Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
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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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Fast Forward Israeli Chief Rabbinate: Supreme Court Lacks Jurisdiction Over Western Wall
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate said the country’s Supreme Court lacks the jurisdiction to rule on the “intrareligious” struggle involving egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. In a 166-page brief filed Tuesday with the Supreme Court, the Chief Rabbinate said in part, “The courts are not the appropriate tribunal to decide if Jewish law…
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Fast Forward Orthodox Rabbinical Group Condemns Trump Over Charlottesville
The largest body of Orthodox rabbis in the United States released a statement on Wednesday condemning President Trump’s continued comparisons between white supremacist marchers and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. “There is no moral comparison,” the president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Elazar Muskin, said in a statement. “Failure to unequivocally reject hatred and…
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Opinion I Am A Rabbi — And My Place Was In Charlottesville
(JTA) — I was in Charlottesville on Saturday. I felt called to go because white supremacy is a hateful ideology that has murdered millions throughout history and continues to kill. I went because my family and ancestors suffered at the hands of anti-Semites throughout history, because I bear their scars on my DNA, because the…
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Letters The Forward Misunderstood The RCA’s Response to Charlottesville
We accept criticism when warranted. In the case of Avital Chizik Goldschmidt’s “Why Won’t Orthodox Leaders Condemn Trump’s Ties to White Supremacists?” it is not. In that article Ms. Chizik Goldschmidt writes, “The Rabbinical Council of America mourned “violence and bigotry”, but not our leader’s failure to condemn it.” Even though Ms. Chizik Goldschmidt does…
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News Charlottesville’s Rabbi: I Saw ‘The Hate Walking By’
Rabbi Tom Gutherz had a harrowing weekend as the senior rabbi at Charlottesville’s Congregation Beth Israel, founded in 1882. Holed up in a church across from Emancipation Park, the site of the infamous white supremacist rally, he said the day’s events were unlike anything he had ever seen. “To see the marching, to hear it,…
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Fast Forward Hebrew Israelite Group Asks: ‘Are We Ready For Female Rabbis?’
When Rabbi Capers Funnye was inaugurated to the role of Chief Rabbi of his Hebrew Israelite community, he laid out dramatic plans. One of his “highest goals” as leader of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, he said, would be to admit women into the organization’s rabbinical academy, and allow women to serve on the…
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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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Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
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Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
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Opinion The Germans have a word for what’s happening in Trump’s America
In Case You Missed It
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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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Fast Forward Trump’s hostage envoy defends talks with Hamas: Meeting with ‘bad people is part of my job’
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