Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.
Elissa Strauss
By Elissa Strauss
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Life Yes, Jewish Women Do Wear Lilly Pulitzer
When Lisa Birnbach’s “The Official Preppy Handbook” was published in 1980, the tongue-in-cheek “field guide” to preppy behaviors became a generational phenomenon, spending a year on the New York Times bestseller list and inspiring American fashion for decades to come. Now Birnbach is back with “True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World,” an updated…
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Life Why I Can No Longer Ignore the Striptease-as-Fitness Phenomenon
When striptease-as-exercise first appeared on the fitness scene, nearly a decade ago, I was positive that it would be a flash-in-the-pan fad. So I just ignored it, and haven’t paid it much attention since. But then, just the other day, while checking out the on-demand exercise classes on cable, I saw that one of my…
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Life Slideshow: Women of the Wall’s Photo Campaign
In attempt to counter those who accuse them of being extremists, Women of the Wall — composed of women who gather once a month for a prayer service at the Western Wall — recently asked women around the world to send in photographs of themselves reading from or holding a Torah. The campaign’s goal: Get…
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Life Our Rack: Cooking for Picasso; Mother-Nanny Relations
What’s on ‘Our Rack’: NONFICTION “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement” (Smithsonian) by Jane Ziegelman looks at the eating habits of five immigrant families living in New York’s Lower East Side between 1863 and 1935. Relying on census date, cookbooks from the era and newspaper clippings, Ziegelman…
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News Embracing My Inner Balebuste
As a girl growing up in the 1980s, I was praised by my parents for fairly mundane things: loyalty to siblings and friends, occasional athleticism and a willingness to speak up to adults on behalf of causes I believed in. My father let me answer the phones on “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” My…
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Life Jennifer Aniston as Barbra Streisand
It’s Funny Girl redux. Or, at least, kind of. Jennifer Aniston has been transformed into Barbra Streisand for the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar. (See the pictures here.) Donning looks from Streisand classics like Funny Girl and What’s Up Doc?, Aniston does her best Babs impression, manicured nails and all. The article explains that Aniston…
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Life Anthony Doerr’s Fictional Journey Inside a Jewish Girls’ Orphanage
In “Afterworld,” a novella that closes the new story collection “Memory Wall,” O. Henry Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr imagines life inside a Jewish girls’ orphanage during World War II. The novella tells the story of Esther, an epileptic grandmother in Geneva, Ohio, whose seizures bring her back to the time she spent in the orphanage….
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Life Housewivery’s Stigma
Housework has always been a sticky spot for feminists, an elusive thorn in our forward-moving sides. To some, it is a prison from which women have to free themselves. For others, including countless stay-at-home moms and professional domestic workers, it is work that has never earned adequate respect. This confusion over housework was present in…
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