This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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Life Trailblazing Woman Joins Orthodox Montreal Shul
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Montreal’s largest and oldest Ashkenazi synagogue, has become the first Canadian congregation to hire a graduate of Yeshivat Maharat, the Bronx yeshiva that ordains women. Rachel Kohl Finegold, 32, is one of three graduates of the yeshiva’s inaugural class. She will be moving with her family from Chicago to Montreal, where she…
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Fast Forward Fake Rabbi Gets 5 Years in Immigration Scam
A lawyer who posed as a rabbi and ran an immigration fraud mill was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday. For 13 years, The David Firm, led by “Rabbi Avraham David,” whose real name is Earl Seth David, accepted millions of dollars in fees from undocumented immigrants in return for aid in obtaining…
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Fast Forward Embattled French Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim Quits Amid Plagiarism Scandal
Gilles Bernheim, the Chief Rabbi of France, quit his post on Thursday after admitting to plagiarism in two books and to deception about his academic credentials. The Paris Central Consistory, the top Jewish religious organisation in France, said in a statement that Bernheim was resigning and gave no further details. Bernheim, 60, a modern Orthodox…
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Life Coming Out of the Child-Free Closet
In February 1997, Ellen Jaffe Gill’ s essay on not wanting to have children, was published in Moment Magazine. In the piece, Jaffe Gill (then McClain) discussed how her decision not to have children did not prevent her from engaging fully in Jewish life. As a writer, she was in fact transmitting the covenant on…
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Fast Forward French Chief Rabbi Won’t Quit Over Plagiarism
Gilles Bernheim, the chief rabbi of France, refused to quit on Tuesday despite admitting to several counts of plagiarism and deception about his academic credentials. The revelations have shocked France’s 600,000-strong Jewish community and Bernheim has come under pressure to quit, but he said resigning would be a “desertion” as he came clean on one…
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News David Stav Aims To Oust Haredim From Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Post
Israel’s Haredim may be on the cusp of losing even more of their power following their exclusion from the new government. If David Stav gets his way, they will no longer control the rabbinate. The self-styled iconoclast is standing in the election for Ashkenazi chief rabbi this summer, and already has the support of several…
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Fast Forward French Chief Rabbi Gilles Berhnheim Admits Lifting Passages for Book
Gilles Bernheim, The Chief Rabbi of France has admitted that he plagiarized parts of his book, “Forty Jewish Meditations. “ “The plagiarizing unmasked on the Internet is true,” Bernheim wrote in a statement from Israel, where he was spending the Passover holidays, Le Monde reported. Suspicion about the origins of the book, published in 2011…
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Culture Robert Frost Rarely Went to Church, But Poet Had Personal Rabbi
Although Robert Frost rarely attended church, America’s supreme poet of pastoral life had his own personal rabbi. Victor Reichert, rabbi of the Rockdale Avenue Temple, in Cincinnati, was one of Frost’s closest friends and confidants in the final decades of the poet’s life. Now, Reichert’s son, Jonathan Reichert, has donated his father’s trove of letters,…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Nation’s largest teachers union rejects move to cut ties with ADL
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Culture In this Holocaust story, there are few words, no swastikas, no yellow stars — just movement, passion and empathy
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Opinion What Democrats fighting Trump should learn from Germany’s failure to stop Hitler
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Fast Forward 31st anniversary of AMIA bombing marked by ceremonies in Argentina, Israel and, for the first time, Congress
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