This is 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…
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News Not Your Grandma’s Poland Anymore
When Poland’s new Sejm, or Parliament, was seated recently, the nationally televised event showed something never before seen in this conservative nation: a transsexual woman and an openly gay man being solemnly sworn in along with other parliamentarians. The seminal event was a consequence of the emergence of Palikot, a new, explicitly anti-clerical, libertarian-oriented party…
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News Conservatives Grapple With Gay Wedding Rite
Having recognized gay rights with their 2006 acceptance of gay unions, Conservative rabbis are now wrestling with the issue of gay rites. The recent efforts of three leading rabbis to construct a kosher wedding ceremony for same-sex couples hews closely to the traditional Jewish heterosexual ceremony, in an effort, they say, to ensure that same-sex…
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News Canada Stakes Out Strong Pro-Israel Stand
Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, reacted swiftly last month when word reached him that the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Ottawa had promoted a YouTube video in which a Palestinian girl urged sympathizers to “destroy the Jews.” Linda Sobeh Ali’s re-Tweet of the video, Baird made clear, had ended her credibility as a diplomat in…
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Opinion Pernicious Attempt To Brand Protest as Anti-Semitic
Is the Jewish congressional representative from heavily Jewish Long Island, Steve Israel, “standing with those calling for the killing of Jews”? Does the Jewish representative from heavily Jewish Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “agree with various calls for Jews to be ‘run out of the country’ and to oppose and ‘destroy’ the State of Israel”? Sean…
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News Conservative Synagogues Crack Open Door to Intermarried Families
In June, after a year of internal discussion, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, a Conservative synagogue just outside Philadelphia, made a tiny amendment to its constitution: It redefined household membership to apply to families with one Jewish parent as well as those with two. Though the amendment impacted a small number of intermarried congregants —some 10…
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Life Separate-Gender Jewish Activities: It’s Good To Have Rooms of Our Own
I have to disagree with Chanel Dubofsky’s Sisterhood post in which she contends that new interest in Jewish men’s clubs reflects male anxiety about a supposed women’s takeover of Jewish organizations and life. I think it’s great that a non-Orthodox Jewish organization is making progress in engaging Jewish men. The goal is to have everyone…
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The Schmooze David Mamet: ‘Crazy About’ Sarah Palin?
That celebrated playwright David Mamet has taken a hard turn to the right is old news by now. He has written about it in his newly published book, “The Secret Knowledge: On The Dismantling of American Culture” (Sentinel, 2011), and has been shouting it from the mountaintops in all the related press coverage. Mamet sums…
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Opinion Kagan, Kaplan and the Stare Decisis Conundrum
Jeremiah Riemer writes to suggest that if Elena Kagan is indeed set to become the first Reconstructionist on the Supreme Court since the Civil War, as I joked in a May 10 blog post (playing off her late parents’ reported membership in a Reconstructionist congregation), then it’s time to take a fresh look at the…
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Culture I come from a long line of Jewish Bundists. Now, Molly Crabapple is part of our family.
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Opinion American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt
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Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
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Yiddish װאָס קען מען זיך אָפּלערנען פֿון מאָלי קראַבעפּלס בוך װעגן „בונד“?What can we learn from Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund?
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט