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The Forward
Biden’s rabbi and I debate whether it’s time for the president to step aside
The first Jewish text that came to mind watching President Joe Biden’s painful performance in last night’s debate was Ecclesiastes, the scroll we read on Sukkot, which this year falls a few weeks before the most important election in our lifetimes. Its essential message is: There is a time for everything. The debate made clear...
A rabbi barred an anti-Zionist congregant from his synagogue. Then he had second thoughts.
(JTA) — Three weeks after Oct. 7, the Chicago rabbi David Minkus was leading his congregation in a Shabbat service when he noticed that someone had covertly slipped anti-Zionist leaflets inside the synagogue’s prayer books. “It was completely shocking,” Minkus recalled months later. “It’s just weeks after Oct. 7, the pain and the shock were...
Sigmund Freud understood the uncanny sensation we all felt watching the Trump-Biden debate
After last night’s presidential debate, many Americans now feel caught in a nightmare from which they cannot awake. (That many other Americans do not want to wake from this nightmare of course makes all this yet more nightmarish.) It is a nightmare that commentators started to wring their hands over during the debate, twisted more...
Why unions are having a renaissance
What do performers at Disneyland, editorial staff at the publisher Dotdash Meredith and players on Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team have in common? They all have recently chosen to join a union. (And that’s just the D’s.) Kidding aside, working people get it: We can accomplish things together that would be impossible on our own, which...
In Israel, a new habit: Attending funerals of fallen soldiers you do not know
JERUSALEM — Some of the 2,000 mourners who crammed around the fresh grave on Mount Herzl’s northern slope one recent day had gone to school with the 21-year-old soldier being buried there, Sgt. Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, whom they called Eli Mo. Others grew up with his mother in Teaneck, New Jersey; worked with his dad...
So, what do the lox-slicing knives at Zabar’s talk about when they think no one can hear them?
Every Thursday when I arrive at Zabar’s, after I don my gloves and apron, I proceed to a rear refrigerator. There, in a narrow, cold space behind the tray of salty lox, is where I hide my three knives, wrapped in paper and aluminum foil. One day as I readied them for another day of...
Meet Zeev Buium, who could be the NHL’s next Jewish superstar
(JTA) — As Zeev Buium prepared to take the ice with the No. 4-ranked University of Denver last fall, he had the jitters expected of any 17-year-old in his first Division I game. But he also had something else on his mind: The Pioneers’ first game fell on Oct. 7 — and Buium’s parents and...
Remembering Kinky Friedman, the only country star who bought his clothes from Hadassah
The songwriter and novelist Kinky Friedman, who died June 26 at age 79, exemplified the essential abiding mystery of Jewish identity. Born Richard Samet Friedman in Chicago to parents of Russian Jewish origin who moved to Texas to run a children’s camp, he acquired his nickname at the University of Texas at Austin from his...
Video: Thirteen-year old bakes baklava in Yiddish
Baklava, a dessert made of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey, is said to have originated in the Turkish and Greek regions. Sender (aka Alexander) Glasser, who speaks Yiddish at home, knows that this dish isn’t part of his Eastern European heritage. But he thought it would be cool to show...
Trump used the debate to court a major Israeli-American donor. Palestinians will pay the price
If you had trouble understanding former President Donald Trump’s answers to questions about Israel’s war with Hamas in his debate with President Joe Biden, that’s for a good reason: He wasn’t talking to you. The audience for his answers wasn’t viewers, Israelis or the Palestinians, and certainly not the moderators. It was Dr. Miriam Adelson....
What Biden and Trump said about Israel — and Hitler — during the first presidential debate
Two Jewish journalists, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, moderated the first 2024 presidential debate Thursday night, and neither asked President Joe Biden or former President Trump about rising antisemitism. But the debate touched on other topics of particular interest to Jewish voters. Here are a few, plus one Jewish comedian’s take on the spectacle....
Moses needed Aaron to communicate. Biden could have used him in debate.
There is a famous leader who, while humble and compassionate, struggled with a stammer. Tasked with leading a nation, he answered that he was slow of speech. Thankfully, he had an interpreter. I speak of Moses, whose older brother, Aaron, often served the role of proxy orator. President Joe Biden has a brother. Two, actually....
‘Non-Zionary’: How some queer Jews are wrestling with Israel
Since Oct. 7, queer Jews — both Zionists and anti-Zionists — have felt unwelcome in places they once felt comfortable. Many queer Zionist Jews say they’ve been excluded from queer groups where support for the pro-Palestinian cause is expected, and support for Israel — even expressions of sympathy for the victims of Hamas’ attack —...
Jewish law has always been clear: Emergency abortions are an essential right
Two things are true about Judaism and abortion. One: Jewish tradition is very clear that abortion is appropriate when it comes to protecting maternal health, and particularly when it comes to saving the life of a pregnant person. And two: when it comes to the abortion debate, what Jewish law and tradition have to say...
LAPD admits it was unprepared for Sunday’s violent protest outside LA synagogue
(JTA) — LOS ANGELES — Facing criticism over the police response to violence outside a Los Angeles synagogue, an LAPD official said the department erred in how it handled the protest and made estimates that “were not correct.” And L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said she has taken steps to explore banning masks at protests, though...
Kinky Friedman, singer and novelist who fronted The Texas Jewboys, dies at 79
(JTA) — Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping, mustachioed Texan country singer and mystery novelist whose body of work often seemed like the un-kosher marriage of the Borscht Belt and the Bible Belt, died June 27 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 79. As frontman for the flamboyant 1970s country group Kinky Friedman and the Texas...
Jewish law says we must wait for justice. For abortion rights, the cost of that wait is too high
The very first line of Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of our Fathers”), urges “patience in the administration of justice.” For millions of Americans, however, the administration of justice — specifically, by our Supreme Court on matters related to reproductive choice — requires an inhuman amount of patience. We are asked to wait calmly while they figure out...
How Gaza became an online clapback to anything (and I mean anything) you disagree with
The other night I was scrolling through an Instagram account about foraging edible plants. (There’s no way I’m harvesting magnolia blossoms to make cookies, but it’s fun to imagine.) I was feeling very seen by a video about how awful the invasive Bradford pear tree smells — if you know, you know — when I...
Today’s antisemitism will not end when the war in Gaza does
The antisemitism over the last eight months that Jews hoped would dissipate has only escalated — and it’s not going away anytime soon. In the last 10 days alone, three teens raped a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France, gunmen opened fire on a synagogue in Russia and pro-Palestinian protesters attacked Jews outside a synagogue in...
Polls show a small slip of Jewish voter from Biden to Trump. Could it impact the election?
Jewish Americans overwhelmingly favor and trust President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump. But a pair of recent polls show a small slip of Jewish voters toward Trump compared to previous years, which may indicate that the president is struggling among both stalwart supporters of Israel and opponents of its military campaign in Gaza....
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