Tagged Orthodox Judaism

NEW YORK (JTA) – When America’s main modern Orthodox rabbinical association voted last week to ban the hiring of clergywomen by its members, the question wasn’t whether to endorse women rabbis. It was whether to widen the group’s well-established repudiation of female clergy or keep quiet and focus on finding common ground with modern… Read more »

Torah Day School, an Orthodox school in Phoenix, is located in a Conservative synagogue, Beth El Congregation. (Courtesy Torah Day School)

(JTA) — Marla Topp of Temple Judea Mizpah in Skokie, Ill., doesn’t need survey data to tell her that Reform Judaism is in decline and Orthodox Judaism is growing. She has to look no further than her own synagogue. A couple of months ago, the temple began renting out… Read more »

Rabbi Uri Topolowsky and his family, seen here during a recent trip to Jerusalem, have left New Orleans and relocated to surburban Maryland. (Courtesy Uri Topolosky)

(JTA) — It didn’t take long after Rabbi Uri Topolosky moved to New Orleans in 2007 for the moderate Orthodox rabbi to win plaudits for helping the city’s Jewish community heal following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The congregation Topolosky was hired to lead, Beth Israel, had seen its building… Read more »

A sex essay that appeared in a Yeshiva University student publication has prompted an intense debate about reproductive health, Orthodox Jewish modesty and freedom of speech. (Illustration by JTA)

NEW YORK (JTA) — It wasn’t your typical college sex scandal. There were no accusations of molestation, inappropriate faculty-student relationships or date rape charges. Instead, the precipitating incident was the publication by a student-run newspaper of a female student’s first-person account of a premarital sexual encounter. But this is… Read more »