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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Pregnancy Has Only Made Her More Pro-Choice
On the new episode of The Jewish Channel series “The Salon,” co-hosts Forward editor-in-chief Jane Eisner and TheLi.st founder Rachel Sklar discuss some exciting news: Sklar’s recently announced pregnancy. In the clip, Sklar talks of the joys and challenges in being 41, single and pregnant. Unexpectedly, Sklar says her pregnancy has only increased her support…
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Mussolini’s Jewish Lover Who Helped Launch Fascism
Margherita Sarfatti, Photograph via Wikicommons (Haaretz) On November 14, 1938, shortly after the Italian Racial Laws were passed, Margherita Sarfatti slipped out of her home near Lake Como, got into her car and asked her chauffeur to drive her to the nearby Swiss border. Among the few belongings the Jewish socialite and art critic had…
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‘A Woman of Valor, Who Will Find?’ Check Her Hair
Photograph courtesy of Sarah Zell Young After college, I became traditionally observant for the first time, taking on a chunk of religious obligations without really understanding them. Newly relocated to New York, I was new to graduate school and new to the study of Torah. I found a rabbi to teach me the ins and…
The Latest
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Reinserting Women into the Holocaust Narrative
Jewish women in Budapest, October 1944. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons (Haaretz) – On October 7, 1944, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz blew up a crematorium in an attempted revolt that, while ultimately futile, has become a powerful rebuttal to the claim that Jews succumbed to the Nazis without a fight. Many know this story but few…
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Advocating for Orthodox Feminism While Male
Photograph via cafepress As the associate director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), Aaron Steinberg plays a direct role in shaping the trajectory of Orthodox feminist advocacy. In the lead up to JOFA’s “UnConference” on Sunday in New York, the Sisterhood’s Sarah Breger spoke with Steinberg about the future of Orthodox feminism and what…
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The Phantom Yiddish Writer
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Shoshana Rose was so beloved a performer and writer, that when she died in November of 1968, Editor Moishe Crystol dedicated space in his weekly editorial column to underscore the magnitude of…
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A Grandmother’s Report From Har Nof
Photograph courtesy of Tziporah Heller Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller is a popular teacher at Har Nof’s Neve Yerushalayim College, whose grandson and son-in-law were at the Har Nof synagogue on Tuesday morning. Here is an update Heller sent to family and friends following the attack, published with her permission: Dear Friends, At about 7 am my…
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On Bill Cosby, Why Did It Take Us So Long?
As the long-known rape accusations against comedian Bill Cosby come to our collective attention, it’s hard not to wonder what took so long? Yesterday Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a reflective piece on this subject over at theatlantic.com that reads like a mix of mussar and atonement. Coates recounts his reluctance, when profiling Bill Cosby in 2008,…
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When A Nice Jewish Boy Marries Out
Getty Images I think Keren McGinity has a crystal ball. McGinity, a groundbreaking scholar, captures the telling details and the idiosyncratic trajectory of interfaith relationships and marriages in America. But as academic as McGinity’s work is, it is also highly personal. Her parents, both Jewish, divorced when she was ten years-old. Each of them went…
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The Power of Touch — and Contra Dancing
From the time I was a young child and attended high holiday services, I always felt a shiver up my spine during the prayer where the community begs God not to abandon them like the way elders are forgotten during their old age. This notion became particularly acute in my job as a social worker…
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Why Is ‘Mikveh Suicide’ a Fiction Motif?
(Haaretz) — Imagine a young Orthodox woman being forced, against her will, to marry an older man who disgusts her. Seeing no way out, she commits suicide – by drowning herself in a mikveh. Now imagine another young Orthodox woman being forced to marry an older man who repulses her. She goes ahead and marries him,…
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