Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at dncnews@icloud.com.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
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Life Crackdown Continues for Women at Western Wall
Add Kaddish to the list of Jewish prayers and ritual objects women are not allowed to be engaged with at the Western Wall, according to the commander of the Jerusalem police. In a March 14 letter to Anat Hoffman, chair of Women of the Wall, Yossi Pariente wrote that he met with a deputy attorney…
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Life Hit-and-Run Tragedy Bridges Jewish Divide
I generally find it hard to feel as if I am part of the same Jewish people as Satmar Hasidim. Living not far from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I see them regularly yet it’s hard to imagine feeling more worlds apart. At the mall I encounter young women — so young that in another life I would…
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Life Why Marissa Mayer Just Doesn’t Get It
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is making headlines for her new decree that company employees will no longer be able to work from home. It is every chief executive’s prerogative, of course, to institute policies that are best for his or her company, and this may well be best for Yahoo. I have no idea. But…
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Life Silent and Invisible on Purim
Should women dress up on Purim to reveal their true selves or to mask them? For religious Jewish women and girls in Monsey, New York, it was a moot question yesterday: They were only supposed to make themselves silent and invisible. An ad in the free weekly circular “Community Connections,” which is distributed widely in…
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Life Sarah Silverman’s Niece Vows to Return to Kotel
The teenager arrested on Rosh Chodesh Adar at the Western Wall for wearing a prayer shawl on Tuesday convinced Jerusalem police to withdraw their 15-day ban on her returning to the Kotel. She plans to go to the Kotel on Monday to chant from the Megillah with other members of Women of the Wall in…
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Life Women of the Wall Rally Hits NYC in March
A prayer rally is being planned for Rosh Chodesh Nissan on March 12 to provide a way for Jews in New York to stand in solidarity with Women of the Wall, who will be praying at the Kotel that same morning. The rally, billed as “Wake up for Religious Tolerance: Rosh Hodesh Nissan Solidarity Minyan…
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Life Women of the Wall: Canaries in the Coal Mine
Ten women were arrested by police at the Kotel Monday morning after celebrating the start of the Jewish calendar’s most joyous month, Adar, while wearing their prayer shawls. This time, they had a large crowd of supporters and were joined by several of the men who, as young soldiers and paratroopers, liberated the Kotel in…
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Life Seder Plate Orange: Now At Pottery Barn
If ever there was proof positive that a once-marginal feminist Jewish ritual is now mainstream, this is it: The latest Pottery Barn catalog touts a new seder plate — holding an orange. The modern, leaf-themed Passover tabletop accouterment has seven compartments. In addition to spaces for the ritual re-telling’s traditional symbols, there’s a leaf meant…
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