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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Going Gaga for ‘Girls’
I’ve felt for a long time that the problem with the rise of bromance/male slacker comedy isn’t that it elevates immature dudes into leading men, but rather that it pairs them up with too tightly wound ladies. It’s what David Denby called the “slacker-striver” pairing, and it was popularized by Judd Apatow. In short: putting…
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When Women Fail To Thrive, Who’s To Blame?
The list of top earners in Israel’s publicly traded companies was published last week by Yediot Aharanot’s Mamon magazine. There is only one woman on the list: Stella Handler. She’s the director of the cable network Hot, and Handler stands out for her gender, with a salary of 14.82 million NIS annually (approximately $4 million)….
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The Line in the Sand
Growing up as a single child to a Russian Jewish immigrant family, I have always felt the pressure to succeed. In a Russian Jewish home, success is often defined as perfection. Though I don’t know much about life in Russia, I can imagine that people were more invested in becoming “perfect” rather than taking a…
The Latest
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Why There’s No Escape From Passover Cleaning
Passover has always been my least favorite holiday. Those who know me well, or have simply been reading my columns and blog posts over the years, will understand why: I hate to clean. My deep dislike of cleaning and housework knows no particular season. To me, it is the ultimate Sisyphysian waste of time, especially…
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Passover Down Under
When I was younger, I was never too excited for Passover. Eight days of no bread?! How would I survive? Later, in my teenage years, I used eight days of no bread and other kitniyot as a means of being on a diet. But the past few years, I have come to appreciate how important…
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Motherhood, ‘Otherhood’ Inspired Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich has died, and a voice who provided invaluable insight to the discourse on motherhood, on feminism, on Jewish identity and on sexual politics, has been stilled. Rich, who was 82, died Tuesday at her home in California. Described in her New York Times obituary, as “a poet of towering reputation and towering rage,”…
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Kadima Without Livni
Tzipi Livni, the incumbent Kadima chair who lost Tuesday’s party primary to former Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, is not your typical Israeli politician. She’s just not slimy enough. When she speaks, she seems to be telling you what she actually believes. In a profile of her in Yediot Aharonot last year, the worst thing…
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Trayvon, and the Case for Newsroom Diversity
The New York Times pointed out an interesting subplot to the coverage of the terrible story of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager who was killed by an armed volunteer neighborhood watchman. Though Martin was shot to death on February 26, it took several weeks before it became a national story. The reason that the story…
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Our Russian-Style Seders
Every April, in the households of Jewish families, we know that Passover is coming. The holiday that defines our freedom as a people is integral to our history and has become a symbol for our incessant struggle to gain liberty and justice as a free people. Of course those who are religious or are aware…
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A Jewish Feminism for Global Challenges
This is the seventh entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. As a child in the 1940s and ’50s, I unknowingly experienced Jewish feminism before it really existed. Beginning in 1938 my mother, Marjorie Wyler, worked full-time as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s director of public relations, radio and television; it was a position she…
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At Brooklyn Girls School, Facebook Is Off Limits
One Hasidic girls school is demanding its students remove their Facebook pages. Noncompliance means expulsion. Beth Rivkah High School, in the heavily Lubavitch Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, is requiring 11th grade girls with Facebook pages to cancel their accounts and pay a $100 fine. That’s quite a U-Turn from the school’s position in 2010,…
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