UJA-Federation of New York and other Jewish agencies are helping synagogues damaged during Hurricane Sandy to apply for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, even though the government agency currently bars grants to houses of worship because of concern that such aid may violate the First Amendment. Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy…
Few topics are as fraught and complicated, or as tempting to oversimplify, as the encounter between religion and state. Take Israel. The balance of religion and state seems to be particularly imperiled for a variety of cultural and political reasons. Some Israelis think the problem has to do with an increase in religious commitment itself….
Invoking George Washington’s famous letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, one of the foremost Orthodox rabbis of his generation, told a congressional committee on February 16 that requiring health insurance plans to cover contraception threatened “the liberties of conscience” of fellow Americans and “redefined by…
In a meeting yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of former yeshiva bucher Chairman Julius Genachowski (whose background in Talmud the Forward recently explored), passed a set of rules that allow the government to regulate the Internet. Genachowski crafted his own version of the much-discussed concept of “net neutrality,” the term used to…
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