I was 7 years old when I first heard of Crown Heights. At the time, growing up in Los Angeles, my entire world felt Jewish. There were Hollywood Jews who worked in the industry like my parents, Russian Jews down the block from our West Hollywood home and Hasidic Jews on Fairfax. Sure, there were…
The family of the Australian yeshiva student killed in the Crown Heights riots condemned as “shameful” a street festival jointly planned by black and Jewish leaders to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the racial unrest that tore through the Brooklyn neighborhood. “The decision to hold a ‘Community Festival’ to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the…
(JTA) — Much has changed in Crown Heights in the past 25 years, since the accidental death of a black boy touched off three days of rioting in which black youths attacked religious Jews in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Many called it a riot. Some Jews call the events of Aug.19-21, 1991, a pogrom. And some…
Surveillance video captured footage that apparently depicts a vandal pulling down a controversial Brooklyn eruv, the Forward has learned. Printed stills from the video are circulating in Crown Heights as police seek those responsible for the repeated vandalization of a controversial ritual boundary used by Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath. The new revelation came as…
A tense religious dispute between Modern Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn over a new eruv is now getting it’s first literary treatment — as a Dr. Seuss-style poem. “Red eruv, blue eruv, tall, eruv, no eruv,” the poem is called, penned by “Rabbi Dr. Who,” and is largely a call for peace. “What good…
A feud between Hasidic and Modern Orthodox Jews over eruvs, the ritual boundaries that allow more mobility on the Sabbath, has apparently spread from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights to nearby Park Slope. The Greater Crown Heights eruv has been cut down twice in the two last weeks. Now the adjacent Park Slope Eruv…
The ritual barrier was not approved by rabbinic authorities
The doors are open to everyone at Shabbat services held on the ground floor of this Nostrand Avenue building in Brooklyn. But, unlike most Orthodox spaces, here it’s the women who lead prayers. Men? They can sit in the back. “Men are welcome,” said Nechama Levy, 32, who organized the new prayer group. “But this…
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