This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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News Entering a third pandemic year, Jews see reasons to hope — and stay cautious
Julia Métraux, now 24, first started having severe fatigue and chronic pain about six years ago — symptoms that led to her eventual diagnosis with vasculitis, which involves inflammation of the blood vessels, in January 2018. She was hospitalized for a week and then bedridden for six months. Her medical needs made it necessary for…
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Fast Forward Chaim Kanievsky, haredi rabbi known as ‘Prince Of Torah,’ dies At 94
(JTA) — Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the powerful leader of Israel’s haredi Orthodox community who was known as the “Prince of Torah,” has died. Kanievsky was 94 and died after collapsing at his home in Bnei Brak, the center of haredi life in Israel where he was regarded with reverence. The son of a major rabbi…
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News How a rabbi suspended for sexual misconduct can stay in the pulpit
Rabbi Jeremy Gerber acknowledged sexual transgressions. His synagogue decided to keep him.
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Letters We need a tenure system for American rabbis
Prior to heroically initiating the escape of three congregants and himself from the Jan. 15, 2022 hostage siege in Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who had led the Reform temple for 15 years, was informed that his contract would not be renewed. In Oct. 2021, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, the assistant…
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News Rabbis warn Jews are ‘self-censoring’ on race, gender
Rabbis from more than 100 North American congregations have signed a letter decrying the exclusion of Jews whose views on race and gender fall to the right of the progressive mainstream. “The ascendency of an ideology that in its most simplistic form sees the world solely in binary terms of oppressed versus oppressor, and categorizes…
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Opinion Our Reform leaders sinned. Should we still sing songs they wrote?
Reform synagogues across the nation are struggling to make sense of the damning report released earlier this month showing nearly unfettered patterns of unwanted sexual contact between male faculty and female students at Hebrew Union College over five decades. Released on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the report, conducted by an independent law firm, showed that…
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Fast Forward Andrew Cuomo questions investigators by calling Chuck Schumer their ‘rabbi’
In an attempt to discredit one of the investigators in his sexual assault inquiry, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo referred to Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, as his questioner’s “rabbi.” That’s according to the transcript released Wednesday by the office of state Attorney General Letitia James. In a contentious 10-hour interview under oath…
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Opinion Growing up in Israel, I had never heard of Rabbi Sacks. After his death, I fell in love with his message
In Nov. 2020, I came across a minor story on an inside page of an Israeli newspaper, reporting that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom “and one of the most important thinkers of our time,” had passed away. I had never come across his name before, so I thought that…
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Sports Forget being caught on camera at a Coldplay concert — I was caught on Shabbat at Yankee Stadium
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Fast Forward After Netanyahu and Cindy McCain meet, she calls out ‘desperation’ in Gaza, and he accuses her of ‘misrepresentation’
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Fast Forward Coldplay welcomed Israeli fans onstage ‘as equal humans.’ Why are some Jewish people mad?
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Film & TV ‘Caught Stealing’ gives us tough, Hasidic drug lords — is it good for the Jews?
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward New crop of High Holidays children’s books take place in Uganda, Hong Kong and a Sephardic home
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Opinion A billionaire Gen Z influencer is reinventing philanthropy — with this South African rabbi’s help
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Looking Forward What Black journalists covering Confederate monuments taught me about fighting antisemitism today
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Film & TV A dizzying Kafka biopic that isn’t really Kafkaesque
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