This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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Fast Forward Why This Christian Congressman Quoted A Famous Hasidic Rabbi
WASHINGTON (JTA) — “A Very Narrow Bridge” is a popular Hasidic song, one that is embraced by Jews of all denominations. The words to it, which are from the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the 18th-century founder of a Hasidic sect, are “The entire world is a very narrow bridge; the main thing is…
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Fast Forward Chabad Couple Does ‘Mitzvah Campaign’ Outside Home Of Subway Bomber
While law enforcement agents were searching the Brooklyn home of Akayed Ullah, the would-be suicide attacker who had detonated a pipe bomb in a Manhattan subway on Monday, a Chabad husband and wife took the unusual opportunity to launch a “mitzvah campaign” in the neighborhood. Rabbi Yisrolik Langsam, who heads a Chabad outpost in the…
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News Frustrated With Israel’s Leaders, Reform Jews Sharpen Focus On Its People
On Saturday, thousands of Reform Jews gathered in a cavernous Boston auditorium, filling the space nearly to capacity. Congregational leaders led the crowd in prayer to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath. The scene of the stage was projected on four massive screens, amplifying the intimate rituals of the sacred day to the scale of a football…
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Fast Forward Conservative Jewish Cemetery Opens Section for Interfaith Families
Interfaith families may now be buried together in a cemetery plot belonging to Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the coastal New Jersey town of Toms River. “There are always questions about burial of non-Jewish spouses in our cemetery,” Glenn Jacobs, a member of the synagogue’s cemetery committee told the website Patch.com, “and some…
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News 3 Weddings In New York Synagogue. One Shared Act Of Defiance Against Israel’s Orthodox Rabbinate
Jewish weddings are typically joyous events during which a couple’s family and friends gather to celebrate and shower them with love as they create a new life together. But on Sunday, three Israeli Jewish couples will turn their party into a protest, and their intimate moment into a public, political act. Temple Emanu-El, the iconic…
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Fast Forward Emails Detail Hasidic Power Broker’s Direct Line To De Blasio’s Office
A new trove of emails shows how a Hasidic rabbi and power broker from Brooklyn received five-star treatment from New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and his staff after hosting a fundraiser for them, the New York Post reported. Moishe Indig, a Brooklyn landlord and member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, had direct access…
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Life The First Thanksgiving Sermon Given By A Rabbi In 1789
As soon as George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving holiday in 1789, some American Jews embraced the tradition right away. Gershom Mendes Seixas, considered by some to be American Judaism’s first public figure, was only 23 years old when he was appointed in 1768 as the cantor of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel (at the…
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Opinion How Israel’s New Divorce Law Makes A Bad Situation Worse
For the past 4 years, Member of Knesset Aliza Lavie of Yesh Atid and Religious Services Minister David Azoulay of Shas have been promoting a law that would allow rabbinic courts to take “international” jurisdiction over cases of agunot — women unable to remarry because their husbands refuse to grant them a religious divorce (a…
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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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