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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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Opinion In Bruce Springsteen’s new anti-ICE protest song, a nod to Minnesota’s own Bob Dylan
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Holy Ground A millennial rabbi built a synagogue where others have closed. Her maverick ideas are becoming a model.
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Fast Forward Chabad ‘let me down,’ suspect said, in hours before allegedly attacking their headquarters
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Film & TV When Catherine O’Hara delivered the perfect Purim spiel
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’
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Fast Forward France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’
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Fast Forward In 92NY talk, Bret Stephens urges ‘dismantling’ ADL and investing more in Jewish identity
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Opinion Amid standoff with US, would Iran really attack Israel?
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