Elana Sztokman
By Elana Sztokman
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Life Between Baalat Teshuva and Britney Spears
When I was an 18-year-old yeshiva high school graduate from Brooklyn, one of the biggest questions on the minds of my female friends and me — right after, who will get engaged next? — was, who is going to “frum out” in Israel? You know, it’s what happens during that post-high school yeshiva experience in…
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Life Why It’s Hard To Be a Zionist and a Feminist
The overwhelming assumption in many circles is that anti-Zionism is the only authentic feminist position. This knee-jerk position assumes that caring about human rights and equality necessitates a view Israel as a great patriarchal enemy. I support Jewish-Muslim women’s peace efforts, and I completely support the notion that women must play a key role in…
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Life Watching My Daughter Fly
I have a knack for embarrassing my children. Like when I sing along while they listen to “Funkytown” with their friends (is it my fault 80’s music is the new retro fad?) Or when I start doing the hip-hop line-dance to Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine” in the middle of the living room. “Ima, please…
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Life Barring Bar Refaeli’s Body: Boon or Bane?
There are only two people whose gargantuan faces greet drivers along Tel Aviv’s Ayalon highway. One is the larger-than-life-even-in-death Lubavicher Rebbe. The other is Bar Refaeli, possibly the most recognized Israeli face (and body) among American adult males. Both billboards – and the glaring absence of any others – are indicative of the frightening and…
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Life Malcolm Gladwell’s Woman Problem
In the perennial debate over “nature versus nurture,” most people subscribe to a rather wishy-washy idea eloquently referred to as the “bit-of-this-bit-of-that” theory. But not Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is author of bestsellers “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”, along with a new book, “What the Dog Saw.” In his book “Outliers,” another of his brilliant explorations…
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Life When Divorce Is a Reason To Celebrate
“Rachel” an ultra-Orthodox mother of 12 living in Jerusalem, got divorced this week. It’s cause for celebration for two reasons. First, this grants her much-needed freedom from her severely violent and erratic now-ex-husband, a man who viciously controlled, manipulated and abused her and her children during the marriage and separation. But the real jubilation is…
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Life Fomer Gur Hasid: ‘A Hole in the Sheet’ Saved My Life
Sara Einfeld says that “A hole in the sheet” saved her life. The 25-year-old former Gur Hasid and mother of two from Ashdod said in an interview in last weekend’s Yediot Aharonot that she was choking in her life, “a carbon copy of masses of other ultra-Orthodox women, all about kids, cooking, husbands, and meeting…
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Life A Jewish Nobel Prize Winner’s Gift to Girls
When Professor Ada Yonath, the bubbly, animated scientist with Einstein-like hair as well as intelligence, received the phone call several days ago informing her that was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, she thought someone was playing a joke on her. “I said, ‘Yeah, right, so should I make an appointment for the hairdresser…
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