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Muslim Clerics Learn Lessons of Auschwitz Firsthand
When Muslims tour Auschwitz and other sites of the Jewish Holocaust, and encounter survivors of that genocide face-to-face, the points of connection they make can be quite unpredictable. For Barakat Fawzi Hasan, a Palestinian assistant professor in Islamic Education at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, a moment of clarity came as he and his co-religionists listened,…
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Fast-Growing Chabad Asks: Who Will Be Leader for Next Generation?
The top echelons of the Chabad movement are on the verge of a once-in-a-generation leadership transition. The Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement never replaced its spiritual leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, after he died in 1994 at the age of 92. Yet a coterie of gray-bearded rabbis picked by Schneerson continues to run the movement from its headquarters…
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Deep in African Bush, Senegalese Tribe Claims Jewish Heritage
He will welcome you into his earthen-floor home, introduce you to his three wives, and let you sample their cooking. But Dougoutigo Fadiga does not want foreigners to come near the sacred tree of his village deep in the Senegalese bush. “The tree is holy grounds,” says Fadiga, president of this remote settlement of 4,000…
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First Kosher Soup Kitchen Opens in Milan, Thanks to Chabad
Chabad in Milan is preparing to launch what is said to be the first kosher soup kitchen in Italy. Sponsored by the Milan branch of Chabad’s educational organization, Merkos l’Inyonei Chinuch, it is expected to begin operation at the end of the summer. The initiative will be a canteen providing free take-away meals to needy…
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House-Hunting in Florida Suburbia Turns Into Great Mezuzah Trek
My childhood friend Sami’s mother claimed she could drive down a residential street and pick out where fellow Jews lived. Granted, most Jews don’t select colonial décor — too Daughters of the American Revolution for our taste. But she denied relying on knotty-pine coffee tables to weed out the non-Jews. Rather, she claimed to possess…
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Move Over Florida, Charleston Is New Hot Place for Jewish Couples
This article originally appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts. The Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, wants everyone to know that Florida isn’t the only state where Jewish couples can enjoy their golden years basking in warm weather and Jewish community. Last week, Charleston’s modern Orthodox synagogue, Brith Sholom Beth Israel, hosted more than 40…
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Six Points Jewish Arts Fellowship Closes With No Renewal of Federation Grant
Life in the arts is never easy, especially in a bad economy. For some Jewish artists, it’s about to get a lot harder. The Six Points Fellowship, a program of the Foundation for Jewish Culture that has given away some $1.26 million to artists over seven years, is shutting down its flagship New York fellowship…
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Talmudic ‘Development’; Orthodox Cinema; Chabad Power Struggle?; Top Kosher Dogs
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by deputy arts editor Ezra Glinter to discuss the new season of Arrested Development and its ‘talmudic’ qualities. Then, Ezra fills us in on the emergent ultra-orthodox cinema in Israel. Next, assistant news editor Larry Cohler-Esses drops by to discuss a possible reshuffling of…
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Top 10 Badass Mah Jongg Jews
Former Forward staffer, Grumpy Jeffrey Goldberg, thinks that lists of Jews are a bad idea, just because a few white supremacists enjoy using them. And also, because they don’t always include him and/or Natalie Portman. That’s ridiculous. First of all, Natalie Portman blew a lot of list-ability with “No Strings Attached.” And his logic is…
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The Mirror in the Mikveh
Ellie Goldenberg and Emily Blum are getting ready to immerse for the first time in the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath. One might assume that Ellie and Emily are soon-to-be brides; in traditional communities, women immerse in the mikveh for the first time before they are wed. But they’re not — Ellie is an 11-year-old…
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Bialystoker Home, 90-Year-Old Jewish Institution, Is Declared N.Y. Landmark
A shuttered 90-year-old Jewish nursing home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has been declared a New York City landmark, a designation that will protect it from being razed. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission decided on May 22 to grant landmark status to the Bialystoker nursing home, which catered to generations of Polish Jews…
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