This is 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
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Books Why Secular-to-Orthodox Memoirs Matter
“Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.” This quote from Ann Patchett sums up my feelings about writing — and it’s also how I feel about my chosen religious lifestyle. I grew up in a secular Jewish home and, as a young adult, was drawn…
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Fast Forward Orthodox Woman Suing Gym for Not Letting Her Work Out in Skirt
An Orthodox Brooklyn woman is suing the Lucille Roberts fitness chain for denying her entry to a kickboxing class because she was wearing a skirt. Yosefa Jalal, 25, said she was harassed, threatened with arrest and had her membership revoked from the women’s-only gym when she insisted on following Judaism’s standards of modesty. “I think…
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Opinion Where’s the Orthodox Counterpoint to All Those OTD Books?
Compelling personal essays and well-promoted books by “off the derech” writers — Jews who were raised Orthodox but are currently elsewhere — have become something of a cottage industry. Some of the accounts are somewhat condescending, even cynical, embodiments of the perennial phenomenon of intrepid youth discovering truths to which their parents are lamentably oblivious….
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Opinion From Black Hats to Egalitarian Prayer — and Back?
Growing up in an Orthodox environment, there was a word I kept hearing. It was dirty. Worse, it was said with derision. It signified weird people who were non-traditional. Or worse, non-observant. Egalitarian. But I eventually left yeshiva and entered college. I was observant, but I started getting a crash course in Judaism-that’s-not-like-my-Judaism. It was…
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The Schmooze Everything You Ever Needed to Know About ‘Frum Porn’
Frum porn. It’s a thing. A recent story published in Vice found no less than 74 videos tagged “frum fetish” on a porn site called clips4sale.com. Another 31 were tagged “frum lesbians.” Most of these clips, Vice reports, come from a site called frumvids.com(click at your own peril), which specifically caters to an Orthodox Jewish…
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Fast Forward 2 Orthodox Jews Shot With BB Gun in Queens
Two Jews were shot with BB guns in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of New York City. City Councilman Rory Lancman said that the victims, neither of whom was seriously injured, were shot over the past 10 days in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens, the Queens Chronicle reported Monday. The New York Police Department…
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Culture A Miserable Marriage Made Worse by Rabbinic Court That Ended It
I just became a wusband, 36 years of marriage to a Jewess left behind. L. and I called it quits after endless struggles. This was a marriage made in hell, and canceled in a place equally miserable — a beit din, a Jewish religious court. Though she teaches at a Modern Orthodox day school, L….
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Life The ‘Shidduch Crisis’ Has Led to an Orthodox Obsession with Female Beauty
“We usually don’t take a car,” the yeshiva boy says to the driver, an older Irish man with a hearty laugh and a dapper straw hat. “But the lady was inappropriately attired (he winks at his date), in her heels I mean, so we had to…” The yeshiva boy’s date cuts him off and leans forward to the…
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