Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the robust lives of American Jews. Here there’s a little of everything about the multifaceted world of Jewish life. There are light-hearted Jewish celebrity stories and shocking Jewish celebrity news. Food is also plentiful,…
Life
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Breaking The Glass Ceiling For Female Cantors
Rebecca Garfein was fifteen years old when the man seated in front of her turned around, at the sound of her pleasant singing voice, and offered her an opportunity that would lead her on the path to become a cantor. At the time, Garfein didn’t even know what a cantor was. Throughout her childhood, Garfein…
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Natalie Portman Betrayed The Truth Before — In ‘A Tale Of Love And Darkness’
When Natalie Portman began promoting her film in 2015, ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’, based on Amos Oz’s memoir — fans of Israeli literature rejoiced. For months, Portman appeared on talk shows and stages nationwide, talking about the importance of Israel to her life and about the film she both directed and starred in….
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If You Want To Understand Israel, Read Its Literature
If you want to understand a people, read the stories it tells. In the work of Israel’s fiction writers, we meet the real Israeli, the one behind the headlines, stripped of hasbara. We get to know Israeli soldiers and Palestinian suicide bombers, Jewish settlers, Arab university students, Holocaust survivors. Here, they collide, just as they…
The Latest
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How Rabbis Should Talk About Drug Addiction In Their Sermons This Week
While I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, my parents would sometimes talk about three of my uncles and their proclivity for gambling. No one said they were gambling addicts, but my uncles liked to play the horses and trade on margins in the stock market. One of my uncles also was involved…
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Mark Zuckerberg Wore A Suit To Congress To Look Boring
What was perhaps most fascinating about today’s Senate committee inquiry into Facebook’s privacy policies in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal was not the requisite public shaming and scapegoating, but what Mark Zuckerberg wore for his public castigation: a suit. Mark Zuckerberg looked bland and contrite — he avoided smiling, even smirking. When he did…
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Orthodox Accounting Students Win $500K In Tax Refunds For Low-Income New Yorkers
A group of low-income-earning New Yorkers received $500,000 in tax refunds last year when fifteen accounting majors from Touro’s Lander College of Arts & Sciences in Brooklyn gave up their weekends to prepare and file online income tax returns for free. The college students, all Orthodox Jews, are part of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance…
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100 Years Of Jewish Men ‘Rebelling’ With Non-Jewish Women
Carey Purcell’s confessional essay in the Washington Post — about being a Gentile woman dating Jewish men, only to be broken up with for Jewish women — has touched a sore nerve, evidently. “Over almost seven years and two serious relationships with Jewish men who at first said religion didn’t matter — and then backtracked…
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What No One Tells You About Having Lots Of Kids
(Kveller via JTA) — When I found out I was pregnant with my fourth child, I cried. In fact, I cried for a couple weeks — when I wasn’t vomiting, that is. I had a 10-month-old at the time, and I was still getting used to dealing with three kids. How I could possibly manage…
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Chernobyl’s Jewish Liquidators Remain Forgotten In Israel, 32 Years Later
Alexander Kalantirksy speaks halting Hebrew with a heavy Russian accent. He was seated in a straight-backed chair in his small, dark apartment in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “Nu, I am not a hero,” he said matter-of-factly, and a bit impatiently. “I am an engineer. I knew what it meant. It had to…
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Forget About Cooking Passover Today — Focus On The Kids’ Program Instead
Why is this year different from all other years? All other years I spend weeks planning meals, preparing shopping lists, making schedules of when to clean, shop and cook. This year I did none of that. All other years we spend hours upon hours and days upon days cooking food so we can “relax on…
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What Couples Can Learn From The Four Questions Of Passover
Questions and curiosity form the basis of Judaism. And, as we’ve discovered through our research on couples, the foundation of lasting romantic relationships. Jewish families around the world will gather around their table this week to celebrate Passover. At these seders the youngest attendees will sing Four Questions. These are a series of questions that…
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