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Heartless Thieves Steal Torah Scrolls From Bronx Synagogue
A Bronx synagogue suffered a terrible blow this week: the theft of three sifrey-Torah, or Torah scrolls, each one worth $45,000. The theft at the Orthodox shul, Young Israel of Mosholu Parkway, on East 208th Street in the Norwood Heights section, was discovered by a worker last Sunday. Besides the Torah scrolls, the thief also…
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Black Market for Jewish Grave Sites Grows on Web
A black market in Jewish graves is hiding in plain sight on the classified pages. Defunct Jewish burial societies have been selling cemetery plots at bargain basement prices through classified ads on Craigslist and in the print edition of the Forward — even though New York and New Jersey state laws bar these sales. Each…
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Prisoner X Case Is Classic Israeli Failure
Case 8493, which includes the story of a prisoner whom the State of Israel admitted this evening existed, until he stopped existing, is not an Australian story. Ben Zygier may have been born in Australia and continued to use the passport of his first homeland. But the story is completely Israeli in its fundamentals: How…
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Orthodox Jew and Black Republican Tim Scott Make Strange Political Bedfellows
On a Saturday night following Shabbat, Nick Muzin arrayed on his dining room table what would turn out to be the winning strategy to elect the first black Republican to Congress from South Carolina in more than a century. The next night at the same table in his Charleston, S.C., home, Muzin hosted his weekly…
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Gabby Giffords Leads Parade of State of Union Guests
President Barack Obama will not be the only one delivering a message during the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Members of Congress along with the White House will also be making symbolic statements with the guests they invite to attend the annual speech. Invited guests this year reflect the pressing issues facing Congress…
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Jewish Mothers Get New Tool To Meddle — Online
In an online age, Jewish mothers worried about their children’s romantic prospects have found a new way to intervene. Rather than simply gifting a JDate membership or forwarding tips to find a match online, more than 5,000 Jewish mothers are using TheJMom.com to network directly in search of their child’s beshert. The site takes old-fashioned…
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David Hartman, Lonely Man of Truth, Pushed Jews of All Stripes to Adapt
Rabbi David Hartman, who died on February 10 at age 81, was perhaps the greatest Jewish philosopher of our time. He raised a generation of students who are helping transform Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora. His books changed the way many of us understand the relationship between Judaism and modernity and national sovereignty,…
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Hacking JDate to Find the Perfect Jewish Hubby
There’s no magic formula for love, as both the lovelorn and happily shacked up will tell you, but according to tech guru Amy Webb there is a formula for online dating. Webb, an Internet pioneer who runs her own digital strategy company, took her number-crunching skills to JDate and emerged with a husband. Frustrated with…
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A Jones by Any Other (Married) Name
I recently got engaged, and despite the fact that my byline is short and simple, figuring out what to do about my last name will be tricky. While I write under the name Abigail Jones, my full name is Abigail Goldsmith Drachman-Jones. That’s eight syllables, 29 letters, four words and one punctuation mark. It’s a…
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Pope Benedict’s Jewish Legacy Tarnished By Ties to Holocaust Deniers
Pope Benedict was cheered by conservatives for trying to reaffirm traditional Catholic identity but liberals accused him of turning back the clock on reforms and hurting dialogue with Muslims, Jews and other Christians. The 85-year-old German-born pontiff announced on Monday he would step down at the end of the month because of the effects of…
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Orthodox Woman’s Journey From Teen Wife to Advocate
Fraidy Reiss was married at the age of 19 to a man she despised. Outwardly, she had a choice. The ultra-Orthodox matchmaker she went to gave her two men to choose from. She went on a couple of dates. She desired neither. But as a girl perilously close to 20 in the Hasidic community of…
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