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News Memorial Held for Airman Slain in Afghanistan
Slain Airman Matt Seidler was remembered as a hero who “chased after his dream” during a memorial at his air force base in Colorado. A crowd of 600 gathered on Friday for the tribute to Seidler along with his commanding officers at Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, and his parents, Marc and Lauren…
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Opinion Holiday Proposal Sparks French Outrage
The political tempest spawned in France by Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the country’s credit rating has transfixed outside observers. They have thus paid little attention to a different storm now roiling the waters of French society: the question of whether or not French Jews can take the day off on Yom Kippur. In early…
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News Reporters’ Roundtable: Orthodox and Gay
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Orthodox rabbi, Steve Greenberg, who recently wrote for the Forward about his decision to conduct a same-sex commitment ceremony. Then Josh talks with Nathan Guttman, the Forward’s Washington correspondent, to discuss how the US and Israel are trying to handle Iran. Finally, Forward editor Jane…
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Opinion Falling in Love With Dusty Treaties
One of the more surprising twists in recent Middle East punditry is a sudden surge of interest among pro-Israel hard-liners in the fine points of international law. The topic isn’t usually popular with hawks; they tend to see it as an infringement on national sovereignty, employed mainly as a club for bludgeoning Israel. Seeing it…
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Fast Forward Israel Hopes To Mute Call to Prayer
Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank is looking into ways to use technology to mute the sound volume of electronically amplified muezzin calls in mosques. Settlement leaders frequently complain about the noise of the muezzins, whose electronically amplified calls to prayer can easily be heard in nearby Jewish settlements, including at night when people…
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Opinion Conservativism Masks a Tolerant Tradition
Although Jewish voters will have little direct impact on the outcome of South Carolina’s presidential primary on January 21, a culture of religious tolerance and freedom is deeply embedded in the state’s history. And it is this underappreciated aspect of South Carolina’s political culture that we see playing out in this year’s contest, especially with…
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News Synagogue Attacks Have New Jersey on Edge
As Jews in some northern New Jersey communities made their way to synagogue last Shabbat, the scene was slightly different from the typical day of rest. Extra police cars were on patrol near synagogues. At Bnei Yeshurun in Teaneck, a new buzzer system had been installed. And at Ahavath Torah in Englewood, a phalanx of…
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News U.S. Jewish Population Pegged at 6 Million
Two new independent studies have found that there are between 6.4 million and 6.6 million Jews living in the United States today, representing about 1.8% of the population. Though the studies used drastically different methodologies, they appear to point to a growing consensus on the number of Jews in America, a figure that has been…
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Culture How one Jewish woman fought the Nazis — and helped found a new Italian republic
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Fast Forward Betar ‘almost exclusively triggered’ former student’s detention, judge says
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Fast Forward ‘Honey, he’s had enough of you’: Trump’s Middle East moves increasingly appear to sideline Israel
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