A Ukrainian immigrant who arrived stateside in 1990 with her husband, children and mother, Yelena Goltsman was deeply closeted when she joined Manhattan’s gay and lesbian synagogue, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in 1995. Today, the media executive leads RUSA LGBT, a New York-based support group for Russian-speaking gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. She has…
Many kegs have been tapped since the night of November 7, 1913, when 11 Jewish students gathered at New York University to found the first official chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Over the next 100 years, the organization, most commonly known as AEPi, would grow — from a small sanctuary for ostracized Jews…
Following a night in Ramallah when I joined the Muslims for Iftar, the dinner meal for breaking the fast on Ramadan, I got into a van that goes to Jerusalem. Two ladies with the most gorgeous hijabs sat next to me. I looked at them and noticed that Palestinian hijabs are very well made. Much…
Forward Looking Back brings you the 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, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 1913 •100 years ago The Tragedy of Zionism As the curtain rises on the…
A century ago, Cobb County, Ga., was a sleepy farming community outside Atlanta, home to about 25,000 people. Now the county is an affluent suburb with a population of 700,000, including a booming Jewish community of about 8,000 families served by four synagogues, two restaurants doling out bagels and deli food, and a Kroger supermarket…
For more than a decade, Jews have been permitted to hold egalitarian prayer services at a southern section of the Western Wall that lies out of sight of Orthodox worshippers. But the area, known as Robinson’s Arch in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, never became a government-supported prayer facility. Worshippers have always been guests of the…
New York City’s Orthodox bloc vote is cracked. With just weeks to go before the city’s mayoral primary, Orthodox political activists in Brooklyn haven’t settled on a Democratic contender. Instead, they’ve picked all of them. In Hasidic Williamsburg, the larger of the two Satmar Hasidic factions likes Bill Thompson. In Flatbush, the Syrians have endorsed…
The Modern Orthodox community has broadly welcomed a long-awaited report into allegations that Yeshiva University staff physically and sexually abused numerous students over several decades. But the report, which withheld most of the findings uncovered by investigators, was not enough to mollify some current and former Y.U. students and victims of abuse. “More will need…
America’s organized Jewish community has long been united in its abhorrence of the dictatorship ruling Syria. Yet it has been notably hesitant and, at times, muted in reacting to the large-scale chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by loyalists of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Despite the community’s strong opposition to any use of nonconventional weapons,…
The Forward spoke with descendants of these men and others who took the stage and filled the National Mall on August 28, 1963
Yeshiva University President Richard Joel said the school feels deep regret and shame at the findings of an investigation into allegation of sex abuse — but a lawyer for alleged victims dismissed the report as a “gross disappointment.” The investigation commissioned by the university following reports by the Forward of sexual abuse by two faculty…
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