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 The Debate: ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ v. Rabbi Shmuley
Later this month, the peripatetic Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is taking the stage at Nessah Synagogue, a Persian Orthodox congregation in Los Angeles, to debate Patti Stanger — the yenta matchmaker of the hit Bravo series “Millionaire Matchmaker.” Stanger, a Jewish, third-generation matchmaker, was profiled by the San Diego Jewish Journal last year. You can read…
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Life Those Passover Pounds
New posts by two of the bloggers I frequently check in on — a young woman whose nom de blog is Material Maidel and Elana Sztokman – focus on food and Pesach. Material Maidel, who writes that she recently moved to New York area from “out of town,” is, I would guess from her posts,…
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Life Daphne Merkin Stops ‘Acting Like the Virgin Mary!’
My favorite essayist, Daphne Merkin, has a piece in the new issue of O: The Oprah magazine, about discussing the topic of sex with her 19-year-old daughter. Titled “Stop Acting Like the Virgin Mary!” — after what her mother exclaimed when the writer brought up fears relating to her own virginity as a young woman…
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Life Why Newsweek’s ‘Most Influential Rabbis’ List Is So Short on Women
Newsweek magazine is out with its annual list of what it deems the 50 most influential rabbis in the country. As usual, women are a tiny number of those selected by the three entertainment-industry figures: the heads of Sony Pictures, News Corp. and Jewish Television Network Productions — all men, and all based in Los…
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Culture Yid Vid: A Condensed Guide to Family-Friendly Passover Videos
Lots of cute Passover videos have been popping up the last couple of years. A reflection of the semi-new hipster Jewishness, I suppose. Search the topic on YouTube and an amazing 3,820 results pop up. Unfortunately, when I searched, the top link is to a video messianic Passover Seder. But look just a little further…
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News Politics And History Pollute Palestinian View of Shoah
Strings of Freedom, the Palestinian youth orchestra from Jenin, has been silenced; its instruments confiscated, its rehearsal space sealed, its director barred from the West Bank refugee camp because she took the teens to play for elderly Israelis on a day designated for kindness. The attempt to do something positive across boundaries of nationality, religion…
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Life Passover Cleaning and Sisters in Brillo Bondage
People go crazy cleaning their houses for Passover. There’s an edge of competitiveness to the kvetching when they say “Oh, Sammy brought chametz into the living room after I turned it upside down to clean it for Pesach (sigh),” or “I told Maddie to stay out of the closet I already cleaned but she got…
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Life What Would Vashti Wear?
From women’s perspectives, there are more layers to be unpacked from the Purim story than there are seeds in a poppy hamantasch. My current favorites are the themes of covering and uncovering as they relate to power and powerlessness — experiences I’ll be tasting in my own Purim costume this year as a totally covered…
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