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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In Praise of the New Ex-Hasidic Reality Show
My friends and I are celebrating the news that a group of our friends — all former ultra-Orthodox Jews, or maskilim — are getting their own reality show. We maskilim have been living on the fringes of the Jewish world, many of us navigating dramatic journeys of self-discovery as we pull ourselves free of our…
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What It Takes To Get a ‘Girlfriend’ Movie Made
Last week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music ran a series of “girlfriend” movies curated by upcoming HBO series “Girls” creator and lead actress Lena Dunham. For the opening night of the series, which I had the pleasure to attend, Dunham chose “This is My Life,” Nora Ephron’s 1992 directorial debut and the best mother-daughter movie…
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In Israel, Jewish and Feminist Selves Do Battle
This is the ninth entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. The first time I entered an Orthodox synagogue and saw a mehitza, or divider separating men and women in prayer, I was a little girl visiting my grandparents in Queens. Their home wasn’t religiously observant in the slightest, but my grandfather had grown…
The Latest
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Lighten Up About Weight? Not Yet
It’s been two years since I’ve experienced symptoms of an eating disorder, such as skipping meals or over-exercising, but I’ve thought about the disease every day since then. In our world, it’s hard not to. I’m reminded of it when I see my friends who have eating disorders post on Facebook about the challenges that…
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Touches of Home at an Istanbul Seder
Passover in my family has rarely been a formal affair. At one point, when I was a child and my family still observed a few watered-down traditions plucked out of the Jewish canon, we would gather round a makeshift Seder table to read selections from the ShopRite Haggadah. A Seder plate and stack of supermarket…
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The End of Feminist Seders?
Google “feminist seder,” and links to articles about Seders long passed come up. Google “women’s seder,” however, and you find links to dozens of current model Seders for women, run by synagogues, JCCs and other Jewish institutions all over the country. The word feminist doesn’t appear. Outside of the original, private feminist Seder — still…
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How Passover Pits Women Against Women
Pesach is one of my favorite holidays. I love the educational, creative possibilities of the Seder, the opportunity to debate, discuss and dramatize our collective history. Over the years, my family has done some wonderfully imaginative things at the Seder table — plays, original songs, games, colored dips, hand-made pillows, and even a puppet show…
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How My Seder is Different
Year to year there isn’t much change when it comes to my Passover Seder. Wine, matzo, and politics are always the dominant features. But this year I want to be conscious of the message the Haggadah provides and what it means to me. Searching for that meaning forces me to look back on the vastly…
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Living Without a 1% Nanny
Last Saturday I sat, coffee in hand, looking through a local website’s classifieds section for a nanny. “CPR certified nanny fluent in three languages with 10 years’ experience seeks new family,” one ad read. “Do we want a sitter who’s CPR certified?” I asked my husband. He looked at me quizzically. “Well, yes. Of course.”…
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Should We Lighten Up About Weight?
That now-infamous Vogue essay in which mother Dara-Lynn Weiss writes about putting her 7-year-old daughter on a diet — Weiss resorts to such tactics as occasionally refusing the youngster dinner, and publicly shaming her when she wanted to go off of her diet — has gotten the author a book deal and some public shaming of her…
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My Feminist Formation
This is the eighth entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. I’ve always felt that I was born a feminist. Seeing injustice and protesting it as a child, my eyes were too big and my voice was too loud. The disparities were offensive: in the synagogue, at homes of my Hasidic relatives, at my…
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