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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Rashida Jones, Jewish Feminist Hero
You think it would be easy for feminists to just say no when others challenge their choices, but, in reality, most women still have to yield to the will of others in what is still largely a man’s world in order to get things done. Well Rashida Jones, star of NBC’s hilarious (and nonchalantly feminist)…
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Concubines Are Kosher Now
The chief judge of Jerusalem’s rabbinical court, Rabbi Eliyahu Abergel, recently ruled that a man may take a concubine if his wife is unable or unwilling to bear children, and unwilling to divorce him. According to an article in Israeli newspaper Israel haYom, Abergel permitted the head of a major yeshiva to take a pilegesh,…
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Sexy Moms, Sexy Daughters?
A new study just came out saying that a growing number of girls as young as 6 want to be considered sexy. It found that media consumption on its own didn’t influence girls, but watching a lot of TV and movies and having a mom who is concerned with being sexy can cause young girls…
The Latest
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Go Aly! Oh Drat, I Already Know She Won
I didn’t expect to actually care about the Olympics. Even though I grew up in a house of guys, with baseball bats and football cleats and ESPN constantly running through the TV room, I was never that interested in watching televised sports. I like playing soccer. I do not like watching tiny ant-people scurry across…
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Women Still in “Kitchen” of Talmudic Study
There will be lots of women at the big Siyum HaShas — which is the celebration of the completion of the daily study of the entire Talmud, which takes about 7½ years — on Wednesday evening. But they’ll be hidden behind a 25-foot high mechitzah, being installed at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey at a…
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Blognik Beat and the Future
For the past six months Blognik Beat has been dedicated to exploring the past, present, and future of Russian-Jewry. Its bloggers have reached back into time to re-tell the story of their ancestors, of their hardships in the Soviet Republic and their struggles in acclimating to a new world. But this blog has not strictly…
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How To Cover My Hair
This post is the third in “Feminist, Orthodox and Engaged,” a series by Simi Lampert on love, sex, and betrothal in the life of a Modern Orthodox woman. It’s not exactly revelatory that people tend to categorize one another. This isn’t necessarily malicious — honestly, it’s probably useful in some ways. Jews are no exception,…
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A Champion for the Developmentally Disabled
It’s not every day that Tina Brown describes someone in her column in The Daily Beast and Newsweek as “an amazing woman.” But Brown, who has a 26-year-old son with Aspergers Syndrome, described Fredda Rosen just this way. Rosen is executive director of Job Path, a not-for-profit organization helping adults with developmental disabilities find jobs,…
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Mourning Aurora
Terry Tempest Williams is an extraordinary writer. She recently published a memoir inspired by boxes of journals her mother bequeathed to her – all of them blank. There was not a single word on those fresh, white pages. They were, as Williams wrote, “paper tombstones.” That’s what I visualize — paper tombstones — as I…
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No More Jewish N-Word
In March, I wrote a blog post about how I feel lucky for never having had the word nigger used towards me. In 2012, decades after the Civil Rights movement, the word is still on the lips of many and is often used as venom. It continues to conjure hatred, fear and pain, the same…
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Why Marissa Mayer’s Choice Scares Me
Like Elissa Strauss, I read the story about Marissa Mayer’s “soft” maternity leave with fascination and concern. I agree with Elissa that for many women, the ability to keep one hand in the work pot after the arrival of a child might be intellectually beneficial, good for morale and helpful for career prospects. I wish…
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Fast Forward Trump taps shock jock Sid Rosenberg and a Haredi newspaper publisher for Holocaust Memorial Council
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