Prime Ribs: Zumba to ‘Hava Nagila’; Facebook as Lifesaver

By Elissa Strauss July 15, 2011

On Slate, Deborah Copaken Kogan tells a moving Jewish mother story for the digital age, about how sharing her son’s strange symptoms on Facebook saved his life.

Among those in favor of beatifying WWII-era Pope Pius XII is a nun now making the case that the pontiff ordered her convent to shelter 114 Jewish women from the Nazis, the AP reports.

Deborah Hirsch writes for JTA about how the increasingly popular “Zumba” exercise classes have spawned de-facto Sisterhood groups. Some instructors even incorporate “Hava Nagila” into their routines, Hirsch writes.

Art critic Jed Pearl ponders the question of what it meant to be a female painter during the 20th century, in his recent review of new biographies on Lee Krasner and Joan Michell. (See the Forward’s review of the Krasner biography here.)

Haaretz talks to feminist and Israeli Prize laureate Prof. Alice Shalvi, who argues that there will never be true gender equality in Israel so long as the army and the Orthodox continue to be such a central part of national life.

Jewish “Freedom Riders” are challenging Jerusalem’s segregated bus lines in Jerusalem, the Religious News Service reports.

Jewish polygamists? The Jerusalem Post reports reports that a new Jewish group views polygamous relationships as the solution to “problems,” such as the surfeit of single women, the temptation of extramarital relations and Jewish–Arab demographic trends.

Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO