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Reporters’ Roundtable: Washington’s Missing Letter; Weiner’s Disappearing District
In this week’s Forward Reporters’ Roundtable, host Josh Nathan-Kazis sits down with Jane Eisner, editor of the Forward, and staff writer Paul Berger to discuss how a famous letter from George Washington promising religious pluralism ended up in a warehouse in suburban Maryland. Then, Josh speaks with Forward Fellow Naomi Zeveloff about the redistricting efforts…
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Amid Scandal, Anthony Weiner Steps Down
Rep. Anthony Weiner, the besmirched New York Democrat who admitted to a series of explicit online exchanges with six different women, announced his resignation June 16 at a senior center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. “I’m here to apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment that I have caused,” said Weiner, who…
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Jewish Groups Spearhead Effort To Find Missing Indiana University Student
The synagogue where Lauren Spierer became a bat mitzvah, and the Jewish campus center that she frequented are among the groups leading the effort to find the Indiana University sophomore, who has been missing for nearly two weeks. Police say that the 20-year-old Spierer was last seen walking home from a friend’s apartment in the…
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Major Effort To Promote Day Schools Shows Mixed Results
When the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education was founded in 1997, it had commitments of $18 million from a dozen leading Jewish philanthropists, and it had lofty goals: to create 25 new Jewish day schools and to double the percentage of non-Orthodox students who attend all Jewish day schools. Fourteen years later, PEJE’S founding…
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When a Synagogue Program May Be an Illegal Hostel
The MacDougal Street Synagogue in New York City doesn’t have a sanctuary or a rabbi. It doesn’t run prayer services or perform weddings. And it doesn’t have a congregation. It does, however, operate budget hostels in six buildings in Manhattan. Or it did, until the New York City Department of Buildings closed four of them,…
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New Hasidic Radicals Bellow Down Tel Aviv’s Streets
The monotonous din of traffic permeated the air on Tel Aviv’s Sheinkin Street on a recent Friday afternoon, when, suddenly, a large white cargo van whipped around the corner, blasting music from a pair of huge roof-mounted loudspeakers. A few people walking on the crowded sidewalks stopped to stare as five bearded young men wearing…
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Will Weiner’s Jewish District Hit The Political Chopping Block?
The Forest Hills Jewish Center, a prominent Conservative synagogue in central Queens, occupies a large, sand-colored building next to a Chevrolet dealership on Queens Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare that cuts through the community’s hulking brick housing complexes. On a recent Friday night, about three dozen congregants gathered in a small, carpeted room inside the Jewish…
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Rainbow Flags Aflutter, Orthodox Groups Enter a Float in Gay Pride Parade
Amid a sea of rainbow flags and equal-rights banners at Tel Aviv’s 18th annual Gay Pride parade, an unexpected soundtrack filled the air: Hasidic music. Despite the suspicions of some marchers, it wasn’t an act of protest by Orthodox groups. Rather, the music was coming from a float designed by a group of Orthodox gay…
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Al Schwimmer, Father of Air Force
Al Schwimmer, a New York native whose actions were described by David Ben-Gurion as the Diaspora’s most important contribution to the survival of Israel, died June 11. He died on his birthday at age 94 in Tel Aviv. He used his contacts and experience as a World War II flight engineer for the U.S. Air…
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Why We Need the Hora
The hora is running on fumes. Go to any bar mitzvah or Jewish wedding, and sure, you’ll still find folks doing that primordial party dance. Some are kicking up a storm, faces glistening with glee (and sweat). But plenty more are simply squashed together, shuffling in the same general direction, feigning frolic. It feels less…
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Solving the Mystery of Washington’s Famous Letter
It started as a mystery. During a lecture in England last December, Jonathan Sarna, America’s foremost scholar of American Jewish history, said he did not know the whereabouts of one of American Jewry’s most important documents: George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation, in Newport, R.I. Upon this yellowed piece of 18th-century rag paper is…
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