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Israel News American Jews Are Furious About The Western Wall — But What Can They Do?
American Jewish leaders are typically thrilled to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and equally happy to host Israeli lawmakers at home. Not this week. On Monday, an angry Steven Nasatir, president of Chicago’s Jewish federation, left Netanyahu’s office feeling angry and vowing that his community would be assembling a blacklist of those Israeli…
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Fast Forward Reform Movement Slams Senate Republican Health Care Bill
(JTA) — The Reform movement sharply criticized a Republican bill in the Senate that would repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act and make severe cuts to Medicaid. On Thursday, Senate Republicans revealed a draft of a measure that would get rid of the legal requirement that most Americans have health coverage, as well as…
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Opinion How Interfaith Weddings Got This Rabbi Kicked Out Of The Conservative Movement
In her article “A Wedding Invitation Like No Other,” Jane Eisner describes “intermarriage” as the “oozing story” among Conservative Jews, a story “found just below the surface.” I am one of the rabbis she describes as “not so quietly defying the restriction against officiating” at a marriage ceremony involving a Jewish person and a non-Jew….
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Opinion The Problem With Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s Intermarriage Proposal
In his recent proposal to marry Jews and non-Jews under certain circumstances, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie explores a phenomenon of modern life in which non-Jews are inspired to participate in very positive ways in the life of the Jewish community out of their love of the Jews in their families. There is broad agreement that these…
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Community What It’s Like To Be A Queer Female Cantor
When you hear the word ‘Cantor’ or the Hebrew word chazzan, the image in your mind might be a man in a miter or top hat, wearing a tallit (prayer shawl), with a beard, or perhaps the iconic Yossele Rosenblatt, the famous tenor from the Golden Age of Cantors, or a clean-shaven Israeli man in…
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News The Ancient Art Of Jewish Storytelling Gets A Reboot, In Podcasts And Classes
David Arfa’s walks in the woods might seem like an ordinary embrace of the outdoors. But those hikes – on which he leads groups of children – actually form part of a venerable Jewish tradition. Arfa, who lives in western Massachusetts, identifies as a maggid, a religious storyteller common across Eastern Europe, especially in the…
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Fast Forward Israel Conversion Bill Draws Fire From Diaspora Jews
(JTA) — Jewish groups criticized a proposed Knesset bill that would require the state to recognize only conversions completed under the auspices of the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, urged the Israeli government to reject the proposed legislation, calling it “another step down a path of…
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Fast Forward Jewish Groups Urge Trump To Stay In Paris Climate Change Agreement
NEW YORK (JTA) — Three Jewish groups called on President Trump to keep the United States as a signatory in the United Nations’ Paris climate change agreement. The Union for Reform Judaism, the American Jewish World Service and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life joined 20 other religious groups in urging Trump to…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
In Case You Missed It
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Film & TV How Leonard Cohen — and a Yom Kippur prayer — inspired a coming-of-age epic
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Opinion A year after Oct. 7, Israel has the chance to remake its future — for better or worse
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Opinion Campus protests defined the year since Oct. 7. Could they actually change U.S. policy?
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Special Report At the kibbutz hit hardest on Oct. 7, a wrenching debate over how to rebuild
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