For 125 years, the Forward has delivered accurate, timely and nuanced news to American Jews. From breaking news to in-depth investigations, our reporting team covers the people, institutions and issues that define the many ways to be Jewish in the…
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Willie Rapfogel’s Downfall in Scandal Means Murky Future for Jewish Programs
Until just a few days ago, William Rapfogel was considered New York Jewry’s poverty czar, and his deep connections to the city’s political class were viewed as one of the prime assets of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, which he long headed. Rapfogel’s abrupt firing amid the disclosure of a criminal investigation into his…
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Lone Jewish Voice Favors Public Christian Prayer in Key Supreme Court Case
For the first time since 1983, the United States Supreme Court is taking on a case that could overturn its long-held approach to deciding when government-endorsed prayer in the public square violates the Constitution. The case, which involves an upstate New York town whose legislative meetings opened with prayer invocations that were given almost exclusively…
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Wearing a Black Ribbon Helped One Jewish Widow Mend Her Soul
A week after her mother died, my friend called with an unusual request. “Can I borrow the black ribbon you used when Rod died?” Though she had been given one at the funeral, she had misplaced it amid the confusion of the shiva. “I want to keep wearing it,” she explained. “If I remember correctly,…
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For Transgender Converts, Changing Gender and Finding Faith Come Together
Growing up female and Methodist in the Midwest, Kadin Henningsen was inexplicably drawn to Judaism, empathizing with characters in Holocaust documentaries on TV. Then in junior high, Henningsen had a revelation while reading Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen”: “I remember thinking I was supposed to grow up to be a Jewish man.” Less than two decades…
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Iconic Opera Singer Regina Resnik Dies at 90
The American Jewish mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik, who died on August 8 at age 90, was admired for her high-flying dramatic delivery and stage presence in roles from Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s “Falstaff” conducted by Leonard Bernstein to the Countess in Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame” conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1987, in the Kander and Ebb musical…
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Angela Buchdahl, First Asian-American Rabbi, Vies for Role at Central Synagogue
When Cantor Angela Buchdahl walks among the pews, greeting congregants before Friday night services at Manhattan’s venerable Central Synagogue, she encounters a mélange of Jewish faces, including blacks, Asians and Hispanics. It’s a diversity that reflects the emergence of an American Jewry of unprecedented ethnic breadth, and a diversity that Buchdahl — born to an…
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The Evil Eye Remover
Nothing was working out that year. My husband had just switched careers at the height of the recession, and we were flat broke. Though my first novel had been published and well received, everything I wrote since then had turned to dust. One of my children had come down with a rare illness — manageable,…
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Genetic Testing For Sephardic Jews Faces Reluctant Community
When Jennifer was 26, people started asking her why she was limping. An exercise enthusiast, she brushed aside the question. Then she noticed she couldn’t run laps in her kickboxing class. No problem, she thought — running wasn’t her thing. Next, she started falling behind some older women in Pilates class. By that time, she…
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Did Robert Mugabe Sign Uranium Deal To Aid Iran Nuclear Program?
Zimbabwe has denied reports it signed a covert agreement to supply Iran with the uranium it needs to develop a nuclear weapon. Such a deal would be in violation of international sanctions imposed on the two regimes. The Times of London quoted Gift Chimanikire, the outgoing Zimbabwean deputy mining minister, as saying that he has…
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Who Are These Singing Twin Sisters?
Forward Looking Back brings you the photos and stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75 and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 1913 •100 years ago ‘Dopey Benny’ Unhappy With Police “Dopey Benny,” a well-known gangster…
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Jewish Acid-Attack Girls Return to Britain From African Island of Zanzibar
The two Jewish victims of a shocking acid attack in Zanzibar have returned home to London to receive further treatment for their burns, [the Independent reported]( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/five-men-held-over-acid-attack-on-british-charity-workers-in-zanzibar-8751297.html on Friday. Katie Gee and Kirstie Trup, both 18, landed at RAF Northolt airfield today after leaving the Tanzania capital of Dar Es Salaam earlier. “I am just…
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
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Fast Forward Israel recovers remains of Thai farmworker abducted on Oct. 7 from Gaza
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