Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Hasidic Judaism, a sub-group of Haredi Judaism that adheres to the historical traditions of Eastern European Jews, including communicating in Yiddish.
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Culture When Auschwitz Was a Jewish Town
Of all the things and places to give an endearing Jewish name, Auschwitz would seem the most unlikely. Oshpitzin — which comes from the Aramaic word for guest, ushpizin, and is the name of a traditional Sukkot prayer that welcomes guests — was how Jews once referred to Oswiecim, the Polish town that would become…
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Life The Perils of Working Out While Hasidic
Thinkstock One Sunday morning a few weeks ago, after we had returned from our Passover getaway in Orlando, we had a family weigh-in in the master bedroom of our rented ranch. After all the matzos and steak and gooey potato starch and almond meal based cookies we consumed, the digital scale was guaranteed to be…
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News Debut Crime Novel Set in Boro Park Hasidic Community
● Invisible City By Julia Dahl Minotaur Books, 304 pages, $24.99 About a week or so after I published my first short story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I learned an embarrassing lesson about the importance of getting things right. Scoring a publication credit in EQMM, the longest continuously running, and arguably the best magazine…
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News How Hammurabi Got Under the Skin of One Orthodox Talmudist
One day, when I was in my early 20s and teaching Torah to religious newbies in Jerusalem, I felt the bedrock of belief shudder beneath me. There’s a reason the sages wrote that the air of Jerusalem makes one wise. I could feel the vibe everywhere. I loved how a cosmetician might share a Torah…
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Life My Mamme — She’s Everything to Us
Frimet Goldberger and her mother at her wedding // Courtesy of Frimet Goldberger When I close my eyes and try to picture my childhood, I see my mamme steering a 12-quart boiling pot of peaches compote. The peaches arrived in a box, all eight pounds of them old and already rotting, costing a grand total…
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Fast Forward Menachem Stark Suspect Indicted in Murder
A Brooklyn construction worker was indicted for the kidnapping and murder of Brooklyn real estate developer Menachem Stark. A grand jury in Brooklyn on Monday indicted construction worker Kendel Felix, who was employed by a contractor who worked for Stark, the New York Post reported. Felix was arrested on April 30 and admitted that he…
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News Construction Worker Kendal Felix Charged in Menachem Stark Murder
A construction worker has reportedly confessed to the January murder of Brooklyn Hasidic businessman Menachem Stark, which he has told investigators was a botched robbery. Kendal Felix, 26, who worked for a contractor who worked with Stark, intended to rob the landlord when he and two buddies snatched him off the street outside his office…
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Culture Reb Zalman’s December Song
● The December Project By Sara Davidson HarperCollins Publishers, 208 pages, $25.99 Founded in the aftermath of the Sabbatean heresy, early Hasidism was a paragon of paradox. Its early 19th-century adherents, particularly those of the philosophically rigorous movement Chabad, were uniters of opposites — heaven and earth, being and nothingness, concealment and revelation. The greatest…
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