Media Roundup: Mikveh and the Single Girl, Nude Ladies Parties

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
• “The Good Body,” a follow-up to “The Vagina Monologues” by playwright Eve Ensler, top right, centers on a Jewish woman of a certain age who undergoes surgery to make sex more pleasurable for her husband.
• Rabbi Andrew Sacks thinks more mikvehs should open their doors to non-married women.
• Jeffrey Zaslow, the Forward’s guest Bintel Brief columnist in March, is out with a new book, “The Girls from Ames” (Gotham), about the enduring friendship of 11 women who grew up together in Ames, Iowa.
• The global recession could usher more Haredi women into the workforce.
• What goes on at Israel’s Nude Ladies Parties? One writer finds out.
• Jessica Queller, bottom right, a former “Gossip Girl” writer who had a prophylactic double mastectomy after finding out she had a breast cancer gene common in Ashkenazi Jewish women, discusses her pregnancy triumph.
• Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish woman who has become a prominent New Testament scholar, speaks with The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle about why “churches are increasingly recognizing Jesus’ Judaism.”
• Phyllis Chesler pays tribute to Holocaust heroine Irena Sendler.
• The Jerusalem Post has an essay about women behaving badly on JDate.
• The Chabad-sponsored Annual Jewish Women’s Parenting Conference, to be held May 14 in Westport, Conn., will feature Rebbitzin Esther Jungreis’s daughter Slovi Jungreis Wolff, out with the new book “Raising A Child With Soul” (St. Martin’s Griffin), and Rosalind Wiseman the author of “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence” (Crown, 2002).
• Israeli filmmaker Nurit Kedar’s new documentary “Chronicle of a Kidnap” focuses on the tireless work Karnit Goldwasser to free her husband, Ehud, who, in 2006, was kidnapped by Hezbollah near Israel’s Lebanese border.
Hello, fellow Forward reader! I’m Joel Brown, a Forward reader and supporter for more than 15 years, and currently the chair of the board of directors.
I’m an avid Forward reader because it ticks so many of my essential boxes: excellent journalism, Jewish focus and diverse viewpoints. In today’s political climate, what I most appreciate is the Forward’s independence — made possible by the generosity of its membership.
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— Joel Brown, Forward board chair
