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Breaking News Italian Chief Rabbi’s Parents Survive Tunisia Museum Rampage
Two Italian Jewish tourists survived the terrorist attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunisia. Alberto Di Porto, 71, and Anna Di Porto, 60, of Rome both managed to escape the shooting attack Wednesday in the capital city of Tunisia by gunmen wearing what appeared to be military uniforms which, according to reports at press time,…
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Breaking News Reform Rabbis Name Denise Eger as First LGBT Chief
The Central Conference of American Rabbis, the rabbinical arm of the Reform movement, installed its first openly gay president, Rabbi Denise Eger. Eger, 55, was inaugurated on Monday morning at the CCAR’s annual convention in Philadelphia. She succeeds Richard Block. The founding rabbi of the Kol Ami synagogue in Los Angeles, Eger has been on…
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Life Letting Women In the Kitchen
Avivit Ravia, one of two female kosher supervisors for Hashgacha Pratit, visits Carousela restaurant. Photograph by Naomi Zeveloff. There is a black and white photograph that my grandmother took of my great-grandmother hanging in my mother’s house and in the houses of all of my great-grandmother’s descendants. In it, my great-grandmother is standing at her…
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Opinion If Jewish Seminaries Are Empty, Let’s Merge Them
A recent Forward article asked a provocative and troubling question: “Where Are All the Non-Orthodox Rabbis?” It pointed to a steep decline in enrollment at non-Orthodox rabbinical schools, which should prompt some new thinking. Here’s a start: Why not merge the Reform and Conservative seminaries? Last year, the non-Orthodox rabbinical schools admitted fewer than 100…
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News How Kayaking in Alaska Prepared Me To Be a Rabbi
With the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the news again, as President Obama proposed protecting much of the oil-rich land as wilderness, I am reminded of the summer I spent a few years back leading a sea kayaking trip through the Refuge. It was an experience of transformation I will never forget and will most…
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Opinion How Could We Have Trusted Rabbi Barry Freundel?
Now that Rabbi Barry Freundel has pleaded guilty to peeping at 52 women while they went to the mikveh — prosecutors say he spied on 100 more women, but outside the statute of limitations — we finally can take off the qualifiers and accept that he is guilty. And that means we can begin some…
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Breaking News Israel Chief Rabbi Vows To Defy Conversion Law
One of Israel’s two chief rabbis said he would not recognize conversions performed by municipal rabbis despite a government directive validating them. A recording of Yitzhak Yosef vowing to block the conversions was published Wednesday on the website kikar.co.il. The Sephardic chief rabbi said he would withhold his signature, which is still required to complete…
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Breaking News ‘Get-Extort’ Rabbis Caught on Tape Plotting To Beat Reluctant Husbands
(Reuters) — An undercover FBI agent testified on Thursday in a case involving three Orthodox Jewish rabbis in New Jersey accused of kidnapping and beating husbands to force them to grant divorces under Jewish law to their wives. Special Agent Jessica Weisman, who went by the name Rachel Marconi during the operation, said she weaved a…
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News What Mike Huckabee’s ‘Kids Guide to Israel’ says about his views
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Culture At 95, Shaindel Schreiber is still dispensing babka and advice on the Lower East Side
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Opinion Netanyahu was right to end the war in Lebanon — now Gaza must follow
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Culture 10 wicked ways to avoid talking about Gaza and Trump this Thanksgiving
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Fast Forward Israeli security cabinet approves ceasefire with Hezbollah, paving way for end of yearlong conflict in Israel’s north
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Culture Who are the most (and least) Jewish Peanuts characters?
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