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Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv Dies at 102
Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community in Israel and one of the most well-known figures in the Haredi world, died Wednesday at the age of 102. Elyashiv died Wednesday at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, where he was hospitalized for several months due to heart, lungs and kidney complications. Since…
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Fighting In Cage, Talking About Peace
When Ramsey Nijem strode cockily into the ring for a televised mixed-martial arts bout June 2011, the breakout star of the 13th season of the Ultimate Fighting Championship reality show, “The Ultimate Fighter,” was draped in a Palestinian flag, a tribute to his father’s homeland. The music blasting through the Las Vegas arena? “One Day,”…
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Cemeteries Up Ante for Sunday Burials
If you want to be buried in New Jersey, try dying early in the week. Jewish law requires speedy burial, but bans Saturday funerals. So a death late in the week often means a funeral on a Sunday. And in New Jersey, a Sunday funeral means extra burial fees of up to $500, even more…
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The Kosher Cure
Holding a thinly sliced piece of prosciutto between two of her fingers, Marina, my Italian host mother, declared, “Dai, provalo!” Come on, try it! It was my first night living in Italy for a semester abroad, and I arrived as a kosher-keeping vegetarian. I hadn’t eaten any meat, let alone pork, for nearly four years,…
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Replica of Western Wall Planned in Kansas
Plans for a full-size replica of the Western Wall in Jerusalem are being drawn up in Wichita, Kan. But women who have had abortions — rather than Jews — are the target audience. The proposed replica is part of a monumental “International Pro-Life Memorial and National Life Center” being planned by evangelical activists in Wichita’s…
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Most Brooklyn Abuse Cases Involve Kin
Recent media accounts of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox community have highlighted the threat victims face from teachers, rabbis and yeshiva staff as perpetrators, and the special pressures — even intimidation — they face from community leaders not to report such cases to secular law enforcement. But a list of child sexual abuse cases…
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A Jew on the Trail of Tears
I was sitting in a restaurant, having lunch with my family in Macon, Ga., when my great-uncle Herbert, a genealogist by hobby, proceeded to retell our family history. I had heard it many times before, but this time there was a twist. I had always thought that everyone on both sides of my family was…
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Heartland Western Wall, Face-Off Over Bucky Shvitz
Click to read the comic in full. In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by staff writer Paul Berger and artist-in-residence Eli Valley who face off over Eli’s most recent comic which takes on sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community. Then, Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff drops by to discuss why an anti-abortion group…
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German Novelist Admits Tie to Munich Massacre
A popular German detective novelist accused of being directly involved in the 1972 Munich massacre apologized for his involvement in the attack and denied being a neo-Nazi in an interview with Haaretz earlier this week. Willi Voss, who was revealed to be an accomplice to the massacre by a report compiled by the German Federal…
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German Circumcision Ruling Raises Outcry
A controversial court ruling in Cologne that effectively prohibits most circumcisions in that city has touched a nerve worldwide, and sparked an outcry in Germany that has united Jews and Muslims in a rare common protest. The judgment, delivered on May 5 but only published on June 26, found that the circumcision of a four-year-old…
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Celebrating the 4th With the N.Y. Philharmonic, West Point Band and Hellcats
“What is someone with my accent doing here?” asked British-born conductor Bramwell Tovey from the stage at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on July 5, where he led an Independence Day concert of classic American music and military marches. Tovey is music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and has led the New York Philharmonic’s…
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