Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Conservative Judaism, one of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism. Conservative Jews are generally more observant than Reform Jews but less so than Orthodox Jews. The movement is led by the…
Conservative Judaism
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Fast Forward Reuven Rivlin Greets Conservative Jews as ‘One Big Family’
Reuven Rivlin, who drew criticism before becoming Israel’s president for his broadsides against non-Orthodox Jewish streams, told a group of Conservative Jews that Jews are “one big family.” “We cannot agree on everything, but we are brothers and we are one big family,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Rivlin as telling the delegation Wednesday from the…
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Fast Forward Perelman Day School Wins Fight With Union
The National Labor Relations Board dismissed charges against a Philadelphia Jewish day school that stopped recognizing its teachers union. In an Aug. 22 letter to the attorney for the American Federation of Teachers in Pennsylvania, the NLRB’s regional director said his board has “lack of jurisdiction over” the case involving the Perelman Jewish Day School,…
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News Rabbi’s Sex Abuse Talk to 9-Year-Old Girls Sends Savannah Into Turmoil
The 9-year-old girl was unusually quiet that Sunday evening at supper. Her parents thought that maybe she was tired. After all, she had worked all afternoon in the family’s booth at The Shalom Y’all Food Festival in Forsyth Park. Finally, the girl told her parents that she wanted to talk about that morning’s class at…
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Culture ‘Seinfeld’ Revolutionized Pop Culture 25 Years Ago — and That’s a Bad Thing
Every era gets the sitcom it deserves. In the early 90s that sitcom was “Seinfeld,” a show about a motley collection of Jews on the upper west side of Manhattan, kvetching, kvelling and ordering soup. And now, 25 years after its premiere, Seinfeld can be seen as a turning point not only in American comedy,…
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Opinion Why ‘Love the Jew, Hate the Judaism’ Is So Wrong
What do some devout Christians say about gays and lesbians? Love the sinner, hate the sin. Love the person even if you believe that at the very core of his or her identity is something so intrinsically wrong, it puts that gay man or woman in a separate, scornful category of being. To the modern…
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Opinion I’m No One’s ‘Heretic’
Rabbi Yaakov Perlow speaks at the Agudath Isael annual gala / YouTube On Wednesday we learned that, while speaking at a fundraising gala for the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, head of that organization, slandered virtually every Jew on the planet, down to and including a bunch of plain-old-Orthodox folks. We were…
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Fast Forward Schechter School Closing Adds to Boston Anguish Over Rabbi Barry Starr Scandal
(JTA) — It’s been a rough few weeks for Conservative Jews in the Boston suburbs known as the South Area. First, Rabbi Barry Starr, the longtime spiritual leader of Temple Israel of Sharon, resigned amid allegations that he used synagogue discretionary funds to pay about $480,000 in hush money to an extortionist to hide a…
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News Storybook Boston Suburb of Sharon Shaken by Rabbi Barry Starr Hush Money Sex Scandal
Rabbi Miriam Spitzer did not have to mention him by name. The class of sixth graders at Temple Israel, in Sharon, Massachusetts, knew exactly whom Spitzer was thinking of when she dedicated that day’s lesson to Elisha ben Abuyah, a revered rabbi who became a heretic. “The lesson was that the Torah taught [by Abuyah]…
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