to wrap tefillin. But when Rachel Putterman went to YouTube for instructions on how to don the ritual leather straps worn by observant…
Jewish Democrats are on the cusp of making major gains in the upcoming midterm elections with a Forward analysis now predicting at least 4 Jews will flip seats in the House of Representatives. With an anti-Trump #BlueWave building in suburbs from coast to coast, Jews are likely to win at least 27 seats when America…
Republicans have taken more money from neo-Nazis while President Trump’s reelection campaign has kept multiple donations from white supremacists, records show. Trump’s campaign has still not returned gifts from at least three white nationalists after the Forward exclusively reported their donations on July 30. The president’s 2020 election operation still has hundreds of dollars from…
