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.
Sam Kestenbaum
By Sam Kestenbaum
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News Hunting the Graveyards for America’s Holiest Jews
The burial sites of the world’s great Jewish sages have served for centuries as spiritual magnets, drawing pious Jews on far-flung pilgrimages to pray in their presence. Each Rosh Hashanah, the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, the famed 18th century Hasidic master, draws tens of thousands of Hasidim to Uman, Ukraine. Likewise, the graves…
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News Can This Rabbinic Revolutionary Make Hebrew Israelites Mainstream?
Like synagogues in many old neighborhoods, the walls of Mount Horeb in the Bronx are lined with the framed photos of esteemed elders who have passed on. There is a faded photo, too, of the Western Wall, and Stars of David. But at this Bronx synagogue, an Ethiopian flag also hangs above a series of…
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News Inside the Heads, Hearts and Yarmulkes of Jewish Cops
Rabbi Gary Moskowitz served on the New York City Police Department for nearly a decade, during which he worked as an undercover narcotics cop and patrolled Times Square. Still, he says that many people could never fully grasp the idea of a Jewish police officer. Moskowitz remembers chasing down a mugger near Columbus Circle in…
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Israel News Ben Ammi Ben Israel’s Spiritual Journey From Segregated Chicago to Negev Desert
When 77-year-old Rabbi Richard Nolan recalls Ben Ammi ben Israel, the leader of the Hebrew Israelite community in Israel who died last weekend, their shared hometown of Chicago is wrapped up in that recollection. And the image is bleak. “There was degradation, segregation, discrimination, lack of education and opportunity,” Nolan said. “A people who had…
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News Jewish Activists Struggle for Right Tone on Racism After Murders of Police Officers
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum was observing the Sabbath on December 20 when New York police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot and killed in their patrol car in Brooklyn by 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who then took his own life. After sundown, Kleinbaum, who leads New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and has been an…
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News Rabbi Hailu Moshe Paris, Revered Leader of America’s Black Jews, Dies at 81
On Sunday night, Rabbi Hailu Moshe Paris, who had been at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center for three weeks, was blinking and smiling at the small group of Jews gathered around his bed. He could not speak, he wore an oxygen mask and was attached to an IV, but he nodded slightly as the group…
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