Sarah Seltzer
By Sarah Seltzer
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Life Chill Out With Halloween, the ‘Secular Purim’
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe it’s time to chill out with Halloween, or the “secular Purim” as we Jews call it. Personally, I love all festivities that involve dressing up and getting creative and weird, but I’ve been disturbed of late that the costume trend has gotten both more and more frighteningly…
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Life The ‘Meh’ Generation
My relationship to feminine appearance-enhancing rituals is always inverse to how tired and busy I am. Sure, I have become a marginally more “put together” person over time, competent enough to get my basic life and work tasks accomplished and also to put on concealer before I swing back out my door for evening outings….
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The Schmooze Mourning Lou Reed — the Man Who Taught Me To Be
I first heard those eerie xylophone notes that open the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” when I was 14, sitting on the rug of my friend Mollie’s bedroom. A moment later, I heard Lou Reed’s voice for the first time, and everything changed. That day, we were two Upper West Side Jewish girls who showed up…
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Life Stopping Binge Drinking Won’t Stop Rape
No self-serious feminist strain of thinking posits that it’s an act of resistance to binge drink. Philosophically speaking, getting inebriated beyond rational capacity is hardly an empowering or equalizing behavior — in fact by its very definition it is the opposite. Yet the mythical booze-pushing feminist is a straw woman who continually gets cited when…
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Life Secular Spirituality Is Not an Oxymoron
Recently while talking with champion swimmer Diana Nyad, Oprah Winfrey expressed confusion over the concept of Nyad’s being both an atheist and a spiritual person capable of awe. David Edwards at Raw Story summarized their encounter Oprah Winfrey recently spoke to atheist long distance swimmer Diana Nyad and told her that she definitely wasn’t an…
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Life I’m No Pew Survey Poster Child
Until recently, I was a poster-child for the kind of attrition from Jewish life that the recent Pew Study, subject of so much angst in the media, describes. I eschewed nearly all organized Jewish activities in the decade after my first Hillel dinner at college, which I fled screaming. Okay, I wasn’t quite screaming, but…
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Life Shutting Down Women’s Healthcare
Women were caught in the crosshairs of the government shutdown this week, which, as this much-shared stunt photo of a group of eight white male Republicans demonstrates, appears to be as much about testosterone and saving face as it is about helping America move forward. Look into the causes for this week’s shutdown, and you’ll…
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Life The Patriarchy Alive and Kicking
Slate recently ran an excerpt of Hanna Rosin’s book “The End of Men” under the purposefully provocative headline “Feminists, Accept It: The Patriarchy is Dead.” The article suggests that professional women, even professional feminists, have access to living the “good life” in a way they never had before. They’ve won! Certainly, this may be true…
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