Jennifer Thompson
By Jennifer Thompson
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Opinion Birthright’s insulting obsession with intermarriage is erasing young Jews
The results are in: Birthright is a success. Or at least, this is the message of a new report out of The Cohen Center’s Jewish Futures Project which measured the impact of the ten-day free trip to Israel for Jewish North Americans. But what do they mean by success? A closer look at the study reveals…
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Opinion This Yom Kippur, Jewish Institutions Must Take Responsibility For Enabling #MeToo Abuses
Jewish experience turns on vulnerability: So much of our communal discourse and action flow from Jewish fears about assimilation, anti-Semitism, the fate of Israel. Yom Kippur adds the dimension of also being vulnerable before God. Thinking of God’s power to write you into the book of death is meant to inspire a feeling of being…
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Opinion Jewish Education Must Include Sexual Ethics
The Jewish Theological Seminary, one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, recently dismissed a Title IX sexual assault complaint on the grounds that the student’s misconduct happened before he was a student there. It may be that the Title IX process does not cover the sexual assault in this case. But JTS’s…
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Opinion It’s Not Just Steinhardt. Jewish Organizations Keep Sacrificing Women
In the wake of a New York Times article outlining a pattern of sexual harassment by Jewish philanthropist and billionaire Michael Steinhardt, two of the women named in the article have written about their experiences. Rachel Sabath and Sheila Katz both wrote about feeling belittled and disrespected by Steinhardt’s sexual comments and propositions to them…
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Opinion MeToo Needs A Forgiveness Option, And Judaism Can Provide It
Many famous men have lied about sexually harassing women and have subsequently lost their jobs and social standing. They deserve to pay for their actions, and should repent. But because this problem is systemic, we need systemic repentance as well. The Jewish practice of teshuvah, or repentance, is about “return” to the right behavior, and…
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Opinion Look Who’s Raising Jews
What do you call people who study Jewish traditions, regularly attend synagogue and work hard to raise Jewish children? Often we simply call such people “non-Jews.” According to the 2000–01 National Jewish Population Survey, 24% of people living in Jewish households are not Jews, the result of an intermarriage rate that was estimated to have…
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