Forward

I am sorry for your loss; I am sorry for my loss

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 12:21:00 GMT

It was unexpected, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been.

Before Yom Kippur, he apologized — but it should have been the other way around

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 11:59:00 GMT

All Yom Kippur, I suffered from a headache and stomachache, but it wasn’t from fasting; Hashem was trying to get my attention.

In ‘The Other Story,’ a tale of forgiveness as faith and family collide

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT

“The Other Story,” presents case studies of two women on opposite sides of Orthodoxy and what those close to them make of their transitions.

I’m angry at my dad for supporting Trump. Do I need to forgive him for Yom Kippur?

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 08:52:00 GMT

Yom Kippur doesn’t offer a magical reset button where forgiveness can be granted and harm removed. You’re upset, and you’re allowed to be.

Amy Coney Barrett makes me feel bad as a working mom

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:38:00 GMT

I feel intimidated. Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, first in her law-school class, professor of the year three times, and she drives carpool, too?

The Yom Kippur sermon Stephen Wise never gave

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 14:00:00 GMT

Despite World War II raging, his sermon didn’t mention the atrocities being committed.

There will be light even after all this darkness

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 09:20:00 GMT

Our connections with those we love are our lights, even if wrested out of social distancing and squeezed into a simple phone call or Zoom square.

AOC reconsiders attendance at Yitzak Rabin memorial event

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 23:55:00 GMT

AOC reconsiders attendance at Yitzak Rabin memorial event

AOC should honor Rabin. She should honor Arafat, too.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 21:36:00 GMT

What is needed instead of shunning one another is to bridge the gap and transcend the us vs. them mentality. AOC should start there.

Antisemitic images found in Google search

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 21:33:00 GMT

Enter “Jewish baby carriages” into a Google Search and the first results to appear are images of ovens.

Historical images of Jewish women pushing strollers and more recent images of Hasidic Jewish women are interspersed with disturbing photos of large black ovens.

One of the results depicts a smoking oven accompanied by text that reads: “Are you Jewish? Have a baby? Look no further…Get this high-quality German-made stroller.”

The image is part of a collection of offensive memes called, “Jewish Baby Stroller Memes,” found on Me.me. Most of the oven images from the Google search are linked to meme websites.

Antisemitism, including online harassment, has dramatically increased in the United States in recent years, according to studies and reports by the Anti-Defamation League and other human rights organizations. The ADL has responded to the uptick by launching an online antisemitism tracking tool called The ADL Tracker , which monitors antisemitic incidents either reported to or detected by the ADL.

The person who discovered the Google search images has made a report to the ADL, and the Forward has reached out to Google and the ADL for comment.

This Yom Kippur, Istanbul’s Karaites look back on a proud past and forward into an uncertain ...

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 19:36:00 GMT

Will one of Judaism’s oldest communities survive another generation?

For the past two years, the Karaite Qahal in Istanbul’s Haskoy neighborhood has been almost empty for the High Holidays. This Yom Kippur will likely be no different. Ever since Yusuf Sadik, a beloved figure of the Karaite community in Istanbul passed away in 2017, less and less have made the trip to the old neighborhood to celebrate the High Holidays. For an overwhelmingly elderly community, the novel coronavirus pandemic hasn’t helped either.

Karaism is one of the oldest denominations of Judaism and separates itself from Rabbinic Judaism by rejecting the very idea of rabbinic law or an oral Torah as transmitted through the Talmud. As such, followers acknowledge patrilineal, rather than matrilineal, descent when defining who is a Jew, and have many divergent practices such as praying without shoes and with full prostration.

Though there is some debate on its origins and various sola scriptura groups have existed throughout Jewish history, the most widely agreed upon origin story traces Karaism and rabbinic Judaism’s split to the 9th century and a dispute between two brothers, sons of the rosh galuta or exilarch who lead the Jewish community in Babylon and later the Abbasid empire.

A Karaite community has existed in Istanbul for almost as long.

The sorry state of community today wasn’t always the case. In years past Istanbul had been a major center of the Karaite world, so much so that one of Istanbul’s hippest neighborhoods still bears their name today. Karakoy, which sits just across the Golden Horn from old Constantinople, literally means dark village in Turkish, but is likely a corruption of Karaykoy , meaning village of the Karaites, known as Karay in Turkish.

“It’s an oral tradition,” acknowledged Avraham Ishdjen, who grew up in the Karaite community in Istanbul. “but what we know from our fathers and grandfathers is that there were once 85 Karaite communities in Turkey.” The largest of those was in Constantinople, or as it was known in the Karaites’ languages, Kushta .

By the height of Ottoman times, Constantinople was the capital of an empire that bridged the other centers of the Karaite world, Egypt, Crimea and Syria. Those traditions have influenced Istanbul’s community and several languages are spoken by its less than a hundred members. Those whose families have been in Istanbul since Byzantine times, known as Constantinoplian Karaites, speak a language called Karaitika or Kareao-Greek, a form of ancient Greek mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Turkic influences.

However today, the majority of Istanbul’s Karaites, are descended from Crimean immigrants who came over around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They speak a Judeo-Turkic language called Qarayca or Qaraim.

The Crimean Karaites believe themselves and their language to be the descendants of the Khazar Khaganate, a medieval Turkic empire which stretched from the Ukrainian steppe, across the Caucasus Mountains and into Central Asia as far as modern Kazakhstan. Sometime between the 8th century and 10th century, shortly before their civilization was conquered and dispersed by the nascent Russian empire, the Khaganate’s nobility converted to Judaism.

Little is known about what Khazar Judaism looked like, but Crimea’s Jewish communities, both Rabbinite and Karaite, provide possible hints.

This year, on Rosh Hashana, or Yom Teruah as it is known to Karaites, only a small handful of worshippers, less than 10, came to the Qahal, the Karaite term for a synagogue. On Yom Kippur it will likely be the same. For Sukkot and other holidays the building will not be opened this year and certainly will not be on any given Shabbat.

“Most of the community more often sees each other in the cemetery, at zecher prayers.” Ishdjen said. Zecher prayers are the Karaite equivalent to what Ashkenazi Jews call a yahrzeit .

Though the showing this year was of course affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the loss of Sadik has been a major blow to the community.

“He was an old Istanbulite gentleman who knew how to joke and how to motivate people to come,” Ishdjen recalled. Explaining that for him, Sadik was a walking library of their history.

“He grew up around the hakhams” said Ishdjen, using the Karaite term for rabbi. “He was the one who knew our tradition very well, he knew it from his childhood, a time when the community was much more organized.”

In that time, more than half a century ago, life in the community looked very different to today.

“When I was a child in the qahal, it was full, 100, even 120 people coming, the community was that big.” Said Mihael Orme, who is 87 years old and serves as president of Istanbul’s Karaite community.

Nonetheless, emigration, assimilation and secularization has whittled down the community.

Without enough young people, most youth intermarry either with Turkish Muslims or occasionally Istanbul’s Rabbinite Jews. Turkey’s state sponsored secularization under the government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his successors affected the Karaite community as it did all of Turkey’s religious communities, and like Turkey’s Rabbinite Jewish community the establishment of the state of Israel led to significant emigration.

Today there are no more hakhams in Istanbul, though the community was once home to scholars and theologians such as Aaron ben Elijah, a contemporary and Karaite equivalent to Maimonides.

Even a few years ago though, dozens still attended the Qahal on holidays, and the occasional Shabbat drawn by Yusuf Sadik’s energy. “He was an old man, but 80% of the energy in the Qahal came from him.” Ishdjen said.

As Sadik’s generation dies out, the future of the community, who is overwhelmingly elderly, is becoming more and more dire. The same is true of their languages. While Qarayca, in its heyday, had a robust printed culture and will leave many books behind, when the last of the Constantinoplian Karaites die out, there will be little left to remember Karaitika.

“What will happen in 50 years? I can’t answer. We are so few it will be difficult for us to continue, but we aren’t interested in fusing with the [Rabbanite] Jews of Istanbul, our traditions are too different,” said Orme. “Maybe someday there will be no one to fill the Qahal, for us though, until our last person, we will continue to keep our religion and traditions.“

A Yom Kippur interview with NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins: ‘I count on God’

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 16:25:00 GMT

Dr. Francis Collins speaks with a rabbi on faith

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Jewish and American pioneer who embraced both worlds

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:30:00 GMT

In her last act, RBG didn’t leave us. Instead, I believe she actually lifted us. She metaphorically handed us her gavel.

Orthodox children need access to a secular education

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:10:00 GMT

Haredi children deserve a secular education; who will make sure they get it?

TweetYourShabbat: Yom Kippur confessions of Shabbat cooking

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT

TweetYourShabbat: Yom Kippur confessions of Shabbat cooking

Birthing babies - and equality - in the maternity ward

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT

Rasslan is an Arab citizen of Israel who grew up in Haifa, and Zarbiv, who is Jewish, immigrated to Israel from Pittsburgh.

In ‘Tehran,’ an agent caught between Iran and Israel can’t find her way home

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT

The thriller evokes the pain some Iranian Jews feel living in Israel, helplessness to return home, but unwilling to forget where they came from.

For America, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a new kind of Jew

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT

Because Ginsburg was so absolutely Jewish, she helped form a bond, in the minds of the public, between Judaism and the quest for social justice.

On Yom Kippur Jews ask, is Dean Kremer the new Sandy Koufax?

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 03:35:00 GMT

On Yom Kippur Jews ask, is Dean Kremer the new Sandy Koufax?

As Yom Kippur gets closer, Orthodox doctors’ calls for more caution trigger tension

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 00:14:00 GMT

“We literally ask Hashem ‘Who by plague. How can we ask that, if we ourselves aren’t taking every possible precaution to keep ourselves safe?”