With some of the hottest days of summer still ahead, New Square, a Hasidic village of the Skverer sect in upstate New York, is a catastrophe waiting to happen, local fire officials say. It is a fear that they have faced each summer for many years. Most of the buildings in the village violate the…
It certainly wasn’t your average Friday night Sabbath. Here I was, aboard the Queen Mary 2, arguably one of the most famous passenger ships in the world. (The original Queen Mary ferried bygone passengers, like Cary Grant, the Duke of Windsor and Bing Crosby.) It was a sunny Friday morning, and I sat in my…
Deep in America’s heartland, a Reform synagogue, a nondenominational mosque and an Episcopalian church are all putting down roots on a 37-acre tract of land that once belonged to a Jewish country club. A body of water called Hell Creek runs through the development, over which the faith groups plan to build “Heaven’s Bridge.” Fantastical…
Over 300,000 people marched together in the mass protest that took place across Israel on Saturday, according to police estimates. It was the third consecutive week of mass rallies across the country against the high cost of living and other social and economic inequities. Approximatley 300,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv, 20,000 participated in Jerusalem,…
The budget deal in Washington and the near certainty of steep declines in federal funding for social services have created a challenge for Jewish communal federations across the country: How to maintain support for hospitals, nursing homes and other services while continuing to provide the education, identity and Israel programs that their donors want? Federations…
Tax credits for property owners who install security cameras. Electronic tracking devices for children to wear. Signs designating storefronts as “safe havens” for lost kids. A number of child-safety proposals have been floated in the wake of the murder of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky in Brooklyn’s Boro Park neighborhood. One proposal might stand out to New…
The masses marching down the streets on the muggy night of July 30 were a mixed crowd. There were students from the “tent city” set up on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to protest high housing costs. Then came young couples who joined the march pushing strollers or carrying toddlers on their shoulders, crying out against…
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has many titles: award-winning author, essayist and University Professor at NYU, among them. Most recently, she’s been tapped to lead the core exhibition development team for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is now being built on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, and which recently made headlines with the…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by opinion editor Gal Beckerman, Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff and staff writer Paul Berger to discuss the upcoming United Nations vote on a possible Palestinian state, which is scheduled to occur in September. Then the group turns to an ongoing debate that has Orthodox rabbis arguing…
A Lakewood, N.J., rabbi and his wife are facing life in prison. They were brought up on kidnapping charges July 18 for their alleged roles in the abduction and beating of an Israeli man who refused to give his wife a Jewish divorce, otherwise known as a get. Shocking, right? Not really. Under Jewish law,…
Just the other day, my friend Molly and I traveled back in time. No, we didn?t ingest any foreign substances or don a funny pair of 3-D goggles. We attended synagogue ? Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan. Or, to call it by its American name, the Stanton Street Shul. Built in 1913 on a narrow…
