Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
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News France’s New Chief Rabbi Embraces Reforms
(JTA) — The first thing Haim Korsia did after becoming chief rabbi of France was give his new office a thorough cleaning. Next he redecorated to give the space a more modern look, placing his 30-inch model of a nuclear submarine — a gift from his previous stint as senior military chaplain — amid the volumes…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Barry Freundel Set for Court Date
Rabbi Barry Freundel is expected to appear in a Washington D.C. court today to face charges he used a hidden camera to peep on women in the mikveh of his Orthodox synagogue. The disgraced cleric faces six counts of voyeurism, a misdemeanor, and could face up to six years in prison. Prosecutors might outline any…
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Opinion Rabbis on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Those of us who knew, or thought we knew, Rabbi Barry Freundel — recently arrested for spying on women in the mikveh, with a mountain of evidence suggesting his guilt — are still in shock. As much as I disagreed with many of his halachic positions, I always thought he was one of the good…
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Fast Forward Dutch Chief Rabbi Says Men Sped Car at Him
Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs filed a complaint with police against two men whom he said tried to intimidate him at a gas station. Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Interprovincial Rabbinate for The Netherlands, filed the complaint last week after two men on Nov. 5 drove a BMW car in his direction in a sudden…
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Fast Forward Sephardic Chief Rabbi Forbids Israelis From Going to Temple Mount
An Israeli chief rabbi urged Jews to stay away from the Temple Mount to prevent bloodshed. Yitzhak Yosef, Israel’s chief Sehardic rabbi, made the call during the funeral Friday of Shalom Ba’adani, 17 who died that morning in hospital from wounds he sustained on Wednesday when a Palestinian terrorist hit him and 12 others with…
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News For Many Converts, Bumpy Road to Mikveh Only Beginning of Woes
(JTA) — There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a Jew. The road to conversion can be long…
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Fast Forward Israel Moves To Ease Path to Conversion
(JTA) — The Israeli government has adopted a major reform expected to ease the path to conversion for hundreds of thousands of Israelis now prohibited from marrying in the Jewish state. In the most significant response in decades to the estimated 400,000 Israelis who are not considered Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate, the Cabinet expanded authority…
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Culture Channeling Freud To Prevent the Next Barry Freundel
(Haaretz) — I was sitting in a group discussion with fellow psychotherapists recently when a colleague mentioned that one of his female patients had, unannounced, come over and sat down on his lap. Someone else shared the revelation that one of his female patients intimated a desire to see him without any clothes on. The therapists…
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