This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
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Fast Forward After Conversion Controversy, Does Israeli Rabbinate Need Tweak — or a Revolution?
(JTA) — Three months after Israel’s Chief Rabbinate rejected his authority to perform conversions, one of America’s most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis joined with Natan Sharansky to advance a message: The rabbinate needs to become more open. But not too much more. A widely respected rabbi in New York’s Orthodox community, Haskel Lookstein saw his credentials…
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Fast Forward 200 Protest Rejection of Conversion by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein
JERUSALEM — About 200 demonstrators protested next to the offices of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate as a hearing took place about the legitimacy of a conversion conducted by the prominent American Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. On Wednesday, the Supreme Rabbinical Court heard the appeal of a case in which a rabbinical court in Petach Tikvah…
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Fast Forward 257 Newly Minted Chabad Rabbis Celebrate Ordination
A group of 257 rabbinical school graduates gathered at the Chabad movement’s Rabbinical College of America outside of Morristown, New Jersey. The rabbis, who received their rabbinic ordinations between 2012 and this year, took part in the celebratory ceremony on Sunday. This year’s cohort is slightly smaller than its largest ever group of 280, which…
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News Israeli Rabbinical Court Rejects Rabbi Who Converted Ivanka Trump
An Israeli rabbinical court did not accept a conversion by an Orthodox rabbi who also helped Ivanka Trump become Jewish. In the latest case exemplifying the tension between Israel’s rabbinate and Orthodox groups in the Diaspora, a religious court prevented the marriage of an Israeli man and an American woman, who converted under a well-respected…
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News 5 Must-Know Facts About New York Police Rabbi Alvin Kass
An unknown assailant attacked Rabbi Alvin Kass, the respected chief chaplain of the New York City Police Department, yesterday while the rabbi was on his morning power walk along Riverside Boulevard. Though the attacker knocked him to the ground, Kass, who is in his eighties, suffered no serious injuries. The Post has reported that Kass…
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Life The Black Lesbian Vegan Who Wants To Change Everything You Ever Thought About Rabbis
(JTA) — Sandra Lawson didn’t expect to perform a public benediction at her local pub in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood. But when her friend Jay, who was entering firefighter training, asked her for a blessing earlier this year, she stood with him in the middle of the room and put her rabbinical school training into action….
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Fast Forward Conservative Rabbi Ousted From Florida Synagogue After Protesting Donald Trump
(JTA) — A Florida rabbi must leave his pulpit after his protest of Donald Trump’s speech at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference riled congregants. David Paskin, who serves as rabbi of the Conservative Temple Beth David synagogue in the south Florida city of Palm Beach Gardens, will leave his position in July. In…
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The Schmooze Chabad’s ‘Six-Minute Rabbi’ Competes With Priest, Nun and Monk on Food Network’s ‘Chopped’
When Chabad Rabbi Hanoch Hecht announced that he would compete in an upcoming Chopped episode, his congregation thought it was a joke. And yet Hecht, who lives in the town of Rhinebeck in the Hudson Valley, will face off for the title of best chef against a priest, a pastor and a nun-in-training in a…
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