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 Why We Don’t Need Period Talks
British artist Francis Wheatley’s depiction of mother and her children, probably not having a period talk / Wikimedia Commons In a recent Sisterhood post, fellow contributor Frimet Goldberger writes about how her mother never had a menstruation talk with her until after she got her period. “There was no big fuss made; she didn’t sit…
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Opinion Solitude and Quiet Will Not Cure You
It seemed like a fairly simple task. For a just-published study, researchers asked their subjects to sit in an empty room alone for 15 minutes. The only potential distraction was a device that allowed them to self-administer electric shocks, which they were allowed to try out beforehand. One-quarter of the women and two-thirds of the…
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Opinion No, Birthright Didn’t Kill Max Steinberg
L.A. native Max Steinberg, killed in combat during fighting with Gaza / Courtesy of Steinberg Family I’ve gone on the record about my ambivalence about Birthright, having argued that it actually discouraged a connection to Israel for Jews like me due to the clear bias of its agenda. Should I have been offered a more…
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Life When Women Bully Other Women
Thinkstock The road to the corner office isn’t an easy one for a woman. There is the glass ceiling to break, and then the maternal wall to mount and then, if you get that far, there are glass cliffs to avoid. Oh my! Many are working today to deconstruct these barriers, including pushes for better…
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Life A Work/Life Balance Ketubah
Thinkstock Should couples sign a pre-pregnancy contract, outlining how caring for the infant will be equally divided between the two parties involved? Slate?s Rebecca Onion thinks so. Concerned about the potential negative effects procreation might have her on her life and her relationship with her husband, Onion wonders whether a ?legally binding document, outlining expectations…
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Life Can a Maxi Skirt Bridge Cultural Divide?
Mushky Notik (left) and Mimi Hecht (right) created Mimu Maxi Together, sisters-in-law Mimi Hecht and Mushky Notik run Mimu Maxi, a fashion label the creates clothes that are both modest and chic. The women, members of the Crown Heights Hasidic community, came up with idea for the company when struggling to find something stylish to…
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Life Free Frida Kahlo!
Often, when a member of a marginalized group achieves fame in an area in which her group lacks representation, she becomes an icon. This is nearly inevitable, and continues to happen today to women like Lena Dunham and Hillary Clinton. Being an icon definitely has its perks. People love you. They want more of you…
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Opinion How Female Circumcision Is Different From a Brit Milah
A recent story in The New York Times looked at the rise of American girls who are being sent abroad to undergo female circumcision, which has been banned in the United States since 1996. As Julie Terkewitz reported, about 228,000 women and girls in the United States, members of an African immigrant population that has…
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Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
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