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 [email protected].
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
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Life Questioning Debbie Friedman’s Private Life
I am disgusted by what someone who goes by “DLevy” has written about Debbie Friedman on the Jewschool blog, breaching basic standards of dignity and respect, and what people are sending around the Twitterverse. As Debbie’s funeral is livestreamed, people watching and posting comments are conjecturing about whether her partner will be named. I’ve been…
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News Debbie Friedman, Beloved Jewish Composer and Performer, Dead at 59
Deborah Lynn Friedman, the beloved and influential composer and singer who transformed contemporary American Jewish prayer and music, died Sunday of complications of pneumonia. She would have turned 60 in February. Friedman, known to everyone as “Debbie,” had been hospitalized for the past week in an Orange County, Calif. hospital after falling ill while at…
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Life Sending Our Prayers Higher for Debbie Friedman
As our previous post noted, Debbie Friedman is seriously ill and needs our prayers. She has a special place in my heart, as she does in the hearts of countless others, because Debbie is an extraordinary person with extraordinary gifts and an extraordinarily generous spirit, and she has made a remarkable impact on our lives….
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News Popular Jewish Singer and Composer Debbie Friedman in Critical Condition
Update: Singer Debbie Friedman died Sunday, January 9 at a Southern California hospital. The Sunday gathering, at the JCC in Manhattan, which was to be a healing service, will go on as a memorial service. A worldwide effort is underway to bring about healing for one of American Judaism’s most beloved composers of healing and…
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Life The Most Complicated (and Expensive) Kind of Assisted Reproduction
Best new word of 2011 (okay, so it’s early yet): “twiblings,” a term coined by writer Melanie Thernstrom to describe her two children, a boy and a girl, who were created using Thernstrom’s husband’s sperm and eggs from one donor. The resulting embryos were implanted on the same day into two different gestational surrogates, and…
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Life A Mitzvah Project With the Help of Online Crowd-Sourcing
How does an 11-year-old girl raise nearly $9,000 for a worthy cause in just over two weeks? By tapping the power of online crowd-sourcing. A couple of months ago, Abby Hofstetter began volunteering at the Masbia soup kitchen with her parents and younger brother at two of their four “restaurant without cash register” locations, which…
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News Euphoria Over New Chancellor of JTS Is Tempered by Criticism and Concern
Ask people about Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, and many compare him to Barack Obama. Both started in their current jobs as the economy was crashing, faced daunting challenges not of their making and were brought in to create change. Both have also become lightning rods for criticism. Eisen has…
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Life Where in the World Is (Alleged Madoff Co-conspirator) Sonja Kohn?
In photos, accused Bernard Madoff co-conspirator Sonja Kohn looks something between the prototypical bubbe and the Queen of England, though she may be richer than the queen. Ms. Kohn, the Austrian-born, fervently Orthodox founder of Bank Medici, reportedly steered more than $9 billion from investors into Madoff’s hands for at least $62 million in kickbacks….
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