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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.

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