Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City home to a major population of Hasidic Jews.
Brooklyn
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Fast Forward De Blasio appoints Jewish Brooklynite as new transportation head
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed longtime Brooklyn Heights resident Henry Gutman as the city’s new commissioner for the Department of Transportation on Wednesday. Gutman, who is known as Hank, was raised in New Jersey, and has lived since 1975 in Brooklyn Heights, where he and his wife, Karoly, are longtime members of…
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Art An artist in exile talks Tu B’Shvat tarot and working from her childhood home
During the pandemic, Jessica Tamar Deutsch has been considering exile as she relearns how to paint. Specifically, she’s been thinking about the title character in “The Lost Princess,” a story by Rabbi Nachman, the mystic founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement, about a young woman who disappears from her home after displeasing her kingly father….
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Fast Forward Son of prominent Jewish judge arrested for role in Capitol siege
The son of a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge was arrested Tuesday morning by the FBI for his participation in the Capitol siege last week. Aaron Mostofsky, the son of Shlomo Mostofsky (who also goes by Steve) is facing four federal charges. He was photographed and videotaped inside the Capitol wearing a fur pelt. Aaron Mostofsky’s…
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Fast Forward A shofar blown in Brooklyn as Biden’s victory sends thousands into streets
The announcement by several national publications on Saturday that Joe Biden was the presumptive winner of the 2020 presidential election triggered a joyful, Jewish-inflected gathering at Grand Army Plaza, a civil war memorial that has served as a site of protest in recent months. The spontaneous party drew drew Sen. Charles Schumer, a shofar-blowing rabbi…
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Culture When COVID hit, I went home to my parents. For Election Day, I came home to New York.
My roommate and I struck out early to vote Tuesday morning. Close to our polling place, a school in deep Brooklyn, we began to pass strangers wearing voting stickers. It wasn’t a very New York thing to do, but we waved at them, and they waved back. I couldn’t help it: despite the extenuating demands…
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Fast Forward Report: organizers of five Brooklyn High Holiday gatherings hit with $15,000 fines
The organizers of five Jewish religious gatherings in the Hasidic hub of Borough Park, Brooklyn, received maximum-allowable $15,000 fines for violating state rules limiting such gatherings to 10 people in areas where coronavirus infection rates are highest, sources told the New York Post. The city said that it handed out $150,000 total in fines in…
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News Orthodox Jews quietly defy coronavirus restrictions to celebrate last of the High Holidays
Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn proceeded with some indoor and outdoor holiday celebrations in their synagogues over the weekend, in defiance of restrictions limiting all religious gatherings to 10 or fewer people in neighborhoods where the rates of coronavirus infection have gone sharply up in recent weeks. On Saturday evening in Borough Park — a neighborhood…
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News Orthodox rabbis say High Holiday services should proceed as usual — despite coronavirus
The leading Orthodox advocacy and religious authority has released a rabbinical decree ahead of the High Holidays that contains no mention of masks or social distancing, in contrast to the organization’s previous statement, which called on congregations to be careful at large gatherings. The decree, or Kol Korei, was written by a group of 15…
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News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
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Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
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Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
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Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
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Fast Forward Trump administration freezes research funding to Princeton amid antisemitism investigations
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Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
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