Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Orthodox Judaism, which aims for a stricter observance of halachic law than Conservative or Reform Judaism. It includes Modern Orthodox Judaism, as well as Haredi (sometimes called ultra-Orthodox) Judaism,…
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Fast Forward Police Allege Physical and Psychological Abuse Among Canada’s Lev Tahor Sect
Newly unsealed police search warrants allege physical and psychological abuse, forced ingestion of drugs and girls coerced into marriage among the fringe haredi Orthodox sect, Lev Tahor. The documents are part of applications for search warrants from the Quebec Provincial Police. They were unsealed on Friday at the request of several Canadian media outlets. The…
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Culture Everything He Wanted To Know About Sex Among the Orthodox
Racheli Ibenboim is a Haredi lady of the Gur dynasty, one of the most fundamentalist branches in the hasidic world. The Gur people, for one reason or another, are ever busy with ever more rules forbidding more and more “sexual temptations” of whatever kind. For example, not long ago a new prohibition was announced: A…
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Fast Forward South Florida’s Jewish Community Grows Beyond Its Retirees
(JTA) — At the Urban Rustic Cafe in a strip mall in this city located between Miami to the south and the Palm Beach retirement communities to the north, the line for a table stretches out the door and into the parking lot. Inside the kosher establishment, the volume is loud. An elderly Orthodox man…
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Life How Tefillin Empowers Me
Editor’s Note: This article is a response to Avital Chizhik’s article which called for Orthodox feminism to seek to open the minds of women, not just to emulate the ritual practice of men. (Ha’aretz) — Dear Ms. Chizhik, I – a high-school student – write to you from a community in which your proposals for…
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Fast Forward Ultra-Orthodox Internet Company Meshimir Blocks WhatsApp Messaging
An ultra-Orthodox web filtering company will begin blocking photos and videos sent via WhatsApp as of February 11. The smart phone message service, which is wildly popular among ultra-Orthodox Jews, has grown increasingly controversial in recent weeks, with rabbis and community newspapers condemning it in public. Now, key features of WhatsApp will no longer be…
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News Postnup Parties Get Happily Married Orthodox Couples To Plan for Divorce
Bobby and Chelle Medow are happily married — and have been for almost 50 years. Yet one Sunday evening in January, the St. Louis couple made contingency plans for a divorce. And 31 other Orthodox married couples joined them. They are part of a small but budding movement that is being promoted by some Orthodox…
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News WhatsApp Spreads Fast Among Ultra-Orthodox — and Rabbis Cry Foul
Ultra-Orthodox leaders are targeting a new threat to their community: the smartphone messaging service WhatsApp. Orthodox Jews have swarmed this service ever since a 2012 anti-Internet campaign tightened communal restrictions against social networking sites like Facebook. Now, some leaders are launching a new crusade against WhatsApp, an SMS-like tool that allows users to share digital…
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Fast Forward ‘Chained’ Wife Gital Dodelson Wins Fight for Orthodox Religious Divorce
Gital Dodelson, the “chained” woman featured on the front page of the New York Post last fall, says she has received a get, or religious writ of divorce, from her husband. The announcement appeared Wednesday afternoon on a Facebook page dedicated to helping Dodelson obtain a get and was confirmed by a publicist who has…
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