This is the Forward’s coverage of Reform Judaism, a major liberal Jewish denomination.
Reform Judaism
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News America’s Largest Jewish Group Has Big Concerns About Jeff Sessions
The largest American Jewish religious organization has “significant concerns” about Donald Trump’s nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. In a statement Monday morning, the central institutions of Reform Judaism, which represent roughly 1.5 million American Jews, called on Sessions to “enforce and interpret the law to promote justice and equality for all.” The…
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Opinion What a Swastika Means to Reform Jews in Today’s America
One morning in early January, the students and faculty of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s Cincinnati campus, the longtime seat of Reform Judaism in America, woke up to find themselves victims of anti-Semitism. A large, white swastika had been scrawled on the seminary’s red entrance sign. You couldn’t miss it. Though traumatic…
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Fast Forward Cincinnati Mayor Condemns Swastika at Rabbinical School
(JTA) — The mayor of Cincinnati and the Anti-Defamation League denounced the spray-painting of a swastika on a sign at a Reform rabbinical school. On Tuesday morning, a white swastika was discovered on a sign on the Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. It was reported to the police shortly thereafter and later removed, according…
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Opinion Intermarriage Will Shape a New American Judaism
When Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom, a retired rabbi from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, performed an intermarriage ceremony for his stepdaughter and her fiancé in 2014 more than a glass got shattered at the end of the wedding ceremony. Rabbi Rosenbloom’s membership in the Rabbinical Assembly wound up in pieces as well. In December 2016, the rabbinical body…
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Fast Forward Jewish Groups Split on Kerry’s Israel Speech
(JTA) — Jewish organizations split along ideological lines in their reactions to Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech criticizing Israeli settlement growth and laying out principles to achieve a two-state solution. Centrist groups were measured in their reactions, criticizing the American decision to abstain last week on a U.N. vote rebuking the settlements while praising Kerry’s commitment…
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Community How an Orthodox Rabbi Became A Reform Jewish Educator
In 1979, I was ordained as a rabbi by a prominent yeshiva. My training prepared me to become a modern Orthodox rabbi, presumably in a congregation. I previously served as a Jewish youth educator in the Chicago region of NCSY and as a visiting staff member for other regions around the Midwest. So, when the…
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Israel News New Jersey Family to Pay Rabbis Shunned by Israeli Rabbinate
(Ha’aretz) — If the state of Israel won’t pay the salaries of rabbis of certain denominations, then we will. That, in a nutshell, is how one family from Livingston, New Jersey, hopes to foment a religious revolution in Israel. By providing a living wage to rabbis who are not eligible for state funding – and…
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Fast Forward Israeli Minister Derides Reform Judaism as ‘Imitation’ Faith
JERUSALEM ( — Israel’s interior minister, Aryeh Deri of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party, called Reform Judaism an “imitation” and said he “can do without that Judaism.” Deri, the Shas leader, reportedly made the comments on Monday during a question-and-answer session in the Knesset. “I want the original, not the imitation” of Judaism, Deri said in response…
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