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
-
Mourning Ayelet Galena
“With unstoppable tears and broken hearts we regret to announce that last night around 5AM, after hours of fighting and holding on, our precious Ayelet – the heart of our world, the light and strength for so many, could not fight any more.” With those words, Seth and Hindy Poupko Galena shared the news of…
-
In Beit Shemesh, Even Purim Is Politicized
While Purim is still more than a month away, Israeli bakeries are already full of hamentashen and newspapers and magazines are full of advertising campaigns for children’s costumes. In the charged atmosphere of Beit Shemesh, even Purim has now become a battleground in the escalating ‘exclusion of women’ in the ultra-Orthodox community. But the moral…
-
Matronita: Religious Women, Feminist Artwork
“Matronita” — from the Latin matrona, a woman of high social and moral status — is a term appearing dozens of times in the Talmud to refer to a woman who engages in discussions with the rabbinic sages. The word, which can also mean a queen or a partner of a king, is the title…
The Latest
-
Updated: The Jewess of ‘Downton Abbey’?
Update: Shirley Maclaine has just been cast as Martha Levinson, Lady Cora’s mother — and the Dowager Countess’ rival. This is delicious news! Still, I’d have rather have seen Barbra or Goldie Hawn, an actual Jewess, play the part of a Jewish American wanna-be-princess, though I doubt Goldie would be able to overcome her tremendous…
-
Why My Husband Doesn’t Babysit
My husband never babysits — and it doesn’t bother me one bit. Allow me to explain: Following an extended maternity leave, I’m about to return to graduate school to complete my master’s degree in English literature. Naturally, people have been asking me about what I’m going to do for childcare. But since I was able…
-
Missing Voices of the ‘Modesty Crisis’
A Los Angeles-based filmmaker and acting teacher named Robin Garbose recent published this essay in Haaretz, explaining why she became Orthodox as an adult. In her piece, Garbose laments that with the current criticism of Haredi values like gender separation, “the baby is being thrown out with the dirty bathwater.” Garbose writes about why she…
-
Prime Ribs, Israel — Beit Shemesh Attack
A 27-year-old woman was attacked last week while she was hanging posters on behalf of her employer. Natali Mashiah was in the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood when she alleges that a group of Haredi men called her a “slut,” a “shiksa,” and smashed her car’s windshield and windows while she was inside of it. They…
-
Of Hasids, Hipsters and Hipster Hasids
In Crown Heights, a neighborhood that has recently seen lots of change in its population, an article on the Lubavitch website COLLive has sparked a bonfire of reaction. An anonymous “open letter,” titled “Take Back Our Neighborhoods,” urges Jewish landlords in the heavily Lubavitch and West Indian neighborhood not to rent to non-Jews, as it…
-
Books ‘Scribbling Women’ Get Less Respect, More Pay
Female novelists might not be getting the respect they deserve, but they sure can get rich trying. This, in short, is novelist (and, disclaimer, my friend) Teddy Wayne’s response to Jennifer Weiner’s recent post about the New York Times’ persistent bias towards male novelists — an issue that The Sisterhood has been following. Weiner found…
-
Why We Should Care That Newt Cheated
It’s become practically a given that public figures who espouse a strict vision of morality will likely be revealed to have participated in behavior that they now want banned. The more vehement and damning the preaching, it so often seems, the less stringent the practicing. In this election, the allegations of hypocrisy are already becoming…
-
Losing My Appetite for Orthodoxy
Two warring factions, my head and heart, have tussled for decades over the inequality and hurt on the women’s side of the mechitzah. Always, if sometimes reluctantly, my heart wins, and I cling to the curtain folds of observant Judaism. But events in Israel these last few months — segregated buses, ultra-Orthodox extremists jeering at…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Everything you need to know about every Pope Leo — even the antisemitic Leo and the one with the elephant
-
Culture A pocket guide to the Jewish grandmothers of Mexico
-
Opinion I supported Israel’s actions in Gaza in October 2023 — not anymore
-
Fast Forward Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters in Brooklyn as Columbia library takeover fallout continues
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
