This is the Forward’s coverage of Reform Judaism, a major liberal Jewish denomination.
Reform Judaism
The Latest
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Opinion Separate Synagogue and State
They didn’t exactly turn handsprings, but their cheering was unmistakable. “This is a historic day for Israelis and Jews around the world,” proclaimed Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. The head of Israel’s Reform movement, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, declared that the decision is “an important breakthrough in the effort to…
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Culture Rabbinic Sister Act
There have been countless examples throughout Jewish history of children following parents into the rabbinate. There have even been instances in which two or more siblings, especially male ones, have chosen to become rabbis. But a family in which all three daughters get ordained? There have been no documented cases — until now. The Reform…
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Opinion The Lessons of Jewish Pluralism
The assertiveness of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious authorities over the country’s social life — and particularly over the role of women in the public square — has generated headlines and condemnation on the part of friends of Israel and, gleefully, from the country’s antagonists and enemies. These developments, and the potentially disastrous ever increasing growth in…
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News Patrilineal Jews Still Find Resistance
Rachel Brook, a 29-year-old vocalist living in Brooklyn, was born to a Jewish Israeli father and a non-Jewish mother. After her parents divorced when she was 3, Brook was raised by her father as a Jew in a Reform synagogue. Last year, she decided to apply to cantorial school at the Academy for Jewish Religion,…
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Opinion Abusing Tikkun Olam
Google “tikkun olam” together with “same-sex marriage,” “global warming” or “abortion,” and you’ll get tens of thousands of hits. Yet in these many, many instances, “tikkun olam” is being invoked by Jewish groups or Jews in two ways that disconnect it from its true meaning. First, the original and entire phrase is “tikkun olam b’malchut…
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News W. Gunter Plaut, Noted Reform Scholar
Those Reform Jews fortunate enough to have met Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut even once never forgot him. He was a tall, imposing, self-confident figure who spoke impeccable, precise, German-accented English that commanded attention in every setting — in classes, at conferences and in public debates. On February 9, the Reform movement and, more broadly, American…
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News Navigating Transition to Middle School
One Jewish day school in Kansas cut its tuition in half. Another school, in Oakland, Calif., grew its endowment 15-fold. And a third, in Houston, succeeded in recruiting families from as far away as New Jersey, Venezuela and Israel. These institutions embraced bold, even risky moves in an effort to generate revenue and boost enrollment,…
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News What Does Schechter Decline Mean?
Long considered a crown jewel of the Conservative movement, the Schechter Day School Network is fast contracting — its enrollment dwindling and its schools being closed, consolidated and, increasingly, transformed into nondenominational community day schools. Since the late 1990s, the network has lost about a third of its schools, a handful of which haven’t closed,…
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