Alison Kaplan Sommer
By Alison Kaplan Sommer
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Israel News Reality TV Star’s Conversion Plight Reveals Orthodox Rabbinate’s Kafkaesque Grip
(Haaretz) — The struggle against the ultra-Orthodox grip on Israel’s Chief Rabbinate in issues of personal status in Israel has a new, and very attractive, poster girl. Alin Levy, an Israeli reality TV star, says she has been told she cannot complete the process of converting to Judaism because she is an actress. Levy blasted…
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Life Too Sexy for Purim?
(Haaretz) — It seems terribly appropriate that International Women’s Day was happening this year as Israelis were caught up with preparations for the holiday of Purim — and not just because it is the only Jewish holiday with a woman, the heroic Queen Esther, who saved her people by charming a king, at its center….
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News ‘Shul on the Beach’ Makes Orthodox Waves in Los Angeles
Did you hear the one about the Orthodox synagogue located between a rehab center and an erotic lingerie shop, steps away from medical marijuana clinics and tattoo parlors, with a dead-on view of a beach where bikini-clad sun worshippers frolic? If you haven’t, it means you’ve never been to the Pacific Jewish Center on the…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Fast Forward Talarico won’t campaign with Democratic House candidate who wants to open ‘a prison for American Zionists’
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News At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America
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Fast Forward California judge says Kars4Kids misled donors by omitting Orthodox Jewish mission from ads
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Fast Forward Pacific Palisades Jews, displaced by fire, reopen their synagogue as part of returning home
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance