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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Antony Blinken’s Yom HaShoah speech was remarkable — it acknowledged U.S. complicity
Thursday marked Yom HaShoah, a day when we remember the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust, honor the six million Jewish lives lost, and affirm that such tragedies should never be repeated. This somber day typically includes statements from U.S. government officials reflecting on the Shoah and pledging “never again.” In his speech during the U.S….
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60 years later, Eichmann’s trial is still shaping how we discuss the Holocaust
This week, we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann. This event was the most significant moment in the evolution of addressing the Holocaust in the post-World War II period. At the end of World War II, there was a surge of attention to the Shoah fueled by…
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Why Jews must keep fighting over shlissel challah
For hundreds of years now, on the Shabbat following Passover, Jews have made shlissel challah. Shlissel in Yiddish means “key.” Some families will make gorgeous bread loafs that look like a key. Others will hide an actual key inside a braided loaf. Others will press a key shape into the top of a challah roll….
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What makes this night different? The story of a hospital room Seder
That the doctor and I washed our hands shortly after arriving in the room wouldn’t seem unusual to the casual observer. Scrupulous hand-washing is common in hospitals. What might have piqued an outsider’s interest was the patient washing his hands. I held a basin over the bed as he carefully poured water from a cup…
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How good it is to sit together: Why we re-opened our religious school during the pandemic
When we decided last spring to give all of our religious school students the option to attend in person, I’m pretty sure most people thought it was a pipe dream — and a risky one at that. We had also thought about other ways to reach our students and how to make virtual classes and…
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My parents escaped the pogroms in the Ukraine. Here’s why I returned.
The bedtime stories my father told me in our cramped apartment in the gritty Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn sketched a magical, mythical place. The Snyderman family house, just outside of Pechera in southern Ukraine, was a simple one, with goats often grazing on its grass roof. My father’s descriptions of the snow glistening in the…
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The IHRA definition isn’t perfect. But its critics aren’t making things better.
On March 16, a group of liberal scholars called the Nexus Task Force published a new definition of antisemitism that they hope will replace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, which has increasingly come to be treated as standard. Their endeavor, while undoubtedly well-meaning, is unnecessary and possibly dangerous. The Nexus website lists three main…
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The Passover story is real, because it has a real effect on the world
Everyone and everything, from person to nation, crafts a story of where they came from and where they want to go. It isn’t a question of whether our stories are fact or fiction, but rather of how they shape who we are today and want to become tomorrow. In other words: the stories we tell…
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Passover must inspire us to address the plague of hunger
This year has been a storm of enormous and unanticipated challenges, devastating loss and limited resources with which to respond. More than half a million people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 in the past year, and millions more have suffered with illness, job loss and isolation from family and friends. In that sea…
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‘The voice of the turtle is heard in our land:’ Solving a lifelong Passover mystery
My childhood memories of Passover are largely connected to Philadelphia, where my maternal grandparents lived and to where my parents, my sister and I would travel every year to celebrate the holiday. After the Sedarim and the first two days of Passover, my father would return to his job in Washington, D.C., while the rest…
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What I hope we learn from two Passovers in social distancing exile
Last year, as we prepared for our first physically distanced Seder, I wrote a poem, my first ever, about the ritualistic importance of U’rchatz: handwashing, in times of a pandemic. It ends with: To remember all those who have lost or have been lost. Tonight, we wash our hands for ourselves, and for others, We…
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