Allison Kaplan Sommer is a journalist at Haaretz, host of Haaretz Weekend podcast and co-host of The Promised Podcast.
Allison Kaplan Sommer
By Allison Kaplan Sommer
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Life Where an M.R.S. Degree Is a Course Requirement
Is marriage a legitimate prerequisite for a university course? That is what some female students are asking at Bar-Ilan University. The controversy surrounds a course in “marital communications,” which we told you about here. It requires those who enroll be married for at least one year. The course is intended for those who want to…
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Life On Flying Rockets and Missing Work
We’ve become used to the gender roles in conventional war. The brave male soldiers march off to the battlefield, the women and children remain back at home, protected in their domestic routines. Or, in the alternative scenario, when the horror of war comes to civilian neighborhoods, life grinds to a halt, and the family huddles…
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Life On Covering War — as a Young Mother
I never met Marie Colvin, the intrepid war correspondent who was brutally murdered by Syrian army shelling. But I used to fantasize about being like her. Scratch the surface of any journalist and you’ll find someone who was once intrigued by the vision of living dangerously, moving from trouble spot to trouble spot, always in…
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Life Pinterest: A Modern Woman’s Fantasy World
It’s supposed to be the guys who get turned on by images. We ladies are more evolved, more sensitive, more verbal, less dependent on pictures to trigger our fantasies. Or are we? After all, young girls are are the bulletin board queens. In our teenage bedrooms, many of us taped up pictures and posters of…
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Life American Parenting’s Inferiority Complex
Let’s face it: an overwhelming number of the modern world’s greatest achievements have come from the United States. Behind all of those accomplishments are human beings, all of whom, presumably, have mothers and fathers. So I ask: If this is true, why are American parents — more specifically, American mothers — so insecure about the…
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Life Mikveh Photo Prompts Facebook Uproar
Ziv Koren, an award-winning Israeli photographer, is no stranger to controversy. But even he was unprepared for the flood of angry messages and comments that faced him when he checked his Facebook page a few days ago. The hubbub was prompted by a photograph he had taken in 2006 — a picture of a young…
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Life When We Wished We Were Whitney
Back in the 1980s, Whitney Houston was the girl who had it all: devastating looks, an incredible voice, impeccable show business connections. Her success seemed predestined. Whitney spent her childhood singing in church choirs and nightclubs along her mother Cissy Houston. Dionne Warwick was her cousin and Aretha Franklin, her godmother. In her definitive 2006…
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Life Bill Targets Israeli ‘Johns’
Update, February 12, 2012 Visiting a prostitute in Israel is expected to become a crime in coming days, after a bill that will make the use of sexual services in Israel illegal passed the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday. According to the Jerusalem Post: “The bill, which was also supported by a large number…
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