Stewart Ain, an award-winning veteran journalist, covers the Jewish community. Follow him on Twitter @AinStewart or email [email protected].
Stewart Ain
By Stewart Ain
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News Rocket man: Jared Isaacman is leading the first trip to space without astronauts
Jared Isaacman set the world speed record in 2009 by flying a jet around the world in 61 hours, 51 minutes and 15 seconds, more than 20 hours faster than the previous record. In September, he plans to circle the globe again – but in 92 minutes. How? His next flight he will be aboard…
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News A synagogue in your home? Zoom camera lighting? Pandemic offered rabbis some unusual tax deductions
A suggestion to rabbis: don’t do your own tax return this year. The pandemic forced most people to move their office to their home and rabbis were no exception. Rabbis found themselves setting up a room in their house from which to work, buying office supplies and camera lighting to Zoom with congregants and participate…
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News In this Florida synagogue, 5 people committed suicide in 4 months. Here’s how the rabbi is coping.
Rabbi David Steinhardt of Boca Raton, Fla., confessed that he had never dealt with anything remotely comparable: in the last four months, five congregants or their close relatives have died by suicide. All were single men aged 20 to 60. In contrast, during his nearly 38 years in the rabbinate, Steinhardt – spiritual leader of…
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News A new study has found that heartbeats actually harmonize during this religious ritual
Two anthropologists have discovered that the heartbeats of those who practice Sufism, a mystical dimension of the Islamic faith, beat in tandem during a communal ritual in which all of the congregants join in deep meditation or an ecstatic trance. Rabbis and cantors told the Forward they were not surprised. “Anyone who has been at…
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News Orthodox Jews show less stress-related weight gain, study shows
Research has shown that when a person turns to religion during a time of stress, it improves his psychological well-being. Now, a new study has found that religion can also provide protection against weight gain. “Generally, being in touch with your values during a crisis like COVID helps you cope with stress in a way…
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News Why not a Holocaust Survivors Day?
When more than 200 survivors gathered last year at the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, it struck Jonathan Ornstein that there were three days each year to remember Nazi victims but no day to celebrate the lives of Holocaust survivors. “Seeing all those survivors in Auschwitz…
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News Jewish groups aim to make Uyghur liberation a Passover theme
At seder tables across the country this Passover, there will be an empty chair, not for the prophet Elijah, but for the Uyghur people. Jewish groups protesting China’s ongoing genocide of the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples plan to take a page from the Soviet Jewry movement and ask Jews worldwide to include the Uyghurs…
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News In a bad economy, some Jewish giving is up—way up
The economy is at a standstill, people are out of work and stuck home — and big Israel-support organizations are having a banner year. The Jewish National Fund raised a record $100.8 million last year in the United States, even as the pandemic canceled live fundraising events and JNF-sponsored trips to Israel. At the same…
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Fast Forward ‘Antisemitic hit-and-run squads’: Amsterdam temporarily bans demonstrations after Israeli soccer fans attacked by street mobs
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