Best of 2021
Best of 2021
Best of 2021
Best of 2021
The summer before 10th grade, some friends of mine pulled off what I have long thought had to be the most outrageous prank of all time: spoiling the biggest twist in the Harry Potter series for an entire sleepaway camp. It happened at Camp Ramah in Ojai, Calif., on July 18, 2005, two days after…
About 30 people packed into the living room and dining room of the white stucco house Saturday as a Torah scroll was laid on the bimah and the gabbai prepared to summon a kohein for the first aliyah. But there were no kohanim among them, because this congregation’s was in the rubble. “Ein kaan kohein,”…
On Shabbat afternoon, March 25, 1911, the top floors of the Jewish-owned Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan went up in flames. Due to the building’s structural flaws, the number of people working at the time, and the lack of responsive emergency personnel, 146 lives were lost in just 18 minutes. As labor attorney Jonathan…
Jewish organizations are urging people around the world to pray for all the victims of the catastrophic residential tower collapse near Miami, including some 20 Jewish people estimated to be among the 99 missing in the tragedy. A section of a 12-story condominium tower in Surfside, Fla., collapsed late Wednesday night, flattening more than 50…
It’s traditional for the gay community to gather for brunch before a Pride march during Pride month, or nachas khoydesh in Yiddish. Today, we propose instead a forshpayz, an appetizer-sized portion of queer archival Forverts history — rare treasures celebrating LGBTQ dignity, visibility and equality: our first archival Pride march back in time. For me,…
A Forward investigation in 9 verses
Almost as fast as social media posts about Israel and Gaza began multiplying, so too did complaints of censorship from both sides. Posts were identified as hate speech and taken down; influencers insisted that they had been shadow-banned — a term for when a user’s posts are left up but the algorithm does not show…
Molly Meisels, then a senior at Yeshiva University, was greeted in class last fall with an unusual message from a professor: “I don’t care if you’re a ‘he,’ a ‘she,’ or an ‘it.’” Meisels, 22, one of only a few openly LGBTQ undergraduates at the more than 2,000-strong university, recalled feeling taken aback but not…
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