Digest: Should Kagan Join JDate? Is Sarah Palin a Feminist?
Sisterhood Digest:
• Maureen Dowd, writing that Elena Kagan “as resigned herself to a cloistered, asexual existence,” suggests that the nominee for the Supreme Court join JDate.
• Australia says no to a burqa ban. Read our recent Sisterhood post on recent efforts to ban the veil.
• The online Jewish women’s magazine 614 is out with a new issue all about the Jewish psyche. It features pieces about psychoanalysis’ Jewish roots, a social worker who combines handwriting analysis with Jewish mysticism, and what Jewish women talk about with their therapists.
• Over at Tablet, Adam Kirsch reviews the new English translation of “The Life of Irène Némirovsky,” a biography of the Russian-French “Suite Française” author whose conversion to Catholicism didn’t save her from being sent to — and killed at — Auschwitz.
• Jewish Woman magazine profiles Jewish mothers of special needs children who have become activists for the rights of the disabled.
• Is Bethanny Frankel of “Real Housewives” fame Jewish? During a recent televised interview, she answered that question like this: “No, I don’t consider myself Jewish. My dad was Jewish and my mom converted … but I don’t think of myself as Jewish.” Her response is rubbing some people the wrong way.
• Sarah Palin is no longer shying away the word “feminism”, And Meghan Daum, writing in the Los Angeles Times, says that if Palin “has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she’s entitled to be accepted as one.” But Taylor Marsh, on the Huffington Post says Palin isn’t worthy of the title: “Anything less than supporting women’s full individual rights simply renders you a pretender, a fake, a feminist fraud.” Watch Palin drop the F-bomb here.
A message from our Publisher & CEO 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 so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
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
