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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The Male Rosa Parks?
When thinking about gender segregation, most of us think of discrimination against women, as when women are forced to go to the back of busses or denied seats if there is no room left in their section. Recently, however, Israeli man Assaf Musman found himself tossed out of a shared van shuttle taxi, called a…
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Earning My Hebrew Accent
I spent the summer before college holed up in my room in front of my laptop watching strange cartoon letters take shape and trying to replicate them on my own. I was teaching myself Hebrew. I’d just been to Israel twice and had become deeply embarrassed that I could not understand a language that was…
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New Approach in Israeli Agunah Cases
There’s a new tool in the kit available to women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce which, according to an Orthodox reading of Jewish law, only a man can give. In Israel, women have begun to file damages claims against their estranged husbands in civil court, and it appears that the threat…
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Learning How to Flaunt It
It was August in Cairo, and the intense desert heat was simply unbearable. Because of my father’s job, my family and I had just moved to the city from Urbana, Ill. It was 1981, and I was about to enter the 7th grade at the Cairo American College, a K-12 school that served Egyptian and…
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Delivering a Baby in Silence
Can you imagine giving birth in silence? Me neither. But at least one woman so driven by piety (and perhaps mental illness) did so, staying silent through the rest of the day, apparently because she made a vow of silence, or taanis dibur. While her husband was at synagogue, one recent Shabbat morning, this woman…
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Are You There Judy Blume?
If you’re anything like me — and millions of other Americans — then Judy Blume was as much a part of your childhood as Trapper Keepers and summer camp. (Ok, so I was a child of the 80’s and I didn’t even go to camp, but you get the point). Rereading Are You There God?…
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The Ambivalent Joy of Camp Season
Several years ago I talked through this dilemma with my therapist: I couldn’t seamlessly switch back and forth between mommying and working. When I was on deadline and working from home, as I mostly do, and in the flow of writing a sentence or article, it would be terribly aggravating to have to stop to…
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Anne Frank, the App
Earlier this month I found myself waiting in an hour-long line outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Antsy, I decided to download the free “Anne’s Amsterdam” app that was advertised outside the museum. A quick download from the iTunes store and — Voila! —“Anne’s Amsterdam” was installed on my home screen. There was her…
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Fiercely Independent Jewish Women
Crossposted from Jewesses With Attitude. We recieved wonderful tributes from the JWA community responding to our call for submissions on the Fiercely Independent Jewish Women that have inspired us in our lives. As we celebrate our country’s independence today, let us toast these fine women (and those in our thoughts not mentioned here) for the…
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More Inequality in Israel
As I returned home this weekend after spending three days representing the National Council of Jewish Women at the Israeli Presidential Conference last week in Jerusalem, I reflected on the fact that the very fundamental issue of inequality in Israel was not addressed in any meaningful way. In fact, women who were asked to speak…
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Happy Birthday Gilda Radner!
Before Kristin Wiig, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey were earning laughs on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner graced the stage of studio 8H as one of the original queens of comedy. Whether as the frizzy-haired Roseanne Roseannadanna, the hard-of-hearing Emily Litella, or the unintelligible Baba Wawa (a parody of Barbara Walters), Radner, who would have…
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