This is the Forward’s coverage of synagogues, Jewish houses of worship.
Synagogues
The Latest
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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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News Two marquee Reform synagogues are in merger talks – and they won’t be the last
Two historic Reform synagogues in New York announced Thursday that they are entering merger talks. One is embroiled in a financial crisis made more pressing by the pandemic; the other is growing, but faces a $2 million shortfall due to the economic impact of the coronavirus. In email messages sent to their congregations Thursday afternoon,…
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