Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt was the Life/Features editor at the Forward. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and Tablet, among others.
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt
By Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt
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The Schmooze An Orthodox Bride Sparks Ire Of Haredi Rabbis — For Playing The Drums At Her Own Wedding
In the Haredi city of Bnei Brak, Israel, at the Ahuzat Wagshel wedding hall, one spunky Orthodox bride has caused a stir. The newlywed, nineteen years old and high on the joy of her own wedding celebrations, approached the wedding band after the guests had left and only family members were left, Haredi news source…
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Life Why Is This Luxury Developer Building ‘Kosher’ Condos On The Upper West Side?
Walk west along 87th street in Manhattan, between Broadway and West End Avenue, just a few steps past Brooks Brothers, a block from the famed Barney Greengrass deli and from the progressive synagogue B’nai Jeshurun, and you’ll find yourself looking up to yet another luxury condominium building in its final stage of construction. But this…
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Opinion Religious Women Are Consumed With Our Appearance. That’s How We Get Heard.
Appearance is a source of excruciating anxiety for me. In both Orthodox and secular settings, I find myself wasting so much time and money on what I look like — and then resenting myself for it. And it’s not about halakha. Far beyond Orthodoxy’s laws of modesty are the social cues that we inevitably message…
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Culture Amos Oz and Jerusalem: A Complicated Relationship
For Amos Oz, the publication of his memoir “A Tale of Love and Darkness” was an electric moment. “As if I was digging in my own backyard, and I must have touched an underground cable; suddenly the lights in all of the windows began to flash,” he told me in 2011. The book, he said,…
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Forward 50 2018 Ruchie Freier
Judge, Ambulance Group Founder And Community Leader For Hasidic Women When Ruchie Freier announced her candidacy for civil court judge in Boro Park, she enlisted the most loyal staff she could find: Her six children. Her girls, in long pleated skirts, ran around Brooklyn holding petition forms, seeking signatures: “Could you sign for my mother?…
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Forward 50 2018 Basil Herring
Adding New Voices to the Siddur The standard American Orthodox prayer-book has been long overdue for an upgrade. For far too long, it has been defined by its non-literal translations of liturgy, hagiographical commentary, and male-centric language. So when Basil Herring, a South African-born rabbi and former executive president of the Rabbinical Council of America,…
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Life Where Are The Orthodox, After Pittsburgh? We’re Right Here, Mourning With You.
I have been asked, repeatedly, by non-Orthodox Jews about the “Orthodox response to Pittsburgh.” What a strange question. After all, the American Orthodox Jewish community has undoubtedly been plunged into mourning over the Pittsburgh shooting victims. Still, I sense a frustration here, among progressives seeking emotional responses from the Orthodox — and I want to…
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Life Israel Chief Rabbi Didn’t Dismiss Progressive Synagogues. Stop Twisting Words To Sow Division.
Several news organizations (including this one) jumped on an interview with Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Rabbi David Lau, in response to the Pittsburgh shooting. Lau, according to the report, refused to acknowledge that the massacre in Pittsburgh was carried out in a synagogue. The story sparked outrage all over social media, some calling to abolish…
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