This is the Forward’s coverage of synagogues, Jewish houses of worship.
Synagogues
The Latest
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News In San Francisco, Jews stand with mayor against opening houses of worship too soon
Religious groups that are pushing San Francisco to open up houses of worship to more congregants are doing so without the support of one faith group: Jews. After the United States Department of Justice sent a stern letter to San Francisco Mayor London Breed saying that her ban on indoor worship services, “raises serious concerns…
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News High turnout at virtual Rosh Hashanah leaves rabbis relieved, but money woes persist
Mishkan, a congregation in Chicago, registered 2,500 guests for Rosh Hashanah services, compared to 1,900 last year. At B’nai Jeshurun in New York, a slate of virtual Rosh Hashanah offerings drew about 10,000 users, three times the number of members and guests the synagogue hosts in a typical year. Although it’s too soon to say…
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News ‘Car Nidre:’ These synagogues are taking High Holidays to the parking lot
Parking lots get a bad rap. There’s even a Joni Mitchell song about how awful they are: “Don’t it always seem to go/ That you don’t know what you’ve got/ ‘Til it’s gone/They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot.” And the 2019 movie “Isn’t it Romantic?” Rebel Wilson played a lovelorn architect whose parking…
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Fast Forward DC synagogue will pack pews with celeb cutouts on High Holidays
With the High Holidays going virtual across the country, Jews will miss the call of the shofar, the intimacy of a shul setting and — not least of all — the opportunity to schmooze. But the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in D.C. is offering congregants a chance to commune with their famous coreligionists —…
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Community A pitch for the High Holy Days season: Follow the lead of Major League Baseball
I recently received an email from my favorite baseball team advertising fan cutouts as an antidote to empty stadiums. As quick as a fastball, I threw on my best team jersey and cap, snapped a photo and uploaded it to the website. My husband did the same so that we could sit together in cardboard…
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News ‘Training and sweating and bleeding’: American Jews learn how to shoot back at synagogue terrorists
Colonel Sharon Gat wants to put a gun-wielding terrorist response team in every synagogue in America. How? By training volunteers from the synagogue itself. His firm is launching the first organized effort to teach Jews across the country how to use guns to defend their congregations against shooters like the ones who perpetrated the attacks…
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News Will Rosh Hashanah 5781 come with a paywall?
The High Holidays are designated for spiritual stock-taking, but this year synagogues are wrestling with a decidedly non-spiritual issue: money. The Days of Awe also happen to be the season in which many synagogues garner enough income — in the form of ticket sales, membership renewals and Yom Kippur appeals — to sustain themselves for…
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News The Jewish world’s top security official says it’s time to address bias in synagogue protection
Securing Jewish institutions has rarely been this complicated: There’s the question of reopening, a spike in anti-Semitic activity online — which security experts worry could translate to physical attacks — and the pressing national conversation about racism in policing, and the Jewish community’s relationship to police. The Secure Community Network is the Jewish organization at…
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Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
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Fast Forward ‘Murdered for speaking truth’: Netanyahu and US Jewish leaders mourn Charlie Kirk
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