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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Prime Ribs: Kat Dennings Is My Homegirl
Actress and my new favorite Jewess Kat Dennings tweets: “Every time a magazine Photoshops my nose, a Nazi gets its wings.” Israeli couples are looking to create more egalitarian wedding ceremonies while still staying within the confines of Jewish law, but it isn’t easy, reports JTA. Some rabbis make the women take mandatory “bride classes”…
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Adina Bar Shalom: Courageous Haredi Leader
Adina Bar Shalom is often introduced as a rabbi’s daughter or a rabbi’s wife, but it’s really her own mind that makes her so extraordinary. A pioneering leader within Israel’s tight-knit Haredi community, the 66-year-old Bar Shalom has been making headlines by espousing courageous views about religion and state in Israel. She is emerging as…
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Israel’s Gender Segregation Fight Gains Key Allies
The State of Israel was established on the basis of equality between the sexes. I oppose discrimination of any kind against women. We are a single island in a much larger area, a single island in which the status of women is ensured by law. But this is insufficient. We still have much to do…
The Latest
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Rachel Azaria on Israel’s Gender Segregation
Every area pertaining to religion and state has been defined in recent years as a battle between secular and Haredi Jews. That has been the accepted view in Israeli society: Ultra-Orthodox and secular are the two camps, and they fight. Shabbat, kashrut, the so-called hametz and pork laws: All the battles have been portrayed in…
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Miriam Perez, Radical Doula
Miriam Zoila Perez has worked in the reproductive justice movement for more than seven years, She is the founder of Radical Doula, a blog that covers the intersections of birth activism and social justice from a doula’s perspective. You might also know her from her work at Feministing.com, where she is an editor. Her writing…
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Holiness and Sex Ed
“His main premise is that young people will tune out educators if their real concerns are left in the shadows.” In the end, that perhaps was the most important line of all in the recent New York Times Magazine article, “Teaching Good Sex,” by Laurie Abraham. The article described a course given by a beloved…
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Millionaire Matchmaker Rachel Federoff
It’s hard to take your eyes off of matchmaking maven Patti Stanger on her show Millionaire Matchmaker. As she selects women to date her millionaires (or occasionally men to meet a female millionaire, or men for a gay millionaire), zinging critiques of their hair color, weight or attire, she is usually bracketed by Rachel Federoff,…
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When Women Are Attacked for Speaking Out
“A Woman’s Opinion is the Miniskirt of the Internet.” That is the title of an op-ed piece in Britain’s “The Independent” that a friend of mine recently sent me. It is by Laurie Penny, a 25-year-old writer known by many for her blog, “Penny Red,” and is about the horrific hate mail she receives on…
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Journalist Mona Eltahawy Assaulted in Egypt
American-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been freed after being beaten, arrested and interrogated by security forces in Cairo. Eltahawy, 44, has reported that she was also sexually assaulted during her 12-hour detention. She is in Egypt covering the violent protests in Tahrir Square and its environs. Eltahawy is the first Egyptian journalist to have lived…
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Q&A With Author Yona Zeldis McDonough
Yona Zeldis McDonough is a Brooklyn-based award-winning children’s author who also has a successful career as a fiction writer for adults. Many know her by the picture books she has created together with her mother, the celebrated self-taught artist Malcah Zeldis. This month, her newest children’s chapter book, “The Cats In The Doll Shop” has…
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Don’t Judge Women Sitting at Back of Buses
To walk a mile in another woman’s shoes, Nancy Kaufman of New York recently boarded a gender-segregated public bus in Jerusalem. The CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women took a “freedom ride” with a group of colleagues while recently visiting Israel to experience what it’s like to be a woman and assume that…
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