This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
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The Schmooze Shalom in the Catholic Home: Shmuley Urges Pope To Have Shabbat Dinners
If doling out advice — from parenting to relationships to spirituality — to American Jews and Gentiles wasn’t enough, celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach has gone for the big score: the Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope. By consulting with Rabbi Shmuley, the Pope joins the ranks of Michael Jackson and…
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Life Women Leaving Orthodoxy
The recent Rabbinical Council of America decision to exclude women from the rabbinate brought to mind the 2004 film “Mekudeshet: Sentenced to Marriage,” a documentary about women stuck in the divorce process in Israel. There is one particularly heart-wrenching scene that has been playing over in my mind recently. “Rachel,” a 30-something Orthodox mother of…
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Life RCA’s Resolution on Women’s Leadership May Prove Chilling
Women cannot be Orthodox rabbis. That much is clear in the resolution passed unanimously at the annual conference of the Rabbinical Council of America, held at the Young Israel of Scarsdale April 25-27. But that is all that’s clear in the resolution, which can be read in its entirety here. On the one hand, the…
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Life RCA: No Women Rabbis, No Matter What They’re Called
The Rabbinical Council of America, the main umbrella group for centrist Orthodox rabbis, just released its position statements, which were adopted this week at its annual conference. Here’s what the RCA had to say about women’s spiritual and executive leadership within Orthodoxy: The flowering of Torah study and teaching by God-fearing Orthodox women in recent…
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Life Jewish Feminists Take on the RCA
In a bold and passionate move, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) has sent two letters to the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), a leading Orthodox rabbinic organization, in an attempt to advance women’s leadership roles in synagogues and communities. One of the letters reads: As the major rabbinic arm in the Orthodox world, the…
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The Schmooze Iraq Vet Saves Rabbi’s Wife From Choking at Yankee Stadium
This will show you never to eat stadium food. At Yankee Stadium yesterday, the wife of a prominent New York rabbi was saved from choking to death by an Army medic who had served in Iraq. It all started when Toby Weiss, wife of Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, began choking…
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The Schmooze Kashrut 911
SOS. Kashrut emergency. You’ve got a dozen people waiting for dinner, you have just used a milky spoon in a pot of chicken soup, and you want to know if the soup is still kosher. Oh, and you’re Haredi, so you can’t draw on the expertise of Rabbi Google (Haredi leaders have banned the Web)….
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The Schmooze A New Passover Tradition: Desalinated Water
His status in haredi circles is legendary, and for years his kashrut seal has appeared on every kind grocery item. Now, you can get tap water with the seal of Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau, the chief rabbi of Bnei Brak. Though during the year a tiny amount of something non-kosher doesn’t render otherwise kosher food…
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