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,…
Orthodox Judaism
The Latest
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Life I’m Observant — and I Wear Tzitzit
A few months ago, I was at the Kotel with my family. When I was leaving the site, a woman stopped me. She grabbed one of the knotted white fringes dangling from under my shirt and, in Hebrew, exclaimed “Tzitzit!? But this is forbidden!” No, I told her, it is permitted according to all major…
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Culture For One Orthodox Teen, Writing Letters to a Boy Changed Everything
(JTA) — The call came one evening in August. I was in Jerusalem staying with my oldest sister, Goldy, for the summer. “It’s for you,” Goldy shouted from the kitchen. “Aunt Fraidy!” Aunt Fraidy had been my host in my last year of high school. My parents, concerned about the influence of my modern Orthodox…
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Culture Why Non-Orthodox Judaism Is Doomed
Back in 1977, a young writer published a bold book that tried to propel aliyah, or emigration to Israel, to the heart of the American Jewish agenda. Hillel Halkin, who had made the move himself from New York seven years earlier, didn’t mince his words, and declared the Diaspora “doomed.” The future of the Jewish…
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News High School Tefillin Debate Just Tip of Iceberg for Orthodox Jewish Women
(JTA) — The announcement this week that SAR, a modern Orthodox high school in New York, is allowing girls to lay tefillin is helping expose an increasingly sharp fault line within Orthodoxy. For decades, it has been difficult to sort out the precise dividing lines between the varieties of Orthodoxy — ultra, haredi, centrist, modern,…
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News New York State Says Relief Resources Doesn’t Help Anyone. It Does.
A public corruption panel created by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wrongly labeled an Orthodox Jewish mental health agency as a do-nothing charity, a joint investigation by the Forward and WNYC has found. But the charity does have ties to operatives with deep political influence who have used it for unrelated political ends. The Moreland…
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Opinion Why Women Can — And Must — Lay Tefillin
A woman prays wearing tefillin in Jerusalem/Getty Images Must, should, or can observant Jewish women wrap tefillin, or not? This well-worn question was recently revived thanks to the two Modern Orthodox high schools in New York — SAR and Ramaz — that have tepidly embraced female students who wish to wrap tefillin publicly in their…
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Fast Forward Ramaz Would Also Allow Girls To Use Tefillin — Joins SAR
Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox school in Manhattan, has joined SAR in agreeing to allow girls to pray with tefillin, although the school’s principal reportedly says no students are currently doing so. “If a young woman wanted to put on tefillin and tallit, she could daven with us in our school minyan,” Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the…
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Opinion My Fight To Lay Tefillin At an Orthodox School
A young woman prays wearing tefillin on April 11, 2013 in Jerusalem, Israel. / Getty Images On December 8, 2013, SAR High School principal Rabbi Naphtali Harcsztark permitted students Ronit Morris and Yael Marans to lay tefillin in the school’s daily women’s prayer group, allowing them to do so within the school building. While this…
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