Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
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Life Israel’s Voiding of Conversions Should Worry Us All
For at least the past seven years or so, the State of Israel has been subjecting converts to intense examinations and inquiries regarding the level of their religious observance. When a convert requests that a rabbinic court administer a get in the context of an amicable divorce, rabbinic judges will surreptitiously cross-examine the convert: Did…
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Life A New, Sophisticated Haredi View on Gender
Recent debates about women and the Orthodox rabbinate yielded a range of interesting, impassioned and also banal observations by various Jewish professionals and laypeople. Although sociological and legal arguments abound, a broader philosophical discussion of the nature of gender roles within Judaism is lacking. The assumption in these debates seems to be that the challenge…
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News What This French Rabbi Wants You to Know About the Paris Attacks
Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur leads a congregation belonging to the Mouvement Juif Liberal de France (Liberal Jewish Movement of France). As France’s third female rabbi, she has long believed in the need for Jews to constantly re-evaluate what it means to be Jewish in the modern world. In a November 17 email exchange with the Forward…
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Life Why I Was Denied the Right to Mourn My Late Mother
“You cannot say Kaddish.” Had those words had been said with sympathy, or at least respect for my loss, I wouldn’t be writing this. On my first morning in Budapest, October 7, the 24th day of Tishrei, I saw an old man standing in a doorway of the Talmud-Torah behind the Dohany Street Synagogue. I…
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Opinion On Women Rabbis, We All Talk Past Each Other. Here’s Why.
Since the Rabbinical Council of America voted to pass a resolution opposing any sort of ordination for women in the Orthodox world, Jews of all denominations have been talking past each other. For some, the granting of ordination to women and their hiring as clergy are developments not only long overdue, but also sensible, fair…
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Fast Forward Chief Rabbi’s Mausoleum Torched in Ukraine
A Jewish mausoleum in western Ukraine burned down in what a human rights group said may have been a deliberate arson attack connected with a dispute over a commemoration project. The gravesite of Hillel Lichtenstein, a 19th century Jewish sage and former chief rabbi of the Ukrainian city of Kolomyia, was partially destroyed last week…
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Forward 50 2015 Deborah Waxman
In the long communal discussion over how to relate to Jews who marry non-Jews, those in the “be welcoming” camp won a major battle this year, thanks in large part to Rabbi Deborah Waxman. Waxman is president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary, which, after more than a year of deliberation, decided in a September faculty…
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Fast Forward Jewish Extremist Arrested in Attack on Rabbi in West Bank
Israel Police have arrested a Jewish man accused of assaulting a leader of the Rabbis for Human Rights organization. Police on Sunday arrested the man who last month threatened Rabbi Arik Ascherman with a knife while he was helping Palestinians harvest olives near the settlement of Itamar, not far from the West Bank city of…
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Opinion As a new Trump administration begins, I’m looking to this Soviet Jewish dissident for guidance
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Yiddish דאָס לעבן אויף דער איסט־סײַד, 1902 — באַשרײַבונגען פֿון אַ יענקיLife on the Lower East Side in 1902, from the eyes of a Yankee
דער ערשטער פֿון אַ סעריע אַרטיקלען אויף אַ גרינגן ייִדיש, וועגן דער מחברטעס אַנטדעקונגען ווי אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע און פֿאָרשערין.
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