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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News Jewish Traditions Through a Mexican Lens
Religion and national culture can make for strange bedfellows. And as evidenced by the availability of items like the political-themed yarmulkes the McCippah and the Obamica, American Jews have come a long way in blending the two. Mexican Jews, on the other hand, are still working on their balancing act. In his soon-to-be released film,…
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News Legendary Optical Shop Looks to the Future
When the doors shut at the original 2nd Ave Deli and at Ratner’s delicatessen, the long-standing Jewish establishments on Manhattan’s Lower East Side received elegiac goodbyes in the press and on the streets. For many, these erstwhile eateries were among a number of examples of how the Jewish presence in the Manhattan neighborhood is quickly…
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Israel News Fashion Maven’s Yiddish Style
As the creative director of the hip department store Barneys, and the author of four books and a regular column on style in The New York Observer, Simon Doonan has established himself as one of New York’s chief purveyors of cool. Expectedly, his writing includes the occasional French phrase, standard when discussing haute couture and…
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News Wearable Art: Israeli Designs on Display
A new exhibit at the largest museum in New Jersey, The Newark Museum, presents a side of Israeli art rarely seen outside the country. The show, titled Women’s Tales: Four Leading Israeli Jewelers, contains the work of several of Israel’s pre-eminent contemporary jewelry makers, whose designs explore themes of living as a woman in Israel….
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Culture Food Freedom: A Celiac’s Passover Story
Tell a Jew you have celiac disease, and the response is almost always: “So like Passover, but year-round?” Yes, I reply, but without the matzo. Indeed, life with celiac disease — the autoimmune deficiency in which gluten, the proteins found in wheat, rye, oats, barley and malt, cannot be tolerated — is much like Passover…
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News Keeping Kosher Gluten-Free
For Sandee Hier, making a Friday night challah was no ordinary endeavor. With a husband and two kids who are gluten intolerant, creating bread that measures up in taste and appearance to the real thing was a mighty challenge. But after five years of experimenting in the kitchen, Hier finally came up with something she…
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News ‘Sabado Gigante’ Host Gets Personal… and Brings Cameras
As host of what the Guinness book of world records calls the “longest running show on television,” Chilean TV personality Don Francisco has hardly lived a private life. But throughout his 46 years on the air, there has been part of the talk show host’s life about which he has always remained silent. Don Francisco,…
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Israel News Israeli Singer Tops iTunes
Generating buzz for pop music was once the territory of MTV and radio, but television advertisements are quickly becoming musical tastemakers, and there is no hipper marketer on this front than Apple. No wonder, then, that Yael Naim’s song “New Soul,” featured in the ubiquitous MacBook Air commercial, has garnered the French Israeli singer a…
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