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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Like Faigy Mayer, I Was Shunned When I Needed My Community the Most
Faigy Mayer’s tragic death, along with the news coverage, conjecture about what happened and whose fault it was, has brought me right back to the grief and rejection I experienced during my divorce five years ago. I did not know Faigy and I definitely don’t know why she died. But as someone raised in the…
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Is Orthodox World Really To Blame for Faigy Mayer’s Suicide?
In bright pink paint, the words “Life is Beautiful” are splashed in graffiti on a wall in New York’s High Line, next to a young 30-year-old woman named Faigy Mayer brandishing a paint roller with a mischievous grin. The cover photo which illustrated countless tabloid news articles on Mayer’s death Tuesday, topped a Facebook timeline…
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Tackling the Gendered Language of Tisha B’Av Liturgy Through Textile
Tisha B’Av traditionally commemorates the destructions of the first (586 BCE) and second temples (69 CE) as well as a host of other tragic historical events. The first time I went to synagogue on Tisha B’Av at 20-years-old, I found the experience isolating: we are supposed to come together in community and sit silently, low…
The Latest
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Egyptian-American Feminist Lifts the Veil on Misogyny in the Arab World
On April 23, 2012, in the midst of the Arab Spring, Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-born journalist, published an article in Foreign Policy magazine called “Why do they hate us? The real war on women is in the Middle East.” That article is now the first chapter of Eltahawy’s book, “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle…
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Rachel Dolezal, My Mother and Raising a Child of Color
I have often thought that my story could only exist in America. I have a German Catholic birth mother, a birth father who is the descendent of African slaves, and I was raised by Jews with Eastern European ancestry. As a person of color, a biracial woman, and a transracial adoptee, it is a particularly…
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Tisha B’Av, Tu B’Av and My Journey of Sexual Healing
I recently participated in a panel on Judaism and Sexuality where I spoke about the potential of healing and transformation in sexuality. Where once there was only hurt, we can have corrective experiences around our vulnerability that allow us to access pleasure and joy in sexuality. In my experience this has required my willingness to…
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Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Women Don’t Regret Abortion
(Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 95 percent of women surveyed in a new U.S. study said they didn’t regret having an abortion and felt that the procedure was the right decision for them. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine followed more than 600 women who underwent the procedure from…
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More Revealtions Regarding Israeli Rabbis Accused of Sexual Abuse
Over the past week, two men heading religious institutions in Israel have been added to the notorious roster of suspected sex predators in the religious Jewish world. Rabbi Ezra Scheinberg was caught by police two weeks ago at Ben Gurion airport trying to avoid arrest on charges of rape, sexual harassment and indecent assault. Ten…
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Why Orthodox Jews Should Watch ‘Magic Mike XXL’
As the lights dimmed for a Monday evening showing of “Magic Mike XXL” in a suburb of Tel Aviv, I spotted a solitary Haredi woman a few rows in front of me. I remarked to my friend that a film dedicated to the exploits of male strippers was far from “tznius,” the rules of modesty…
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Dior’s Pretty New Face? An Unknown Israeli Teen Model
Fourteen-year-old Sofia Mechetner from Holon, south of Tel Aviv, is the newest Israeli model to make it big in the international fashion world. Mechetner has signed a two-year contract with the famous Dior fashion house in Paris, where she will be an in-house model – although she has no prior experience at all. The new…
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How ‘Inside Out’ Changed My Parenting Philosophy
The new Pixar film “Inside Out,” centers around an eleven-year-old girl named Riley going through a tumultuous time in her life- a big move, a new school, and tension with her parents. As viewers, we get a glimpse into her head, and learn of five key emotions represented by different animated characters— Joy, Sadness, Anger,…
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