To millions of New Yorkers, Jonathan Zizmor is the don of dermatology. But to some victims of sex abuse, Zizmor is the donor who established a scholarship in their alleged molester’s name. Zizmor, who is renowned across New York City’s five boroughs for his campy subway advertisements promoting cosmetic procedures, gave $250,000 to Yeshiva University…
Pope Francis, in some of the most compassionate words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged or marginalised and should be integrated into society, but he reaffirmed Church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin. In a broad-ranging 80-minute conversation with journalists on the plane bringing him back from a week-long…
Lazer Chaim Zinger washes talleisim. His small storefront on Lee Avenue, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, looks like any dry cleaner, with a row of tagged plastic-sheathed garments hanging behind the counter. In this Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, however, you have to take your long black coat somewhere else. For $100, Zinger will hand-wash your…
For 25 years, Roy Naim, an undocumented immigrant, led a secretive life. Having no identification papers, he could not drive, rent an apartment or be legally employed. Worst of all, he constantly feared being deported from his home and family. All he did was try to lie low, and somehow get by. Naim is still…
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward deputy culture editor, Naomi Zeveloff, to discuss the our ongoing series about transgender Jews and the response so far. Then, opinion editor Gal Beckerman drops by to discuss what the US is and isn’t doing about Syria. Finally, we check back in…
It’s an issue that Mila Kunis, Jonah Hill and Lena Dunham never had to deal with, but Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Goldblum and Sarah Silverman have: an obviously Jewish last name. A name that tells people who don’t know you from Adam (Sandler) that either you share something deep in common with them or you’re a…
Jack Hidary, a well-connected tech millionaire, thinks he has a shot at being elected mayor of New York City. But his dark horse quest may tear Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community in two. Hidary, who announced his candidacy in a respectfully reported New York Times story on July 16, is a scion of one of New…
A Florida synagogue rocked by allegations that a long-time congregant abused boys decades ago in New York is set to reexamine how it deals with members accused of abuse. Rabbi Efrem Goldberg told congregants of the Boca Raton Synagogue in a July 24 email: “The last few weeks have been extremely challenging as our community…
After 9/11, when the legitimacy of waterboarding and other torture methods during interrogations became a topic of fierce media debate, the French Jewish journalist Henri Alleg, who died July 17 at age 91, seemed uncannily prescient. Alleg, a newspaper editor in Algeria in the 1950s, was imprisoned and tortured by French authorities for supporting Algerian…
(JTA) — The guy with the socks up. The guy with the pants down. The guy with the headlocks. The guy who tweets and deletes. What is it with these male politicos? And why are they all Jewish? The cloistered community that is Washington’s Jewish elite collectively choked a little Saturday morning as it progressed…
At summer camp, sneaking into the boys side or the girls side is as classic an activity as roasting marshmallows. But what if the side you were assigned isn’t where you think you belong? Or what if you don’t fit into either side? Jewish summer camp — with its gender-segregated bunks, bathrooms, activities and rituals,…
