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Opinion How I Built My Jewish Charity Database
Last summer, I hit upon a way to measure Jewish institutional power: Using data from the IRS, I would gather financial information on every single Jewish organization that files a tax return. My first story based on that project is printed in this issue of the Forward. This addendum, which is only for readers with…
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Opinion Why a Sicilian Nun’s Song Moved Me as a Jew
I’m not usually the type of person who goes in for reality TV shows. Especially not when they revolve around singing competitions, and especially not when one of their singers’ performances becomes an overnight Internet sensation, to be endlessly posted and reposted on social media. So why did I feel compelled to watch a Sicilian…
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Fast Forward Stymied by Israeli Bureaucracy, Ukrainian Has Been Making Aliyah for Years
(JTA) — Sitting in his sister’s living room in this town outside Tel Aviv, Yuriy Yukhatskov says he’s glad to be far from his home city of Kiev. Yukhatskov, 44, says that what he sees as the pervasive anti-Semitism in Ukraine’s capital would grow only worse with the country’s recent unrest. He fears that last month’s…
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Fast Forward Will Esther Lebowitz’s Killer Get New Trial in Notorious 1969 Baltimore Slay?
Some 200 Baltimore Jews attended a hearing to protest the possible release of a man who was convicted of murdering an 11-year-old Jewish girl in 1969. Attorneys for Wayne Stephen Young, 68, are requesting a new trial based on a 2012 ruling by the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the state’s highest court, which found…
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Fast Forward Jewish Heirs Won’t Get Back Art Treasure, German Panel Rules
A collection of medieval religious art worth an estimated $275 million will not be returned to the heirs of four German-Jewish art dealers. The descendants of another heir said, however, that they will not give up the fight for the Guelph Collection now held by the Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In a ruling last…
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Opinion The Spiritual Advisor Students Need (Hint: It’s Not Campus Rabbi Anymore)
The Jewish world is still aflutter with the recent results of the Pew Research Center’s study of American Jews, which speaks of declining Jewish identification among young people. While much of the institutional world is fretting about how to reach Jews who don’t identify with being Jewish, Hampshire College, a secular institution in Amherst, Mass.,…
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Israel News Jewish Students Find Global Connections — and Schisms — in Israel Program
Thousands of students from around the world head to Israel every year to discover the country and its culture. And what do they learn? “In general, Israel education is about falafel, geography and one directional learning about Israelis,” quipped Shana Zionts, director of student life at Columbia/Barnard Hillel. This winter, a delegation of young adults,…
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The Schmooze Vice Trades in March Madness for Hitler
Who’s more worthy of Hitler-comparison, Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein? Voldemort or Satan? Bashar Al-Assad or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? These are the hard-hitting questions that Vice is setting out to answer. Forget March Madness. They’ve come up with Hitler Madness, the tournament to “officially determine the most Hitlerish person of all time.” Per the rulebook: Some…
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Sports An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
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News Mamdani’s first Jewish Heritage event reveals a narrowed circle
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News ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
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Opinion Netanyahu is facing electoral catastrophe — and could place Israel in existential peril
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump announces he has ‘largely negotiated’ Iran deal, Strait of Hormuz opening
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Opinion In Trump’s assault on democracy, echoes of Nazi Germany but new glimmers of hope that America will be different
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Art This Jewish artist hadn’t painted in more than 5 decades. Then came Oct. 7.
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Opinion How can I explain to my 93-year-old mother why it suddenly seems ok to hate Jews?