Scribe, the Forward’s curated contributor network, is a place for showcasing personal experiences and perspective from across our Jewish communities. Here you will find a wide array of reflections on Jewish issues, life-cycle events, spirituality, culture and more.
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You say matzah — and matzo and matzuh and matzee and more
Readers respond to our editor-in-chief’s column about a Passover copy-editing conundrum
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100-year-old Holocaust survivor compares Trump to Hitler
I’d like to say a few words about Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump, and Ruth Nussbaum. Let’s start with Ruth, who is marking her 100th birthday on September 30th, and isn’t overly thrilled with the occasion. As she told me a few weeks ago, “I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody”. Ruth Rozanski was born in Offenbach,…
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This year for the High Holidays, female faces filled my screen
My late father, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, would often tell the story of a Hasidic rabbi, the Kotzker Rebbe, who wanted to give the Almighty a blessing. Instead of constantly asking for blessings, this rebbe felt it was time to give God some comfort, too. But what blessing could a human possibly offer the divine? Certainly…
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A sukkah kosher for coronavirus
We love exiting our homes and entering our sukkot (the plural of sukkah) because of the opportunity to commune with nature and the Divine. Such an opportunity is one of the reasons we are obligated to dwell in a sukkah during the festival. We are taught that, just as the Israelites were protected by ananei…
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It is not too late for American Democracy — yet
Democracy is under attack, in countries around the globe and in the United States. As scholars and directors of Holocaust and genocide study centers at American universities, who were born and raised in East and West Germany after 1945, we are watching the deliberate dismantling of democracy in the U.S. with growing concern. We have…
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I didn’t know I owed him money, but he wouldn’t let me pay
This story happened when I was 21 and I’ve been carrying it with me ever since. Every Yom Kippur, it’s the first thing on my mind. When I was 14, I wanted to get into a music summer school for teens that was taught at Rimon, one of the best contemporary music schools in Israel….
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I said sorry, but I didn’t understand what I did
An apology is a rare element of human communication — you can instantly tell when someone is apologizing honestly or faking it (the other phrases of this breed include “I love you” and “sure, you can have the last french fry”). If you’ve had the opportunity to apologize sincerely and on the spot, and you…
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I am sorry for your loss; I am sorry for my loss
1 I found out that he died from Facebook. I remember those initial moments of confusion, when I reread the post. “What? Impossible. What happened? He wasn’t sick!” I remember the shock, when I realized what he had done, that he was cut short — in the midst of life. I remember the confusion, not…
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Before Yom Kippur, he apologized — but it should have been the other way around
A few years ago I was studying in yeshiva in Jerusalem. I was coming off a whirlwind high from becoming an adult bar mitzvah and a great community send off months prior. I was ready and excited to dive into Jewish texts in a way that was previously foreign to me. Through the Facebook group…
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The Yom Kippur sermon Stephen Wise never gave
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the most prominent American Jewish leader of the 1930s and 1940s, was a renowned orator who did not shy away from using his sermons to address social and political controversies. But on Yom Kippur in September 1942, as the Holocaust raged in Europe, the cat got his tongue. On August 25,…
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A Kol Nidre for 2020
Ashamnu — I confess, I am guilty. On this Kol Nidre, after the terrible year that we have all experienced — that we are still going through — I feel discouraged & pessimistic. It is hard to see light at the end of this tunnel, to envision our community & our nation acting in ways…
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Read this for effortlessly clear skin
Once a month in seventh grade, my mother would pick me up from school and drive me to a blood clinic in Greenwich, where a nurse would draw blood from my arm and make sure I was not pregnant. It was a ridiculous way to spend a late afternoon — I had not started menstruating…
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Yiddish דאָס לעבן אויף דער איסט־סײַד, 1902 — באַשרײַבונגען פֿון אַ יענקיLife on the Lower East Side in 1902, from the eyes of a Yankee
דער ערשטער פֿון אַ סעריע אַרטיקלען אויף אַ גרינגן ייִדיש, וועגן דער מחברטעס אַנטדעקונגען ווי אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע און פֿאָרשערין.
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