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…
Moshe Stein is a nice Jewish exterminator. Whether he is squishing odorous ants, bursting blood-filled bedbugs or trapping rats and roaches, Stein is unfailingly warm, thoughtful and polite. “I personally believe you have to be nice, soft-spoken, because the bottom line is, you are dealing a lot with housewives,” Stein said. “You have to have…
Sparkly gowns, heels, corsages, suits, ties, teenage pimples. Why yes, I’m talking about the high school prom — that quintessentially American rite of passage. Like many other Jewish girls who attended yeshivas or all-girls schools, my knowledge of proms is secondhand. I know about the gowns and heels and ties and Jewish nerds who take…
Ten years ago, shortly after midnight on May 17, 2004, a jubilant Arthur Lipkin and his longtime partner descended the stone steps of Cambridge City Hall clutching a marriage license application. It was a historic night of revelry and celebration, as Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to legally…
The scene was that of a typical family gathering at an Amsterdam restaurant in April. Children squatted on their chairs to reach the table, cuddling up to their grandmother, dishes were passed and toasts were made; a pair of sisters talked about old times. Yet this was no typical family. The da Costas are descendants…
Down the corridor outside the administrative offices at South Philadelphia High School run several display cases honoring storied alumni like actors Jack Klugman and Eddie Fisher and singer Marian Anderson. But during his four years as principal of Southern, as insiders call the school, Otis Hackney III never realized that a framed diploma of legendary…
Officials at Agudath Israel defended remarks by the organization’s leading rabbi, Yaakov Perlow, in which he called the religiously progressive Open Orthodox movement heretical, and criticized non-Orthodox Judaism. “This kind of stuff has been part and parcel of what our movement has been speaking about since time immemorial,” said Rabbi David Zweibel, Agudath Israel’s executive…
Ultra-Orthodox rabbis sought to enlist ultra-Orthodox women in their push to limit Internet use at a rally in Boro Park, Brooklyn on May 29, saying that women are responsible for controlling web access by their husbands and families. Speaking to a crowd of 10,000 women, a panel of rabbis warned of the dangers posed by…
Rabbi Miriam Spitzer did not have to mention him by name. The class of sixth graders at Temple Israel, in Sharon, Massachusetts, knew exactly whom Spitzer was thinking of when she dedicated that day’s lesson to Elisha ben Abuyah, a revered rabbi who became a heretic. “The lesson was that the Torah taught [by Abuyah]…
The leading rabbi of Agudath Israel of America, the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group, condemned non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and called the religiously progressive Open Orthodox movement heretical at the group’s annual gala. “The Torah must be guarded from the secular forces that seek to corrupt its values and the lives of [Jews], from intruders who sometimes…
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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