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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Share Your Experience With The Sisterhood
Shiva and burial services are some of the most challenging moments for all of us, but particularly for women in traditional Jewish communities. Over the next week, The Sisterhood will be collecting stories from women about their experiences in Jewish mourning rituals. Have you felt marginalized by your limited role at a loved one’s funeral?…
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A Woman’s Kaddish
Over the next week, the Forward will be collecting impressions and recollections from women about their role in Jewish mourning rituals. To share your story, click here. Catching a glimpse of your rabbi discreetly sneaking out of the room as you begin a eulogy for your grandfather is a little disconcerting. Two months ago, I…
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Feminism’s Race Problem Surfaces (Again)
Last week Twitter blew up with the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen. The discussion began after a notoriously abusive “male feminist” had a very frightening and nasty public breakdown. But the hashtag itself, started by blogger Mikki Kendall, contained tweets expressing frustration, hurt and, at times, some withering intellectual takedowns of aspects of mainstream white feminism — and…
The Latest
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Bar Mitzvah Pornography
I actually must thank Sam-the-Bar-Mitzvah-video dancer and his family for their voyeuristic and strategically-posted video of the burlesque dance routine that’s been making blogosphere news. They have certainly given us Rabbis fodder for our high holiday sermons. But while many of us are busily typing up diatribes against the excess, the lavishness, the expense and…
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Parenting Gone Wild
I didn’t want to write about Amy Sohn’s story “Modern Mothers’ Turn to Scratch an Itch,” in the New York Times’ Sunday Style section. Any “trend” piece about a handful of wealthy women whose idea of work/life balance is leaving their kids with their husbands at the summer vacation house during the week as they…
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Why Is Anti-Vac the New Black?
I am pro-vaccine. Very. And I think you should be, too, as a parent, a Jew and a fellow citizen. For this reason, I find myself increasingly baffled by the anti-vaccine movement that seems to be gaining steam even as study after study discredits any harmful side effects from vaccinations and children — babies! —…
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Childcare problems? The Jewish Organizational World Responds
In her new story “Motherhood in the ‘Lean In’ Era for Lillith, former Sisterhood editor Gabrielle Birkner takes a look at the childcare crisis and what the Jewish communal world should, and is, doing about it. Daycare programs and tuition subsidies are arguably as good an investment as trips to Israel. And there are fewer…
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Heels Versus Flats as a Married Woman
As a woman, being married is usually not enough to keep a man from looking at you; there’s no obvious sign that I carry around with me that signals my status as a taken woman. I wear a ring, of course, but that’s not noticeable, especially not from afar. I wear a hair covering —…
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Alice Walker Isn’t Welcome — And Rightly So
Alice Walker, the BDS advocate who last summer refused to authorize a Hebrew translation of her Pulitzer-winning novel “The Color Purple,” and who more recently sought to persuade singer Alicia Keys to cancel a performance in Israel, is quick to try to silence others. But now, Walker is declaring herself a victim of censorship. According…
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A Jewish Way to Process Abortion
Over at Tablet, Josie Glausiusz has a reported piece on new Jewish mikveh ceremonies and rituals for women who have had an abortion. Like everywhere else, abortion is a complicated issue in the Jewish community, from the “feminists [who] don’t necessarily want to acknowledge the notion that abortion may be associated with feelings of grief,…
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Sam’s Crazy Bar Mitzvah Draws Rabbi Rebuke
Who in America with a Facebook account hasn’t seen this D-cup of craziness? It’s Sam Horowitz’s big fat bar mitzvah dance number, replete with dancing girls clad in golden sequined mini-dresses shaking everything their mamas gave them to the Christina Aguilera song “Show Me How You Burlesque.” In front of 15-foot-high letters spelling out Sam’s…
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