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When Even Challah Seems Haunted
What makes a home Jewish? I?m not talking about the discussions, the jokes, the smell of pickled fish. I?m talking about walking into, in this case, my ailing mother?s apartment in Skokie ? the town where the Nazis marched because it was sooo Jewish ? and wondering: How do you know a Jewish lady lives…
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Conservatives Grapple With Gay Wedding Rite
Having recognized gay rights with their 2006 acceptance of gay unions, Conservative rabbis are now wrestling with the issue of gay rites. The recent efforts of three leading rabbis to construct a kosher wedding ceremony for same-sex couples hews closely to the traditional Jewish heterosexual ceremony, in an effort, they say, to ensure that same-sex…
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Women Seek To Join Hatzalah Corps
Miriam was home alone in Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhood of Boro Park when she birthed her second child, her water breaking unexpectedly and the baby slipping out along with it. Moments later, seven men barreled through the door. One of them took the baby, and another asked Miriam to lie down so that he could check…
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New Questions Raised About DSK Case
A new investigative article has raised more questions about the prosecution of French banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sex abuse allegations, raising the possibility that he was set up. The meticulously researched article by Edward Jay Epstein in the New York Review of Books analyzes room key card information and previously unknown video footage to examine…
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Travesty of Alabama’s Immigration Law
If Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were alive today, they would surely be standing arm in arm, condemning Alabama?s new anti-immigrant law. Under Alabama?s new law, House Bill 56, local law enforcement officers are required to obtain proof of legal status from anyone whom they stop and ?suspect? is in the…
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StandWithUs Draws Line on Israel
A decade ago, during the height of the second intifada, Roz Rothstein, a family therapist and child of Holocaust survivors, watched the news coming from Israel from her home in Los Angeles with growing frustration. Feeling that Israel was not getting the backing it deserved in the United States, she and her husband, Jeremy, set…
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Anti-Liberal Cloud Hangs Over Israel
These days, the word “fascism” is used here in Israel almost casually. It is spoken sometimes with glee, often in sorrow. Yet while it is fair (and painful) to say that a crop of laws, recent and prospective, are anti-democratic, the word “fascism” simply does not fit the Israeli reality. Bibi Netanyahu makes a preposterous…
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An Alter-ed Perspective on the Bible
As this year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, a new English translation might seem a bit late to the game. After all, the KJV is justly celebrated for its eloquence, and the shelves are packed with more recent translations, such as that of the Jewish Publication Society, that…
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Inside the Ultra-Orthodox Shomrim Force
Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights By Matthew Shaer Wiley, 256 pages, $25.95 When 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky went missing in Brooklyn last June, it took two hours for anyone in Leiby?s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood to inform the police. The local volunteer Jewish security patrol heard almost immediately. The patrol,…
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Pius XII’s Legacy Divides Catholics Too
The recent controversy over Roman Catholic Cardinal Kurt Koch?s statements at a meeting at Seton Hall University in October with scholars and clergy offers Jews an opportunity to reflect on the challenges of wading into disputes with other religious groups. Koch, the Vatican?s emissary to the Jews, responding briefly to a question about the push…
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How Many Russian Speakers Are in U.S.?
They make up about 10% of the American Jewish community, but no one is entirely sure how many Russian-speaking Jews there are in the United States. At a recent conference at Harvard University, the answer fluctuated from as high as 750,000 people to fewer than 500,000, depending on which expert took the podium. Sam Kliger…
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