When Israel was invited to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it an international “seal of approval.” But a year later, it’s clear that membership in the elite group has brought anything but approval of the country’s direction in one key area: inequality. Israel’s ascension last May to…
In this edition of the Women’s Roundtable podcast, a co-production of the Forward’s Sisterhood blog and Lilith magazine, panelists weigh in on what fashion has to say about piety, and they take a look at how feminist Passover rituals have evolved. Lilith editor Susan Weidman Schneider, Lilith associate editor Sonia Isard and Sisterhood contributor Debra…
On a recent Sunday morning at Canter’s, the legendary Los Angeles deli, business was brisk. As usual, the customers were an eclectic mix: hipsters, rockers, senior citizens. And, at a table near the front sat Simon Rutberg, a slim, graying man in glasses and a black T-shirt. Rutberg himself is something of a legend. The…
A landmark conviction of a prominent member of Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox community for sexual abuse faces possible reversal following the indictment of man charged with having bribed a witness to testify against the abuser. On April 13, Samuel Kellner, 49, was arraigned in a Brooklyn court on multiple counts of grand larceny, perjury and criminal solicitation….
A challenge to the tax-exempt status of Jewish National Fund’s American arm introduces a new wrinkle into an ongoing debate over how the Internal Revenue Service should treat charities whose foreign operations run counter to public policy of the United States. A coalition of anti-Zionist groups has claimed in its challenge that JNF ethnically discriminates…
It was November 29, 1947, and the United Nations was about to vote on the resolution that paved the way for the establishment of the State of Israel. The story is well known: The Zionists achieved the necessary two-thirds majority by the skin of their teeth. But some details are still emerging. Recently Suzy Eban,…
Just weeks before starting his year as a fellow at Yeshivat Hadar, an egalitarian Judaic learning program for adults, Itamar Landau moved in with his girlfriend. The fellowship demanded that Landau keep kosher and observe the Sabbath. The couple agreed to separate milk and meat in their shared kitchen and to refrain from activities such…
Stanley Siegelman was never at a loss for words — and they always rhymed. Over the past decade, Stanley, who died of cancer on April 11 at the age of 87, regaled Forward readers with his light verse, first as a contributor to this newspaper’s “Der Yiddish Vinkl” column, more recently with his online “Siegelmania”…
Toward the end, as he lay dying, pretty much all I wanted to do was make him laugh. I called him every week with a line or a joke or a story he might find funny. I plied him with levity. And laugh he often would. Even so, I suspected that as I tried to…
’Twill come, I know, as no surprise. (I speak, of course, of my demise.) The signs abound, for all to see: A curtailed life expectancy. My breath is short, my sighs are long, The heart beats sound (to me, all wrong.) Self-pity I will not embrace, But these are facts that one must face. My…
Editor’s Note: NBC has canceled “The Paul Reiser Show.” Paul Reiser began our conversation by asking about the family. “I might as well lead with the Jewish,” he said. “We’re talking on the phone. Why be Presbyterian?” Family is important to Reiser, and it is a recurring theme of any conversation with him. During this…
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