Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
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Opinion The OU Is Right: Orthodox Women Shouldn’t Be Rabbis
Most of a rabbi’s roles can be halachically and effectively assumed by women, and have been for many years. A rabbi must be learned in Jewish texts and the practical laws pertaining to daily Jewish life — and Orthodox women’s seminaries teach thousands of young Jewish women those laws, and do a top-notch job of…
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Fast Forward Rabbis Plan Sukkot Protest At Trump Tower Over Immigration
A group of rabbis is planning on staging a Sukkot-themed protest against the administration’s immigration policies outside Trump Tower on Monday. T’ruah, the rabbinic human rights organization, will erect a sukkah in front of President Trump’s residence on Monday morning in attempt to demonstrate how the administration’s decision to ban refugees and immigrants from certain…
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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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Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
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Fast Forward It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
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Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
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Opinion Trump’s treasury secretary is about to make a catastrophically bad move on Israel
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward ICE arrests Palestinian protest leader at Columbia, in sharp escalation of campus actions
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Books Two middle-aged women defied the Nazis. One ‘wrote’ a book that betrayed the other.
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Fast Forward What does the election of Mark Carney mean for Canadian Jews and Israel?
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Culture Why are Jews buried in a plain pine coffin?
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