Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.
For Rabbi Haskel Lookstein it’s been a challenging summer. A widely admired New York rabbi, Lookstein has faced down this over-heated season at the tail end of a long career as a beloved and respected spiritual leader among Manhattan’s elite. He has, among other things, long presided over Manhattan’s East Side synagogue Kehilath Jeshurun and…
Surveillance video captured footage that apparently depicts a vandal pulling down a controversial Brooklyn eruv, the Forward has learned. Printed stills from the video are circulating in Crown Heights as police seek those responsible for the repeated vandalization of a controversial ritual boundary used by Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath. The new revelation came as…
Jewish life is thriving in Africa. That’s what British-American photographer Jono David discovered during a four-year journey accross the continent. David set out to document the Jewish landscape of Africa, from dwindling European enclaves in South Africa to the isolated Egyptian Jewish community — to the unprecedented blossoming of Judaism among Sub-Saharan Africans. “My goal…
A tense religious dispute between Modern Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn over a new eruv is now getting it’s first literary treatment — as a Dr. Seuss-style poem. “Red eruv, blue eruv, tall, eruv, no eruv,” the poem is called, penned by “Rabbi Dr. Who,” and is largely a call for peace. “What good…
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed pushed back on demands from local Black Lives Matter supporters for the city to boycott Israel by standing behind a police training program between his city and Israel. “I happen to believe that (Israel) has some of the best counterterrorism techniques in the world,” Reed said at a July 18 press…
Carlos Santana is moving ahead with a performance, just days away now, in Tel Aviv — shunning public calls from the movement for the boycott, divest and sanction against Israel for him to cancel. The Grammy-award winning rock superstar is scheduled to play in Tel Aviv on July 30. And while Palestinian, Israeli and American…
A feud between Hasidic and Modern Orthodox Jews over eruvs, the ritual boundaries that allow more mobility on the Sabbath, has apparently spread from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights to nearby Park Slope. The Greater Crown Heights eruv has been cut down twice in the two last weeks. Now the adjacent Park Slope Eruv…
In recent weeks, America’s racial wounds have been torn open, an uneasy rhythm of violence playing out in the streets and on social media: African-Americans shot dead on camera by police, protests rolling through cities and police killed in apparent retaliatory shootings. Like many African American congregations, members of the century-old black Hebrew Israelite movement…
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