Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the robust lives of American Jews. Here there’s a little of everything about the multifaceted world of Jewish life. There are light-hearted Jewish celebrity stories and shocking Jewish celebrity news. Food is also plentiful,…
Life
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How Carolyn Goodman Quietly Took Reins From Flamboyant Hubby in Las Vegas
(JTA) — You haven’t heard a lot about Carolyn Goodman, which may be just how she wants it. Goodman, 76, was elected mayor of this city in 2011, succeeding her husband, Oscar Goodman, who had served three terms and was barred by term limits from running for a fourth. She was reelected last year. Whereas…
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The Rise of the Jewish Single Woman
Oy, the single ladies. In many circles of the Jewish community, this is the cry. Woe to the single women—those who are single by choice and those who are still hoping to get married; those who are divorced, those who are widowed, those who were never partnered—and the children they could be having but aren’t….
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Is the Kotel Compromise Another ‘Status Quo’ Agreement?
Yesterday the leaders of the Reform Movement in Israel and the U.S. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the deal to expand the egalitarian prayer plaza at Robinson’s Arch. Less than a year ago, on the day I was viciously stomped in the stomach at the Kotel, a friend cynically asked: “Why did you put yourself…
The Latest
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When Is Internet ‘Get’ Shaming Kosher?
In recent years, the power of social media has been harnessed to shame men who refuse to grant a “get,” or Jewish divorce, to their wives. YouTube, blogs, Facebook and an old-fashioned demonstration helped free last month. Porat, an Israeli woman who had been waiting for a divorce for eight years after her husband had…
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What We Can Learn From Hillary Clinton, Mark Twain — and a Hasidic Master
On the wall of the administrator’s office at my Hasidic elementary school in Brooklyn’s Boro Park in the 1980s hung a curious sheet of paper with an English-language quotation, incongruous against a wall of Yiddish and Hebrew notices and talmudic citations. The sheet was an enlarged photocopy of comments written by Mark Twain. “The Jew,”…
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Spoofing the Sex-Drenched Zionism of North American Jews
Good satire depends not only on distancing the viewer from the object of ridicule, but on making them identify with it, if only just a little. For North American Jews who’ve grown up with affection towards Israel, a new video blog (or vlog) does just that. is a sendup of sex-drenched Zionism which purports to…
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When an Orthodox Rabbi’s Wife Doubles as Sex Therapist
(JTA) — What makes for good sex? It’s an unusual question for the wife of an Orthodox rabbi to talk about publicly, but Doreen Seidler-Feller has made a career of it. A clinical sex therapist and professor at UCLA, Seidler-Feller has been married to Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, the campus rabbi at the UCLA Hillel, for more…
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What Happens When An Israeli Woman Admits to Regretting Motherhood?
The opening paragraph of a recent article on the sociologist Orna Donath includes the phrase “professional iconoclast” in reference to Donath and her work on Israeli men and women who don’t want to be parents (as opposed to “childfree,” which has no direct translation to Hebrew). Donath, a post-doctoral student at Ben Gurion University, is…
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With or Without Taylor Swift, the Kids Are Alright
Several hours before Taylor Swift won best album of the year for the second time at the Grammys, I was privy to an incisive analysis of the pop star. The conversants were approximately ten and eleven years old and were discussing their pop music likes and dislikes at a sports club in New York City….
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Matchmakers Make Comeback in Age of Tinder and JDate
Sara Malamud of World of Singles is based in Israel, but only works with Americans. Jewish romance has changed dramatically since Yente the matchmaker inspired fear, hope and singing from the characters of “The Fiddler on the Roof.” Today, it’s all about swiping left or right and perusing endless dating websites. But a small group of…
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Israeli Breast Cancer Survivor Filling a Niche with Nipples
(JTA) — Michelle Kolath-Arbel squeezes a nipple, rolling it in her fingers with a look of mild disgust. This model, which Kolath-Arbel ordered from China two years ago for $50, is thick and crude and took three months to arrive in the mail. “It was hard, rubbery,” she said. “It looked like a doll’s. My…
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