Gabrielle Birkner
By Gabrielle Birkner
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Life Coco Chanel, ‘Horizontal Collaboration,’ and Outfitting Occupied Paris
The designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel had a well-documented affair with the Nazi officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, with whom she lived at Paris’s Ritz hotel throughout the German occupation of France. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the new biopic “Coco Before Chanel” (French-language trailer below), which portrays Mme. Chanel as an up-by-her-two-toned-ballet-flats heroine…
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Life Fasting While Pregnant?
Of the four fasts commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, Tisha B’Av is the only one in which traditional rabbinic authorities don’t widely exempt pregnant and nursing women. In the following video, posted Tuesday on Web Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Brovender — who is not a medical doctor — states that “there is…
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Life Mikveh = Quiet Time
Three days before my wedding last month, my friend and fellow Sisterhood contributor Debra Nussbaum Cohen accompanied me on my inaugural visit to the mikveh. While I’m not particularly observant, I have long been inspired by the Jewish ritual bath as a metaphor for renewal — an opportunity for a fresh start, in whatever area…
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Film & TV ‘Over the Hill’ at 24?
If you’re Orthodox and female and live on the Upper West Side, how old do you have to be to qualify as “over the hill”? “If you’re not married, let’s say, by the age of 24, 25, there’s something wrong with you,” explained one of the talking heads featured in the trailer of J.J. Adler’s…
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Life Media Roundup: ‘Taliban Mom,’ Shabbat in Prison, Egg Trafficking
• Bad-mommy news out of Israel is in abundance this week, between Jerusalem’s “starving mom,” whose arrest sparked street riots, and the child abuse conviction of “Taliban mom” of Beit Shemesh. Sure puts these “bad mommies” in perspective. • In the wake of the ordination of Alyssa Stanton, the first black female rabbi, Moment magazine…
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Life OU Booklet Alleges Vatican Collaboration With Hezbollah
A booklet that alleges that the Vatican is in cahoots with Hezbollah was published by a branch of the Orthodox Union and was, until recently, being distributed to Israeli solders. Haaretz is reporting that the booklet — purported to be narrated by a Hezbollah leader who converted to Judaism, changed his name to Avi, and…
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Life Shmuley: I Foretold Jackson’s Demise
In the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is, not surprisingly, all over the place — weighing in on the Gloved One’s decline and demise. In this opinion piece in today’s Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes that, back in 2004, he foretold Michael Jackson’s untimely death: In the two years that I…
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Life Rabbi Shmuley on the Gloved One, z”l
As you’ve probably heard, pop superstar Michael Jackson died today at age 50. The music icon had a short-lived, but well documented, friendship with Rabbi (and author and television star) Shmuley Boteach. In 2003, the British Web site “Something Jewish” published a Q&A with Rabbi Shmuley about his relationship with the King of Pop. Read…
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