In Ogden, Utah, where I grew up, the streets are named after United States presidents. They run in chronological order from the city center up to the Wasatch Mountain Range, ending with Buchanan. The only exceptions are Lincoln and Grant, which curiously precede Washington — a tribute to the war that began and ended before…
On the surface, Frimet Goldberger and Rachel Brown seem to have little in common. Goldberger, 28, grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, in upstate New York. Brown, 30, was raised in Ogden, Utah, in a devout Mormon household. Yet the two have a shared path: Both left their respective religious groups…
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Florence Prag Kahn, the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress, was a pioneer in many ways. She was born in 1866 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her parents were Polish Jewish…
When it comes to interfaith marriage, is there anything that Jews can learn from Mormons? Most Jewish leaders would not relish this comparison. After all, what does a liberal, cosmopolitan group of immigrant grandchildren have in common with this American-born collection of conservative Christians? Well, more than you might think. For one thing, they make…
Mitt Romney may be the highest-profile Mormon to visit Israel but he is far from alone. Christians have traditionally dominated tourism to Israel and make up nearly two-thirds of visitors to the country, according to the Israel Ministry of Tourism, a figure that includes members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. Although…
Israelism, the idea of a nation or people’s direct descent from one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, or the appropriation of Jewish ideas or texts for use in new belief systems, is not unique to the Mormon faith. At the height of British imperial power in the early twentieth century, notions of a…
The Mormon practice of baptizing deceased Jews by proxy is nothing new. The Jews called the Mormons on it years ago, and the Church promised to stop doing it. But recent headlines have indicated that some Mormons, unable to suppress their desire to save the souls of dead Jews, are back at it. Big names…
In my piece, published this week on Salon, I wrote about Mormon gender roles being highly prescribed, with men defining themselves “in contrast to women but also against other men in the secular world.” From the outside, Mormon family norms might seem like a throwback to the 1950s, and Romney certainly garners his fair share…
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