Elana Sztokman
By Elana Sztokman
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Life Women in Israel Fight for Their Voice
When asked at a JOFA panel about the status of women in Israel and what can be done to protect women’s basic rights, I replied that I would first make it illegal for a political party that has no women on its list to run for the Knesset. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this sentiment….
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Life Battling Over Women’s Bodies in Modi’in
This Sukkot, there is a religious battle going on in the city of Modi’in, Israel, and as often happens in such battles, it is being fought over women’s bodies. It actually started this past Passover, when the open, mixed city of Modi’in was inundated with visitors from the neighboring ultra-Orthodox town of Modi’in Illit, also…
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Opinion We Don’t Do Forgiveness Well
The High Holidays don’t work for me. I know that Yom Kippur is supposed to be the holiest day of the year, and I’ve read and listened to many great ideas about how Yom Kippur is supposed to work on supreme spiritual issues and in sanctifying relationships and community. And I’ve been trying it out…
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Life Arrested For Wearing A Tallit — Or Being A Woman?
Four women were taken into custody by the police on August 19 (Rosh Hodesh Elul) for wearing a tallit (ritual fringes) at the Western Wall, making Israel the only country in the world where wearing a tallit can be illegal, and the only country where there is a proposed law — submitted by ultra-Orthodox politicians…
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Life Who Cares What Hillary Clinton Wears?
Clothes may not make the man, but apparently they do make the woman. In America, it seems that no matter how successful, intelligent or high-ranking a woman is, she will ultimately be measured by her looks. At least that’s the message gleaned from a recent interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan:…
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Life Goodbye — And Good Luck! — to Joanna Samuels
When Rabbi Joanna Samuels was six years old, she drew a typical child’s picture — with stick figures and awkward shapes — and then wrote, “When I get to be a mommy, I will get a job.” That picture, which has been hanging in a frame for 35 years, moving with her from home to…
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Life Tel Aviv Rape, Blanket Indictment
It never ceases to amaze me how some so-called leaders will use women’s issues to advance their own agendas that have nothing to do with women. The overtly racist statements coming from the Shas government minister Eli Yishai last week in light of a Tel Aviv rape case were particularly troubling. When the police arrested…
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Life When Orthodox Men Get Personal
The strangest part of Monday night’s panel discussion of my new book, “The Men’s Section,” about partnership synagogues, or Orthodox congregations in which women play key roles in leading communal prayer, wasn’t that the four-person panel was made up of all men. All-male panels are so common — to wit, I passed by a poster…
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