A prominent Syrian rabbi?s recent guilty plea and a new tell-all book that probes the underside of his insular community appear likely to confront Syrian Jews once more with a scandal that just won?t go away. On Monday, March 28, Rabbi Saul Kassin, age 89, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized money transmitting ?…
Lord Byron was a celebrity before the word was invented. All over Europe, men saw his portrait, and wanted to look like him. Women ? also a few men ? saw him and wanted to make love to him; a surprising number succeeded. The details of his private life made good topics for public conversation….
The current exhibit at New York?s Jewish Museum, ?The Art of Matrimony: Thirty Splendid Marriage Contracts from the Jewish Theological Seminary Library,? is, essentially, a room full of contracts. True, they are beautifully decorated, restored and mounted. But their raison d?être is as legal documents ? each stipulating the conditions of a marriage. Jewish law…
Anyone old enough to remember Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore knows how important the U.S. Supreme Court is. Now comes Wal-Mart v. Dukes, in which the Supreme Court will hear arguments March 29 on whether 1.6 million women who work for the giant retailer will be able to…
Matthew Sharpe is the author of a story collection and four novels. His most recent is “You Were Wrong,” published last summer by Bloomsbury USA. He spoke to Allison Yarrow about writing of a suburban house, his Jewish sensibility and Kafka’s inexplicit religious authority. Listen to the podcast below and subscribe to Forward podcasts on…
Host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with staff writer Nathan Guttman about whether or not Israel is headed for another war with the Palestinians, in light of a recent Jerusalem bombing and several rocket attacks from Gaza. Then Myra Mniewski, a poet and Yiddish translator, joins the conversation to discuss a Yiddish-language poem published in the Forverts…
U. S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said she did not hesitate a minute when she was asked last year to be a keynote speaker at today’s 100th anniversary commemoration of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Solis reminded the thousands of people packed into the blocks near Washington Square that the fire in the overcrowded…
Scores of events have been scheduled to mark the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The workplace disaster took place March 25, 1911, and killed 146 people — most of them young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. The Forward speaks with the filmmakers behind an HBO documentary on the fire, the composer of a…
I saved the visit to my father’s grave for the last day of my trip to Israel. It’s not that I don’t like going, it’s just that there are already so many reminders of death in Jerusalem. Both Arabs and Israelis point to bullet holes in Old City walls, each one a testament to a…
Tell us what you think are the most important books, films, sculptures, pieces of music or any other cultural artifact produced about the Holocaust. And why they are vital. With the help of Paula Hyman (professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale), Joanne Rudof (Archivist of the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale), Lawrence Langer (author…
The rabbi chosen to head the largest Jewish religious organization in North America has not always toed the party line. As the spiritual leader of a large, wealthy suburban congregation, Richard Jacobs is every part the modern Reform rabbi. A tall and well-spoken former dancer, he wears a green Save Darfur bracelet and a small…
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