Best of 2021
Best of 2021
The Latest
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Books An oral history of the most epic Jewish summer camp prank ever
The summer before 10th grade, some friends of mine pulled off what I have long thought had to be the most outrageous prank of all time: spoiling the biggest twist in the Harry Potter series for an entire sleepaway camp. It happened at Camp Ramah in Ojai, Calif., on July 18, 2005, two days after…
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News ‘There is no Kohen:’ A minyan in the shadow of disaster mourns its losses
About 30 people packed into the living room and dining room of the white stucco house Saturday as a Torah scroll was laid on the bimah and the gabbai prepared to summon a kohein for the first aliyah. But there were no kohanim among them, because this congregation’s was in the rubble. “Ein kaan kohein,”…
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Opinion The Surfside disaster is our generation’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory moment
On Shabbat afternoon, March 25, 1911, the top floors of the Jewish-owned Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan went up in flames. Due to the building’s structural flaws, the number of people working at the time, and the lack of responsive emergency personnel, 146 lives were lost in just 18 minutes. As labor attorney Jonathan…
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News ‘They need a miracle’— aid pours in for Jewish victims of Surfside, Florida building collapse
Jewish organizations are urging people around the world to pray for all the victims of the catastrophic residential tower collapse near Miami, including some 20 Jewish people estimated to be among the 99 missing in the tragedy. A section of a 12-story condominium tower in Surfside, Fla., collapsed late Wednesday night, flattening more than 50…
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Archive We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Yiddish: LGBTQ stories, and silences, in the Forward archives
It’s traditional for the gay community to gather for brunch before a Pride march during Pride month, or nachas khoydesh in Yiddish. Today, we propose instead a forshpayz, an appetizer-sized portion of queer archival Forverts history — rare treasures celebrating LGBTQ dignity, visibility and equality: our first archival Pride march back in time. For me,…
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Music How Jewish is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah?’
A Forward investigation in 9 verses
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Culture Have social media giants been censoring posts about Israel and Gaza?
Almost as fast as social media posts about Israel and Gaza began multiplying, so too did complaints of censorship from both sides. Posts were identified as hate speech and taken down; influencers insisted that they had been shadow-banned — a term for when a user’s posts are left up but the algorithm does not show…
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News ‘Second class citizens’: LGBTQ students allege culture of alienation and fear at Yeshiva University
Molly Meisels, then a senior at Yeshiva University, was greeted in class last fall with an unusual message from a professor: “I don’t care if you’re a ‘he,’ a ‘she,’ or an ‘it.’” Meisels, 22, one of only a few openly LGBTQ undergraduates at the more than 2,000-strong university, recalled feeling taken aback but not…
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News RFK Jr. wants fluoride out of drinking water. Israel has a decade of lessons to offer.
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Film & TV Why ‘The Brutalist’ resonated so deeply with me
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Culture They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion The blessing and burden of bearing first witness to Jewish history
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Fast Forward Israel hits Yemen as conflict escalates with Houthis, Iran’s strongest remaining proxy
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Fast Forward Using menorah from Argentina’s Milei, Volodymyr Zelensky lights Hanukkah candles with Ukrainian rabbis
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Culture The crucial Bob Dylan question that ‘A Complete Unknown’ fails to answer
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