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The Schmooze Is Azealia Banks Jewish now?
Hip-hop artist Azealia Banks proudly posted her engagement ring on Instagram Monday, announcing conceptual artist Ryder Ripps had proposed to her. Unlike most women, who might be showing off a large rock, Banks’ finger was adorned with a chunky gold ring featuring a relief of a menorah. The photo was captioned “I’m Jewish now. MAZEL…
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News NYC mayoral candidates promise the Jewish community an open door at City Hall
Shortly after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York managed to enrage much of the Jewish community with a single tweet. After witnessing a large funeral in the Orthodox neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last April, de Blasio warned “the Jewish community, and all communities” that police would…
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News Jewish constituents put renewed focus on Sen. Gillibrand. She welcomes it.
Chuck Schumer is a hard act to follow. The 70-year-old Senate Majority Leader imbues all he does with his scrappy Brooklyn Jewish upbringing. Kristen Gillibrand, the junior senator from upstate New York who was raised Catholic, has a much more nuanced relationship with her state’s Jewish citizens. In an interview after the inauguration of Joe…
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News Dr. Rochelle Walensky, new head of CDC, got her start at Jewish summer camp
Dr. Kenneth Freedberg was standing at his wife’s bedside in a Boston hospital’s intensive care unit when an unexpected visitor entered: Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “We were there for no more than 45 minutes when Rochelle walks in,” said Freedberg, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “She didn’t work there,” he said, recalling his…
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News As more American Jews intermarry, seminaries face calls to ordain intermarried rabbis
Lex Rofeberg was a junior in college and thinking about becoming a rabbi when he hit a roadblock: he was dating a non-Jew. A representative from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s seminary, visited Brown University to talk to prospective students, and was questioned by a fellow student about a policy Rofeberg…
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News Old Irving Park neighbors push to rename Kolmar Park to honor German-Jewish author killed in the Holocaust
Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods. Subscribe to support their on-the-ground reporting here. Neighbors are pushing for a Northwest Side park to be renamed after an influential German-Jewish author and poet who died in the Holocaust. Kolmar Park, 4143 N. Kolmar Ave., is named for the street on which it…
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News Andrew Yang on yeshiva education: ‘We shouldn’t interfere’
Andrew Yang said he would not take action to boost secular education in yeshivas if elected mayor of New York City, staking out a position likely to win him support in Brooklyn’s Orthodox communities. “As mayor, I will always respect religious freedom including the freedom of parents to do what’s best for their kids educationally,”…
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Fast Forward Meet the NYC Council candidate who’s in a Jewish a cappella group
For Eric Dinowitz, a public-school teacher, father of 5-year-old twins and aspiring politician, one of the challenges living through the COVID-19 pandemic has been the disruption of his musical career. Dinowitz is a member of Six13, a Jewish all-male a cappella group formed in 2003. In an interview, he said what he has missed most…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Fast Forward Talarico won’t campaign with Democratic House candidate who wants to open ‘a prison for American Zionists’
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward California judge says Kars4Kids misled donors by omitting Orthodox Jewish mission from ads
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Fast Forward Pacific Palisades Jews, displaced by fire, reopen their synagogue as part of returning home
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Fast Forward Israel’s Noam Bettan takes 2nd at Eurovision, buoyed by scrutinized public vote