This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
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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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News Reconstructionists Look for Leader To Weather Challenging Time
Reconstructionist Judaism is suddenly leaderless, six months into a dramatic effort to save the movement through a reorganization of its key institutions. In the sweeping membership crisis that has rocked North America’s non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in the past decade, perhaps no denomination has faced greater peril than the Reconstructionists. During its half century of existence,…
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Opinion As Yeshiva Child Sex Abuse Scandal Grows, Why Are We Afraid To Speak Out?
We in the Orthodox Jewish community claim to value children deeply. We want to have children, and we pressure our own children to get married and have children, and yet, when it comes to really ensuring those children’s utmost protection from harm, somehow the silence is deafening. As a Yeshiva University alumnus and a psychotherapist…
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Fast Forward Innocent Man Who Served 23 Years for Satmar Rabbi Slay Suffers Heart Attack
The innocent man freed after serving 23 years in prison for the murder of a Brooklyn rabbi suffered a serious heart attack just a day after being released, his lawyer said. David Ranta, 58, was freed Thursday after more than two decades behind bars for the 1990 robbery slaying of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a member…
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Fast Forward Innocent Man Freed 23 Years After Murder of Hasidic Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger
A New York man convicted of killing a Hasidic rabbi more than two decades ago was freed on Thursday after his conviction was vacated as a miscarriage of justice. David Ranta, 58, spent 23 years in prison until the conviction integrity unit of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office concluded after a year-long investigation that the…
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Opinion How To Pick the Perfect Rabbi
I once spent three years of my life following what was supposed to be a one-year search for a new rabbi at one of the country’s biggest synagogues. It was one of the most fascinating, shocking and challenging experiences of my life — as a Jew and as a writer. And it made me entirely…
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News Favorite Rabbis; Obama in Israel; Newark and Philip Roth
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward Digital Features Editor Abigail Jones to discuss our crowdsourced list of 36 inspirational rabbis. Then, Forward Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman calls in to fill us in on President Obama’s trip to Israel. Finally, Josh talks Philip Roth and Newark with Nate Lavey,…
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Opinion The Rabbi Who Inspired You Most
I spent the past few weeks reading hundreds of nominations for the Forward’s new series, America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis. When we launched this project in early February, we hoped that people would respond — that they would take a little time to tell us about the rabbi who inspired them or their communities — but…
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Fast Forward After Minneapolis shooting, local Jewish service channels a city’s grief and resolve
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Culture ‘The Pitt’ tackled the trauma of the Tree of Life attack. Here’s how survivors of the synagogue shooting reacted to the episode.
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Holy Ground A Millennial rabbi built a synagogue where others have closed. Her maverick ideas are becoming a model.
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News Why Josh Shapiro’s memoir could complicate a presidential run
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