Judy Bolton-Fasman
By Judy Bolton-Fasman
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Life Gilad Shalit Inspires My Daughter To Join the IDF
My daughter was the first person to tell me that an agreement had been reached for Gilad Shalit’s release. Her voice was joyous in a “shouting-from-the-rooftop” kind of way. Shalit’s captivity has been very much on my teenage daughter’s mind since she saw the halting video of Gilad as a prisoner of war two years…
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Life Thoroughly Modern Mikveh?
Given that rabbinic laws of family purity alternately repel and fascinate me, I recently decided to confront my prejudice and attended a panel discussion on “Exploring Contemporary Understandings of Niddah” at last week’s Mayyim Hayyim conference on all things mikveh. While I’m offended by the idea of clean and dirty or pure and impure when…
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Life Training Mikveh Ladies — and Other Lessons in Immersion
The staff at Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh loves to think up catchy program titles having to do with — what else — water. Their latest wordplay, “Gathering the Waters: Ancient Ritual, Open Access and New Meaning,” was a spectacular, bustling conference, held earlier this week and dedicated to all things mikveh. Mayyim Hayyim…
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Life An ‘Advice Goddess’ on the Age of Rudeness
Amy Alkon, the witty syndicated advice columnist behind “The Advice Goddess,” thinks rudeness has reached epidemic proportions. Alkon opens her book “I See Rude People” with a description of being subjected to a stranger’s decibel-crushing cell phone conversation. And woe to the person who shouts out his phone number within earshot of Alkon. She’s at…
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Life Pearl Abraham Branches Out
After the recent attempted car bombing by a Pakistani-born American citizen in New York’s Times Square, Pearl Abraham’s fictional exploration of the radicalized mind in “American Taliban” (Random House) is especially pertinent. The book is loosely based on on the story of John Walker Lindh — the young American who joined the Taliban, returning to…
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Life Rebecca Rosen: Nice Jewish Girl and Psychic to the Stars
For the past few years, I’ve been waiting for my Dad to come by for a nice, long chat. He’s been dead for seven years, but that’s no deterrent. Six years ago I began a memoir about the year I said Kaddish for my Dad. Dad was ill for years, until Parkinson’s Disease literally choked…
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Life Senator-Elect Scott Brown Channels His Inner Jewish Mother
Dear Ayla and Arianna Brown: I have an explanation for your father’s election night announcement that you are both “available” to meet men: He was simply channeling his inner Jewish mother. Ladies, your dad probably just wants you to be happy, healthy and, in the not-too-distant future, married (as long as it’s to to a…
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Life Coming to Terms With My Mother’s Half-Century-Old Lie
When I heard that Leslie Starobin, a Boston-based artist, was looking for first generation Jewish immigrants from Latin America for her series of montages called “The Last Address,” I got in touch with her. She was thrilled to hear from a Cuban-American Jew — a so-called Juban — and felt it was fortuitous that I was…
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