“You want to try the Republican chili?” That’s the kind of invitation I got, repeatedly, from many of the 50 contestants at this year’s Dallas Kosher Chili Cookoff. And after trying the Republican Jewish Coalition’s surprisingly garlicky spoonful, I faced a Jewish institutional smorgasbord. Whose culinary sensibilities would I sample next — those of the…
Sullivan County’s Board of Elections has backed claims that more than 100 residents of the upstate New York village of Bloomingburg — including Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm and his family — were not legally eligible to vote in last month’s contentious local elections. Lamm announced Wednesday that he would end his fight over the election…
The world lost a valiant advocate for women last week: Orthodox feminist Rivka Haut. Rivka often worked behind the scenes because she eschewed fame. But she played an important role in some of the most significant advances for Jewish women over the last half century, especially in Orthodoxy. It was Rivka, for example, who suggested…
(JTA) — In 1944, Andras Szasz’s mother obtained an admittance slip to a Red Cross children’s home that she hoped would save her 8-year-old son from the Hungarian fascists then prowling Budapest in search of Jews to torture or kill. Szasz never made it to the home. In the summer of 1944, he and his…
A labor union battle raging at a Philadelphia Jewish day school has highlighted the scarcity of collective bargaining in the Jewish education system and the use of religious exemptions to ban union contracts. Perelman Jewish Day School, with 300 kindergarten to fifth-grade students on two Philadelphia-area campuses, announced on March 24 its decision to unilaterally…
Under mounting pressure on immigration, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will meet with Jewish advocates for reform on Thursday. Cantor, who is viewed by immigration activists as holding the key for a possible vote on immigration reform, has thus far turned down requests from advocates to meet and has not engaged with Jewish groups…
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…
A U.S. proposal to consider freeing a jailed Israeli spy caught many American intelligence officials off-guard and will face stiff opposition if the Obama administration decides to go ahead with it in a bid to salvage Middle East peace talks, officials said. Negotiations over the fate of Jonathan Pollard, a former naval intelligence analyst serving…
(JTA) — For 20 or so minutes last week, the issue of religious freedom was cast as a struggle between working women and Muslim and Jewish butchers. The pointed questions posed March 25 to the Obama administration’s chief lawyer by three U.S. Supreme Court justices got to the heart of whether businesses have the same…
NBA player Al Horford took out his phone as he left the U.S. Holocaust Museum on Friday and Tweeted: “Life changing experience.” It was an emotional afternoon for players and staff members of the Atlanta Hawks who arrived in Washington a day before their scheduled game with the Wizards and hustled from the airport directly…
A reader signing his or her name as “ASP” asks: “In her book ‘The Passover Seder,’ Ruth Gruber Fredman wrote that the galaxy is called seder or ‘order’ in Hebrew. Is this true?” Exactly what Ruth Gruber Fredman wrote in her book, I don’t know, but seder, while it does mean “order” in Hebrew, does…
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