When Vladimir Putin offers you a gift — you accept it. That’s according to Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi, who said he had to accept Putin’s offer to move a contested Jewish library to a new Jewish museum in Moscow controlled by Chabad in Russia. The Schneerson Library, a collection amassed by the early rabbinic…
What do a Japanese rabbi, a Korean church and a Chinese restaurant have in common? For Temple Isaiah of Great Neck, on Long Island, N.Y., the answer’s no punch line. The three components have all played a crucial role in the congregation’s colorful 46-year history. For 37 years, this Reform congregation held the majority of…
Judith Levy met her husband, Herb Levy, more than four decades ago at the Concord Resort Hotel and Golf Club, in Kiamesha Lake, N.Y., which at the time was a famous Borscht Belt destination. A singer with a gig at the hotel, she was passing the time by writing letters in the lobby. Herb came…
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 and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 1913 •100 years ago Peddler Bound and Gagged Jacob Furman, an old clothes peddler who lives…
The fate of a congressional resolution to authorize President Barack Obama’s planned military strikes on Syria hinges on scores of undecided U.S. lawmakers, with party loyalty appearing increasingly irrelevant. Even after congressional hearings featuring Obama’s secretaries of state and defense, a half dozen closed-door briefings and phone calls from Obama himself, it was too close…
In his first five-year term as mayor of the city holy to the world’s three monotheistic religions, Nir Barkat has limited ultra-Orthodox power in the city, slowed the migration of non-Haredim out of Jerusalem and boosted secular culture — a low priority for his Haredi predecessor — with a budget increase of 300%. But one…
The political leaders of half of Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidic community announced they would back New York City Democratic mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio today, setting the stage for an epic get-out-the-vote showdown in Williamsburg next week. “All in all we felt it’s a no-brainer, the shidduch between him and us,” said Isaac Sofer, a leader…
In a nondescript apartment building in Budapest’s Eighth District, Rabbi Sholom Hurwitz stands behind a wooden podium and claps out the beat to a raucous Sephardic melody. About 30 people, most of them men, pray together in the flat’s main sanctuary, a small living room that the congregants affectionately call their shtibl — from the…
(JTA) — Even at 70, Yedidia Yehuda can negotiate a narrow mountain path in northern Azerbaijan with a confidence easily mistaken for carelessness. “You take care not to fall yourself and don’t worry about me,” he tells a visitor following him toward a small town on the northern bank of the Kudyal river, where 2,000…
Chat during synagogue services and God might kill you, the Talmud warns. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, God might kill everyone you know: One legend attributes a 17th-century Cossack slaughter of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews to excessive talking in synagogue. “Woe to people who carry on conversations during prayer, for we…
What’s the best way to squeeze charitable dollars out of Jews? A new study suggests it could be to make sure that they’re involved in a Jewish community. Jewish charities complain that shrinking donor pools and tighter-fisted younger Jews are threatening the viability of the Jewish not-for-profit ecosystem. Yet a September 3 study from Jumpstart,…
