Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
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Breaking News Russia’s Chief Rabbi Slammed for Meeting Far Right Austria Leader
(JTA) — Rabbis in Vienna condemned the chief rabbi of Russia for meeting the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar met this week with Heinz-Christian Strache and his delegation at his office in Moscow, the UK Jewish News reported. The meeting came two weeks after the Freedom Party candidate for…
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News Looking Back at Jacob Neusner’s Complicated Legacy
During the turmoil of the election campaign, the death of Jacob Neusner, one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the past century, received relatively little attention. Neusner, who died in October, was one of the giants who established Jewish studies in the 20th century, and a central figure in the history of critical scholarship…
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News Neo-Nazis Target Jews in White Supremacist Richard Spencer’s Montana Town
For two years, the quaint town of Whitefish, Montana, has been the unlikely site of a showdown against white supremacy. Now, amid agitation by local activists against a resident white supremacist and his family, neo-Nazis have made a public call for harassment against the Jews in his predominantly white and Christian area. “The heat is…
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Breaking News Rabbis and Imams Search for Common Ground as Donald Trump Looms Large
(JTA) — A year ago, when several dozen Washington-area Jewish and Muslim religious and lay leaders jostled for spots in a group picture, the mood was convivial. The most novel item on the agenda for that November 2015 confab was bringing in non-Middle Eastern Muslims into the Jewish-Muslim dialogue. The meeting and the venue —…
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Israel News New Jersey Family to Pay Rabbis Shunned by Israeli Rabbinate
(Ha’aretz) — If the state of Israel won’t pay the salaries of rabbis of certain denominations, then we will. That, in a nutshell, is how one family from Livingston, New Jersey, hopes to foment a religious revolution in Israel. By providing a living wage to rabbis who are not eligible for state funding – and…
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Breaking News Chief Rabbis Promise Conversion Standards — Vow To Count Ivanka Trump as Jewish
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate committed to creating standards for recognizing which Diaspora rabbis it trusts to handle Jewish conversions. The Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis announced separately Wednesday afternoon that they would convene a meeting next week with the Chief Rabbinate Council and the Supreme Rabbinical Court to determine the standards. The conversion…
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Culture On Cult German Show, Real Rabbi Officiates TV Bar Mitzvah
If you walk through a German-speaking town next Sunday night, the odds are that the streets will literally be empty as people stay at home to watch a bar mitzvah on TV. For Germans and Austrians like me, “Tatort” (“Crime Scene”) is the holy grail of television. It’s the German equivalent of “Game of Thrones,”…
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News ‘Alt Right’ Leader Ties White Supremacy to Zionism — Leaves Rabbi Speechless
A prominent leader of the “alt-right” left a Hillel rabbi speechless when he drew a direct parallel between white supremacy and Zionism — igniting debate on social media about whether such a comparison has any validity. Richard Spencer, who leads the white nationalist National Policy Institute, appeared at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas on…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
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Fast Forward Minneapolis police arrest man for ‘terroristic threats’ made to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah
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Fast Forward Jewish officials handling hurricane communications face antisemitic harassment
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Oct. 7: One Year Later At Oct. 7 memorial ceremonies across Israel, searing grief and political tensions are on full display
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Oct. 7: One Year Later On this grim anniversary, focus on what we can — and cannot — control
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