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Torah Scholars Seek Original Version of Bible — But Does It Exist?
(JTA) — According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is so sacred that even a single error made on a single letter renders the entire scroll unusable. And yet the Hebrew Bible — including the Torah, its first five books — is riddled with corruptions and alterations that have accrued and been passed down over the millennia….
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When Meyer Lansky Fell in Love with a Holocaust Survivor
● I Pity the Poor Immigrant: A Novel By Zachary Lazar Little, Brown and Company, 256 pages, $25 In photographs from my high school years, I’m often blinking against the light. My smile and shut eyes look like an evasion of the camera’s flash, of the picture itself. Looking now at that face, I imagine…
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Donald Sterling Rant Shine Unwelcome Light on Jewish Loan Societies
(JTA) — The saga of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling took yet another bizarre turn when he went on national television this week and started touting the virtues of Jewish mutual aid organizations. In a CNN interview that aired Monday night, Sterling’s attempt to apologize for the inflammatory racial remarks that may cost him…
The Latest
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Twitter Is Platform of Choice for Anti-Semites as Hate Rises on Social Media
Twitter is the “weapon of choice” for bigots and racists, according to a new report on digital hate and intolerance released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The center surveyed hateful content on over 30,000 websites and found that online hatred rose more than 30% over the past year. The report also graded top social media…
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What Kind of Jewish Name is O’Donnell?
The Seesaw is a new kind of advice column in which a a broad range of columnists will address the real life issues faced by interfaith couples and families. Join the discussion by commenting on this post, sharing it on Facebook or following the Forward on Twitter. And keep the questions coming. You can email…
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Mango the Bear Makes ‘Meteoric’ Recovery After Groundbreaking Surgery
(Haaretz) — Six days after globally pioneering surgery to correct his slipped disc, the giant Syrian bear is moving his legs beautifully, says Sagit Horowitz, spokeswoman for the Ramat Gan Zoological Park. “He changes position from side to side all the time, which means he can,” says Horowitz of the quarter-ton quadruped, who was the…
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Debut Crime Novel Set in Boro Park Hasidic Community
● Invisible City By Julia Dahl Minotaur Books, 304 pages, $24.99 About a week or so after I published my first short story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I learned an embarrassing lesson about the importance of getting things right. Scoring a publication credit in EQMM, the longest continuously running, and arguably the best magazine…
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Jewish Fraternity With Right Wing Ties Helped Block J Street Bid
When American Jewry’s major umbrella group on Israel met recently to debate a membership application from the dovish lobby J Street, some of the strongest opposition to it came from an organization better known for throwing beer-fueled parties. Deliberations in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are secret. But the hawkish Zionist…
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Beaten Holocaust Survivor Ursula Nelson Sues Home Care Agency for $1M
Holocaust survivor Ursula Nelson was planning to live out the rest of her life at her quiet apartment in Queens, N.Y. That changed one morning in late March 2011, when Nelson ended up badly bruised and beaten, with a fractured nose and an injured shoulder, in a New York hospital. At age 89, Nelson had…
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The Remarkable Career of Ruth Wisse, Yiddish Scholar and Political Firebrand
On a cold day in late March, I sat in room 103 of Harvard University’s Sever Hall with about 60 undergraduates, listening to Ruth Wisse talk about Avrom Sutzkever. A partisan and a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, Sutzkever was one of the 20th century’s greatest Yiddish poets. The reading that day was of his…
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How Hammurabi Got Under the Skin of One Orthodox Talmudist
One day, when I was in my early 20s and teaching Torah to religious newbies in Jerusalem, I felt the bedrock of belief shudder beneath me. There’s a reason the sages wrote that the air of Jerusalem makes one wise. I could feel the vibe everywhere. I loved how a cosmetician might share a Torah…
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