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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What the Gosnell Horror Reveals About the Abortion Debate
Last week, after a steady Twitter campaign by the right wing, several journalists — I’m looking at you, Dave Weigel and Jeffrey Goldberg — spoke up for the first time about the continuing tragic case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, now on trial for murder in Pennsylvania. In their minds, apparently, Gosnell’s nightmare of a law-flouting…
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How to Fix American Day Care
After finishing Jonathan Cohn’s new story, “The Hell of American Day Care” about the potential tragic consequences of the abysmal day care policies in the United States, it took everything I had to not get up from my desk and wrest my baby boy away from his caretaker’s arms. The fact that they were only…
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Nauseating Ad Shows Woman as Meat
Hungry for a nice steak? An advertisement for the Israeli restaurant Angus Meat may just turn your stomach. It features an attractive, skinny woman, photographed naked with her body marked up like that of a cow chart on a butcher’s wall. Body parts are labeled: shin, shoulder, foot. Her bottom is labeled “fat.” The banner…
The Latest
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Having Some of It
When Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” came out, it immediately saturated the public consciousness. I didn’t know precisely what “Lean In” meant (it seems most people debating it now aren’t entirely sure either) but I could tell the concept would irk me. And that’s because it sounded so suspiciously…
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The Only One Not in Grad School
A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I were at a lunch hosted by one of our friends in our community. There were 11 people there, all around our age, and all more or less Modern Orthodox. I was the only person there who is not in graduate school. This is a phenomenon I noticed soon…
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First Ultra-Orthodox Sex-Segregated Playground Opens
The reportedly first sex-segregated public playground in the country has been opened in Kiryas Joel, the ultra-Orthodox enclave in Monroe, NY. According to YourJewishNews.com, Kiryas Joel’s Satmar Hasidic community has built on 283 acres on the city’s outskirts a playground that completely separates boys from girls. More accurately, the space is divided into four areas:…
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Trailblazing Woman Joins Orthodox Montreal Shul
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Montreal’s largest and oldest Ashkenazi synagogue, has become the first Canadian congregation to hire a graduate of Yeshivat Maharat, the Bronx yeshiva that ordains women. Rachel Kohl Finegold, 32, is one of three graduates of the yeshiva’s inaugural class. She will be moving with her family from Chicago to Montreal, where she…
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‘Brazen’ Women of the Wall Arrested, Charges Dismissed
The five women arrested at the Kotel Thursday morning while participating in a Rosh Chodesh prayer service with Women of the Wall were released by the judge before whom they appeared in a Jerusalem court in a move described by the women’s prayer group as “groundbreaking precedent.” About 300 women, including two members of the…
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You Are Not Washed Up, Yale SWUGs!
Have you heard about “senior washed up girls” — or “SWUGs”? They’re the latest acronym for a sexual trend that affects Ivy Leaguers, in this case young women at the end of their college careers discovering that (either due to free will or lack of options) they do not care anymore: about grades, hookups, relationships…
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Jewish Feminist Shulamith Firestone’s Lessons
A young woman from a strict Orthodox family clashes with her father, leaves home and finds a home of sorts in the “Movement” — first the New Left of the 1960s, then the explosion of radical feminism out of that group’s fed-up female contingent. Her forward-thinking writing and organizing electrifies this new “wave” of feminism,…
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Coming Out of the Child-Free Closet
In February 1997, Ellen Jaffe Gill’ s essay on not wanting to have children, was published in Moment Magazine. In the piece, Jaffe Gill (then McClain) discussed how her decision not to have children did not prevent her from engaging fully in Jewish life. As a writer, she was in fact transmitting the covenant on…
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Culture I ranked the NYC mayoral candidates exclusively based on their bagel orders
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Opinion Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right
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News An Alabama millionaire offered Jews $50,000 to move to his town. 16 years later, what’s left?
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