Covering Religion in New York (2023)

Thursday’s protest, coming on the final day of Ramadan, was one of the larger weekly protests students have organized over the past two months. As published in Religion News Service. NEW YORK — Loud chants carried through the main plaza at Baruch College in the early afternoon on Thursday (April 20) as a group of…

On a recent Sunday, amid a sea of blue and white Israeli flags waving at a Washington Square Park protest against legislation in Israel to undermine the country’s judiciary, a handful of tricolor Palestinian flags stood out.  Among the dozen people who marched with the Palestinian flag was Udi Aloni. A Tel Aviv native, Aloni…

On a January morning at a synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Rabbi Ira Rohde, and behind him, Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, walked slowly toward the front of the building, both dressed in liturgical robes. Rohde carried a two-foot-long scroll draped with a red mantle over one shoulder, gripping the bottom with both hands. The…

Sacred and mystical Jewish texts are usually studied at home or in the synagogue. But on a recent evening in Manhattan, a progressive Jewish community read the Zohar, a text of Jewish mysticism written in the 13th century in Spain, while seated around a checkered tablecloth at Cowgirl, a non-kosher, Texas-style restaurant at 519 Hudson…

Members of the Druze faith are scattered all over New York City; there is no house of worship where they can meet. Prayer is not central to the Druze religion, which makes a house of worship much less important than for other religions. In the Druze faith, not everyone identifies as religious. There are the…

In his three years of life, Yechiel Zeev Mergui’s mocha-colored hair had never met a scissor’s blades. The untouched strands — uniform in length, not yet growing peyot, or sidelocks — still told the story of when he first entered the world.  On a Sunday afternoon in Forest Hills, Queens, with the last rays of…