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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Lean In and Pay More Taxes
Getty Images You can add the IRS to the long list of institutions, including public schools and corporations, that still haven’t caught up with the reality that women work now too. As Think Progress reports, married women who earn about the same as their husbands are hit with a big tax bill. And the more…
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Throwback Thursday: Pianist Myra Hess
Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Though acclaimed for her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, Myra Hess, born in 1890, achieved artistic heroine status for her deep and abiding faith that art and music must…
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Where Are the Israeli Female Small Business Owners?
Renee Ghert-Zand // Israeli women network at the business conference Israeli women, like their counterparts in the United States are, in parlance popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, leaning in. However, although Israel is “start-up nation,” it is no leader when it comes to women and business. I got a chance to learn more about this at…
The Latest
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Feminism Is Better Than Therapy
Vivian Gornick On the website of the Believer there is an excellent interview by Madeleine Schwartz with Vivian Gornick, who is a journalist, feminist, critic, memoirist and just all-around woman you should know and read. Gornick, who was born in the Bronx in 1935 to a couple of Jewish lefties, “grew up torn between the…
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I’m Moving Back to Kiryas Joel
Getty Images // Families in Kiryas Joel Recently, while sitting at a relative’s wedding in Kiryas Joel and picking at the soggy stuffing under the skin of the chicken thigh and listening to the gossip around me, I had an epiphany: I really, badly miss Kiryas Joel. So, when I got home and kicked off…
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Keeping Track of Orthodox ‘Tznius Craziness’
tznius craziness // An ad for children’s costumes shows female faces blanked out. Do you have the sneaking suspicion that an extreme focus on women’s and girls’ modesty has become the new normal in much of the Orthodox community? One man has gathered the evidence into an Evernote virtual notebook he titled “tznius craziness.” The…
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Shameful in Beit Shemesh
(Haaretz) — It was as frightening as any terrorist attack, recounted the young woman assaulted in broad daylight at a bus stop in Beit Shemesh last week. But in fact, it was probably worse. After all, one might presume that if an Israeli Jewish woman had been attacked by a Palestinian in the middle of…
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Why Are Strong Female Characters So Thin?
Lionsgate Publicity // Jennifer Lawrence as “The Hunger Games’” Katniss Everdeen Over at the Atlantic, Julianne Ross has a piece about the predominance of scrawny women in young-adult fiction. From “The Hunger Games” to “Divergent,” a new wave of popular books features skinny girls acting tough. “It seems literature only goes so far in its…
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Remembering Rivka Haut
Courtesy of Phyllis Chesler // Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut, right Yesterday, a fearless and legendary leader of Jewish women, Rivka Haut, was memorialized, mourned and buried. The funeral took place at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale on March 31. Rabbi Avi Weiss compared Rivka to black fire and white fire — the black fire…
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So Long, Schmekel
Schmekel was Brooklyn’s trans Jewish band. The group’s lyrics probed queer and trans identity to a klezmer/punk beat. In February, after three years of musical irreverence the group disbanded. “Schmekel ended amicably,” drummer Simcha Halpert-Hanson said in an email to the Forward. “We felt finished with the project and wanted to pursue other life goals…
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Birth of the Future for Transgender Jews
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of the introduction from the Forward’s new ebook, Transgender & Jewish. Buy it now on Amazon. This is a book about the birth of the future — a future that was unimaginable to me for most of my life, and that is still unimaginable for many American Jewish communities,…
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