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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On Segregated Buses, a Choice that Isn’t
Dr. Hanna Kehat?s mother did not ride her local bus for three years. The 78-year-old lifelong resident of the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood Mea Shearim lost her bus because Haredi extremists would stone the bus every time it rode down her street. So Egged simply stopped the route, forcing her and many of her car-less neighbors…
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Insisting on a Jewish Prenup
In her Sisterhood post “On Agunah Issue, Pressure Rabbis, Not Rep,” Dvora Meyers takes on a grassroots campaign to pressure Michigan Rep. Dave Camp to condemn what we consider to be abusive behavior by his staffer, Aharon Friedman. In the past, Camp has called Friedman’s refusal to grant his wife a Jewish divorce decree, or…
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Seeing Beauty in ‘Making Trouble’
By fourth grade, I was already a troublemaker ? taking on any boy who dared to challenge, in the classroom or on the playground, girls? equality or worth. I learned from the best of the troublemakers, women who refused to take no for an answer when going after what they want: my mother and my…
The Latest
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Where an M.R.S. Degree Is a Course Requirement
Is marriage a legitimate prerequisite for a university course? That is what some female students are asking at Bar-Ilan University. The controversy surrounds a course in “marital communications,” which we told you about here. It requires those who enroll be married for at least one year. The course is intended for those who want to…
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Gendered Text Doesn’t Spoil New Haggadah
Kathleen Peratis wrote in this Sisterhood post that she seriously considered taking her 24 copies of “New American Haggadah” back to the bookstore, after she realized that the Passover manual doesn’t use gender-inclusive language. I’m clearly expecting fewer seder guests than is Peratis. I own one copy of the aforementioned Haggadah, and have every intention…
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Why I’m Shopping Around My ‘Ex-Frum’ Memoir
Gavriella, I understand from this Sisterhood post that you don’t like the questions you’re getting in the wake of the publication of Deborah Feldman’s memoir and Pearlperry Reich’s television appearance about leaving the ultra-Orthodox world. I understand that you may feel attacked, when these women criticize their communities of origin. But to me, a writer…
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Prime Ribs: Missing Waitresses and ‘Taliban Women’
Where are the … waitresses? Not at one popular Jerusalem eatery, at least not on Thursday evenings. That’s apparently when yeshiva boys descend on Heimische Essen to get their fill of kugel and kishka. In an effort to secure the über-strict Badatz kosher certification, Heimische Essen has agreed to employ an all-male wait staff on…
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Sandra Fluke and the Big Jewish Conspiracy
The latest salvo from the trenches of the extreme right against Georgetown Law student and contraception advocate Sandra Fluke is the most absurd yet, and matches the other slurs in offensiveness. Her latest crime is — wait for it — dating a Jew. Yes, it’s not enough that Fluke had the gall to stand up…
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Second Edition Feminism
This is the fourth entry of an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. In the introduction to my first book, “The New Jewish Wedding,” I wrote, “References to the rabbi as him/or her do no more than acknowledge the decision to ordain women by the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements.” That was 1985. When I revised…
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The Limits of Childhood
When is a kid not a kid? Perhaps when he’s old enough to carefully set up his computer camera to spy on his roommate in the supposed privacy of their college dorm room, and use texts and Tweets inviting friends to watch a live feed of the roommate’s gay sexual encounter. The roommate, Tyler Clementi,…
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A Russian On Campus
Last year, with each college campus I visited, the tour guide raved about the uniqueness of each brick that made up this or that structure, the new “green” innovations on campus, and the dining hall filled with organic and environmentally friendly food. What these guides also emphasized was the diversity that existed on their campus….
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