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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When DIY Was More Than DIY
I recently discovered, and promptly became obsessed with, Emily Matchar’s blog New Domesticity. On the blog and in her upcoming book due out next year, Matchar explores the recent-ish explosion of “lost” domestic arts like bread-baking, bee-keeping and serious DIY laundry (handmade washboard, anyone?). I’d been noticing the popularity of this return to the ways…
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Two Sides of a Cliché Coin
Last season, “The Real Housewives of New York City” started to fall apart. Like many reality show participants, the Housewives were all too aware of their own roles and too obsessed with promoting their products and businesses. So Bravo, the network that airs all of the “Housewives” shows, fired half the cast and brought in…
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My Mom, Her Alzheimer’s, and Me
This post is in reply to Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s Forward piece, “Keeping the Conversation Going: A Daughter Speaks to Her Mother Across the Memory Loss Divide.” When I read Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s article about learning to cope with her mother Betty’s memory loss, Betty reminded me so much of my own mother: vibrant, engaging, talkative,…
The Latest
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My Apartment, My Sukkah
Of all the holidays I’ve never observed, Sukkot has always looked like the most fun. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who celebrated the autumn festival; my awareness of it came entirely from reading. Sukkot would have seemed exotic if it wasn’t somehow so familiar, a combination of Thanksgiving and being allowed to sleep on…
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You Never Know What Can Happen
This post is in reply to Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s Forward piece, “Keeping the Conversation Going: A Daughter Speaks to Her Mother Across the Memory Loss Divide.” The visit to my Dad last week didn’t have an auspicious beginning. For the first time since he entered a nursing home two and a half years ago, he…
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Battling Over Women’s Bodies in Modi’in
This Sukkot, there is a religious battle going on in the city of Modi’in, Israel, and as often happens in such battles, it is being fought over women’s bodies. It actually started this past Passover, when the open, mixed city of Modi’in was inundated with visitors from the neighboring ultra-Orthodox town of Modi’in Illit, also…
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Literary Gender Wars Rage On
Last year, I spent a lot of time writing about the literary feud known as “Franzenfreude,” which occurred when the plaudits received for Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” inspired a big conversation about gender, genre and the marketing, reviewing and treatment of books in the media. Here’s a brief history of the ongoing conversation. Jennifer Weiner…
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Studying Daf Yomi, Together
This post is the seventh in “Feminist, Orthodox and Engaged,” a series by Simi Lampert on love, sex and betrothal in the life of a Modern Orthodox woman. When my fiancé, Jeremy, and I were studying in yeshivot in Israel — at the same time, but completely unaware of one another’s existence — we each…
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Mechila Not Just For Women
This is the seventh in a Sisterhood series on women, apologizing and Yom Kippur. I didn’t know about the custom of asking mechila — for forgiveness — when I was growing up. When I eventually learned about it, early in my career writing about religion, I thought it was a great concept. The message, after…
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Stop Apologizing. Seriously!
This is the sixth in a Sisterhood series on women, apologizing and Yom Kippur. As a professor of Jewish Studies, I find that moments of inspiration present themselves to me readily, like gifts I don’t quite deserve. I read furiously, I attend lectures and intellectual events like clockwork, and I spend time listening to my…
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Grandma’s Gefilte Fish
Every year just before Rosh Hashanah, my mother and I engage in a ritual attempt to approximate my grandmother’s gefilte fish recipe. The recipe itself is an approximation. She cobbled it together from other Holocaust survivors, and perhaps gleaned a few tips from women in a displaced persons’ camp, perhaps remembering bits from what her…
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