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Fast Forward Rabbi Writes Anti-Gun Protest Prayer After Las Vegas Shooting
As Americans process the horrific Sunday night shooting in Las Vegas, one rabbi has put pen to paper, writing a protest prayer-poem about gun violence. Titled “Unetaneh Tokef for America,” Rabbi Douglas Sagal’s poem protests the inability of politicians to pass gun control – and links to it a deadly epidemic of a firearms violence….
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Fast Forward Henry Okolica, Connecticut Rabbi Who Served Vets And Students, Dies At 103
Henry Okololica survived the Holocaust, attended the March on Washington and led a Connecticut synagogue for four decades. He died at 103 on September 25. “God took care of me,” he once told the Connecticut Jewish Ledger in an interview, referring to the Holocaust. “I didn’t escape Germany to live my own life. I escaped…
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Fast Forward Key West Rabbi Offers Chabad As Hurricane Irma Storm Shelter
Rabbi Yaakov Zucker, the Chabad rabbi in the Florida resort of Key West, is offering his building as a potential shelter for local residents who might face a direct hit from the ferocious Hurricane Irma. Zucker, who has been working to prepare the building, told the Algemeiner that the Chabad house was a “hurricane 5…
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Fast Forward 600 Conservative Rabbis Protest Bibi ‘Betrayal’ Over Orthodox Control
More than 600 rabbis affiliated with the Conservative movement have signed a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protesting the country’s lack of recognition and support for non-Orthodox Jewish movements. “We ask you to lead; we ask you to fulfill your promise to us that Israel will be the homeland of the entire Jewish…
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Yiddish World The Surfing Orthodox Rabbi Who Inspires Kids To Get Fit
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As a young boy growing up near the ocean in Los Angeles, Rabbi Nachum Shifren would often take a surfboard under his arm and hit the waves. It wasn’t until he was 30, while living in Santa Barbara, that he became inspired by the local Chabad to become an Orthodox Jew. At…
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Fast Forward Your ‘Blessed’ Emoji? Rabbi Brands It Idol Worship.
Could adding an emoji to that text message make you idolatrous? Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a France-born Israeli cleric, said that the popular praying hands digital emoji is not kosher — and that Jews should beware, as they may be committing avodah zarah, or “foreign worship,” one of the worst sins in Judaism. “The source is…
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Yiddish World Why Does This Moscow Shul Attract So Many Converts?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the center of Moscow stands the historic Choral Synagogue – a beautiful yellow-white Neoclassical structure, the most famous shul in the Russian capital. The building, which now belongs to the Lithuanian Jewish community and its “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia,” was built in 1891 by…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Says Synagogue Fired Him For Welcoming Nonwhite Members
The rabbi of a Modern Orthodox synagogue in the New York suburb of Yonkers is filing an anti-discrimination complaint against his own synagogue board, alleging that they punished him for welcoming nonwhite families to the synagogue. Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Vinas filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Lincoln Park Jewish Center, the…
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