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Fast Forward Norway Plans New Rules on Circumcision of Boys
Norway will promote new legislation to “regulate ritual circumcision,” the country’s health minister said. Minister Bent Hoie said the new legislation on non-medical circumcision of boys under 18 will be introduced before April 20, 2014, according to a report by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. “We will review submissions on the matter before we can decide…
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Fast Forward Last Jew in Afghanistan Faces Ruin as Economy Withers
Zabulon Simintov always removes his kippah, the skullcap worn by Jewish men, before entering his cafe in a dilapidated building that also houses Afghanistan’s last synagogue. “Let me take off my cap, otherwise people will think something bad about me,” Simintov said cheerfully as he descended grime-caked stairs to the ground-floor cafe. In his 50s,…
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News My Brother’s Lives and Deaths
Mental illness took my brother’s life on numerous occasions, most recently and for the last time when he was 58. He was 22 the first time he died, six years to the day after my father’s yahrzeit. His obituary noted that Gerald M. Jacobs died at home, but funeral arrangements were incomplete. Contributions could be…
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Culture Jewish Film Fests Thrive Even Amid Decline in Funding for Culture
(JTA) — At the opening-night celebration of the Boston Jewish Film Festival’s 25th birthday, festival volunteers handed out deli-made kugel for ticket holders to nosh while waiting on a line that extended back to the parking lot. Once inside the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, the celebration last week continued with a performance by a…
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News Susan Galloway’s Supreme Court Church-State Fight Began With Christmas Carols
(JTA) — The need for a firm barrier between church and state is as clear now for Susan Galloway as it was in grade school, when she was expected to sing carols at the Christmas show. Galloway grew up in McHenry, Ill., a town northwest of Chicago with few other Jews, and the carols sung…
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Fast Forward Italian Actor Moni Ovadia Quits Milan Jewish Community
Italian actor Moni Ovadia resigned from the Milan Jewish community with accusations that it is a “propaganda office” of the Israeli government. The announcement by Ovadia, 67, in an interview published last week in the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano sparked a row in the Italian Jewish world. “I don’t want to stay in a place…
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Opinion Why Jews Should Not Accept Jesus — Whatever George W. Bush Thinks
The dispiriting news that President George W. Bush plans to speak at a fundraiser to a group of ‘Messianic Jews’ led me to reframe and slightly revise an article I wrote several years ago. It not only explains in a short compass why Jews do not accept Jesus as a Messiah or son of God,…
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Fast Forward Yair Lapid and Shelly Yachimovich Call for More Religious Pluralism
Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Labor Party Chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich called for greater religious pluralism in Israel. Speaking in separate appearances Monday at a plenary session of the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Jerusalem, Lapid and Yachimovich both advocated for the loosening of Orthodox control of Israel’s religious laws. Yachimovich stressed…
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News That whites-only, no Jews allowed Arkansas community is legal, says state’s attorney general. How?
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Opinion Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear
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Film & TV How Jon Stewart evolved on Israel — at least on ‘The Daily Show’
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Opinion I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump fired a commissioner over bad jobs numbers. Nixon targeted a ‘Jewish cabal’ at the same agency
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Looking Forward That time my violin teacher tried to convert me to Christianity
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Fast Forward UK’s largest Jewish group calls Israeli aid to Gaza ‘long overdue,’ months after disciplining members for criticizing Israel
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Fast Forward Holocaust survivors say latest hostage videos recall their own condition 80 years ago
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