Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Digest: Patenting Genes, Sara Netanyahu’s Tsuris

The Sisterhood Digest:

• Israeli soldiers, in Haiti to assist victims of last week’s catastrophic earthquake, delivered a healthy baby, over the weekend, in a makeshift hospital that the Israel Defense Forces set up on a Port-au-Prince athletic field. The baby’s mother reportedly plans to name her newborn son “Israel.”

• As Myriad Genetics prepares to go to court to defend its right to patent two genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer — genes that are most prevalent among Ashkenazic Jews — the Los Angeles Times comes out in favor of barring patents for gene sequences.

• Sara Netanyahu is being sued by a former housekeeper, who is charging that Israel’s First Lady was emotionally abusive. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, Mrs. Netanyahu “expected [the housekeeper] to be on call 24 hours a day, and once even phoned her at 2 a.m. to reprimand her for failing to properly cover a pillow.” The Prime Minister’s office says the woman’s claims are false, and that she received warm and affectionate treatment from Mrs. Netanyahu.”

• Joy Ladin, a Yeshiva University English professor and a transgender woman, describes what it’s like to pray on both sides of the Western Wall’s mechitza.

• In other Kotel news, writer Phyllis Chesler compares Israel’s treatment of the women’s prayer group Women of the Wall to “Komeini-ism,” and urges the Israeli Parliament “to undertake the long overdue separation of synagogue and state.”

• How did a Texas preacher’s daughter find herself at the center of Rabbi Leib Tropper’s sex scandal? Tablet magazine explains.

• A Jewish Israeli woman who is married to a jailed Palestinian man has managed to make her way, via taxi, from her home in Gaza to Israel. In tow were her young children. Her journey was reportedly facilitated by Yad L’Achim, a controversial organization that helps Jewish Israeli women get out marriages to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

• Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick writes about the women’s anti-war organization Code Pink’s recent attempt to enter Gaza via Egypt.

• Israel’s justice minister recently endorsed the idea of applying halacha to the state’s legal system. Rivkah Lubitch looks at what doing so could mean for Israeli women’s civil and property rights.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.