This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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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 Chief Rabbi Attacks Jerusalem Pride Ahead Of Event
Jerusalem is holding its gay pride parade today – and predictably not everyone (including the city’s chief rabbi) is happy about it. “It is sad that a couple of days after Tisha B’Av, when masses visited Jerusalem and remembered it being a holy city… [the] essence of this parade is contradicting the trend of Jerusalem…
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Fast Forward Hasidic Murals Vandalized Amidst Debate About Late Rabbi’s Portrait
Three newly-painted public murals of the Lubavitcher Rebbe were vandalized in Crown Heights late last week, exposing an ongoing debate about the image of the movement’s late charismatic leader — who is revered as the Messiah by a vocal segment of the community. The community website Collive uploaded surveillance footage on Friday of two young…
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Opinion This Transgender Veteran – And Ordained Rabbi – Fires Back At Trump
WASHINGTON, D.C. (JTA) — On Wednesday, in our offices near this city’s Dupont Circle, the staff at Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. were opening the mail when a request came in from a veteran asking that we change her first name on our records from Jaron to Rona. “I just immediately did it without…
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Fast Forward These Rabbis Have No Idea Why They’re On Rabbinate’s ‘Blackllist’
NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2012, Rabbi Jason Herman wrote a letter to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate certifying that a friend of his who wished to get married was Jewish and single. The letter was declared invalid. But several months later Herman, spiritual leader of the Orthodox West Side Jewish Center in Manhattan, obtained a license…
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Fast Forward Rabbinate Claims List Of Rabbis Whose Conversions Are Not Kosher Is Not A Blacklist
(JTA) — The Israeli Chief Rabbinate says that its list of foreign rabbis has been misconstrued, and that the list does not imply that those rabbis cannot be trusted to vouch for the Jewish identities of their followers. On Saturday, JTA reported on a list of some 160 rabbis whose efforts to confirm the Jewish identities of immigrants were rejected by Israel’s…
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Fast Forward Dear Israeli Rabbinate: Please, Add Us To The Blacklist!
Dear Israel Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau: We, the following San Diego, California, Rabbis are outraged that we were left off of your blacklist of rabbis whose testimony as to the Jewish identity of their congregants are unacceptable to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. In the future please include our names among the other blacklisted rabbis. We…
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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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Film & TV For ill and for good, this ‘Wicked’ song has become ubiquitous
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News As young Jews move away from Israel, Jewish leaders are reluctant to change their approach
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