By Allison Kaplan Sommer
Mazel tov, Priscilla and Mark! You pulled it off: a
surprise wedding. What was supposed to be a medical school graduation party for a newly minted M.D. turned out to be an event in which she collected a M.R.S. degree and also wedded a newly minted billionaire.
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By Allison Kaplan Sommer
As the Israeli national-religious population continues to lurch rightward, the belief that for an Orthodox man, the sound of a woman’s singing voice is inappropriately erotic and therefore violates Jewish law has gone increasingly mainstream. This lies behind the ongoing dispute over whether IDF soldiers have the right to walk out when
women sing in army ceremonies, and whether government ceremonies that include the religious public can legitimately eliminate female singers.
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By Allison Kaplan Sommer
I’m surely not the only girl with literary tendencies to have come of age in the 1980s assiduously following
Anna Quindlen’s journalism career — reading her columns in The New York Times and pretty much wanting to be her when I grew up. Back in the Stone Age, before the Internet, before blogs and their informal, chatty tone, Quindlen’s combination of reportage, observation and personal insight felt exciting, fresh and new. I admired her so that I didn’t even resent the fact that she was able to waltz into The Times at age 25 with no previous journalism experience and land a job, an accomplishment she credits to affirmative action for women.
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By Allison Kaplan Sommer
When I first came to Israel as an American college student in the 1980s, I was frequently drawn into long discussions comparing Americans and Israelis. Back in the old days, before cable television and the Internet, many Israelis were exceptionally defensive about being viewed as a member of a primitive Third-World culture, and eager to point out ways in which they were superior to Americans.
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By Allison Kaplan Sommer
Having retired from the Passover-cleaning and Seder-making business, my in-laws have, in recent years, chosen to spend the holiday at a hotel abroad, every year at a different destination. My husband and I packed up our three kids this year and joined them for 10 days of matzoh-eating and sightseeing in Provence.
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Cleveland Kidnapping, Elizabeth Smart and Us
Tracing the Jewish Origins of the Holy Ghost
Ethical Kosher Seal Stalls Amid Orthodox Opposition
Baby Boomers’ Rocky Road to Jewish Love
'War' With Ultra-Orthodox at Kotel? Bring It On
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