This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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News Obama Chats With 900 Rabbis on Issues and Renewal
Rosh Hashanah is more than a week away, but Barack Obama drew upon the High Holy Days themes of renewal and rededication in a conference call with more than 900 rabbis. “I know that for rabbis this is the busiest time of the year as you prepare for the High Holy Days,” the Democratic presidential…
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News Barack Obama’s Rabbi(s)
Will a rabbi’s blessing help Barack Obama? What about 300 rabbis? And will the IRS find this arrangement kosher? “Rather than sit and yell at my television, I thought there was an opportunity to do something,” said Rabbi Steven Bob of Congregation Etz Chaim in Lombard, Ill, in the western suburbs of Chicago. Rabbis for…
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Life The Rebbe and the Shoah
There have long been those within ultra-Orthodox Jewry who regarded the Holocaust as divine punishment for what they saw as the sins of the Jews: Zionism, liberalism, irreligiosity, religiosity they disliked, etc. Most recently, former Israeli chief Sephardic rabbi, Mordecai Eliyahu, placed the blame for the Nazi genocide on Reform Judaism. According to a respected…
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News Poll: Conservative Leaders Back Gay Rabbis
An overwhelming majority of religious and lay leaders in the Conservative synagogue movement support gay rabbinical ordination and same-sex marriage, according to the results of a newly released survey. In another development likely to boost the push for gay ordination, the movement’s flagship institution, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, announced that Rabbi Daniel Nevins…
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News Conservative Rabbis Predict Gay Ban Will Fall, Canadian Shuls Weigh Split With Movement
With leaders of Conservative Judaism predicting an end to the outright ban on gay ordination and same-sex marriage, some of the movement’s more traditional Canadian synagogues are threatening to form a breakaway coalition. Several movement leaders, speaking at an August 24 meeting in New York, said that the ordination of gay rabbis and the sanctioning…
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News Key Rabbis Say Conservative Judaism Will Lift Gay Ban
The ordination of gay rabbis and the sanctioning of same-sex marriage within Conservative Judaism is near certain, according to movement leaders who spoke at a meeting in New York on Thursday night. Organized by the movement’s congregational arm, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the gathering offered a preview of the halachic opinions on homosexuality…
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Israel News Rabbis: Israel Too Worried Over Civilian Deaths
As international human rights organizations decry the high toll of civilian deaths suffered in the Lebanon war, America’s main organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis is calling on the Israeli military to be less concerned with avoiding civilian casualties on the opposing side when carrying out future operations. Following a solidarity mission to Israel last week,…
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Culture RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
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News DNA test kits spark a surge of online conversions to Judaism in the U.S.
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Opinion What does Mamdani’s response to synagogue protests mean for Jews? No one will like the answer.
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News As young Jews move away from Israel, Jewish leaders are reluctant to change their approach
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