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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Jerusalem Official Opposes Segregation, Loses Role
Jerusalem City Council Member Rachel Azaria quickly paid a high price for standing up for what she believes in. On October 17, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat stripped her of her portfolios on the city council that concern community councils and early childhood issues. She was being punished for petitioning Israel’s High Court of Justice to…
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JDater Allegedly Stole Hearts and Money
It’s always horrible to hear stories of people getting swindled for thousands or millions of dollars. But I always feel an extra wrench in my heart and an extra dose of righteous anger when the swindler is someone involved in a romantic relationship with his victim. It feels like a double dose of larceny –…
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When Sukkot Is a Festival of Sex Segregation
Israel’s High Court of Justice has just ruled that there can no longer be gender segregation on public streets of the Haredi Jerusalem neighborhood Mea Shearim, according to Haaretz. Except this year, the ruling states, when a barrier of up to 26 meters long may be erected to separate the sexes during the festival of…
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A Mother’s Joy in Gilad Shalit’s Imminent Release
I am surprised, I confess, by the depth of my feeling about the announced deal that will reportedly free Gilad Shalit from Hamas’ captivity. I have friends who feel conflicted about the price Israel will pay for the deal. More than 1,000 Palestinian convicts, many of them the “hard prisoners” known to be particularly dangerous,…
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Gilad Shalit Inspires My Daughter To Join the IDF
My daughter was the first person to tell me that an agreement had been reached for Gilad Shalit’s release. Her voice was joyous in a “shouting-from-the-rooftop” kind of way. Shalit’s captivity has been very much on my teenage daughter’s mind since she saw the halting video of Gilad as a prisoner of war two years…
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How Surviving Attempted Rape Changed Me
It is fair to say that I became a distance runner during the very long four minutes I was being chased by a man determined to rape me. It was then that my sense of invincibility disappeared. I swore that if I got out of the situation unscathed, I would never again exercise alone in…
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Ranking Women’s Status and Why Lists Don’t Work
Newsweek recently put out an issue dedicated to the status of women in the world. In it was a ranking of the 20 best and worst countries for women with the usual suspects at the top, including Scandinavian countries, and the usual suspects at the bottom, including Saudi Arabia and countries in Western Africa. The…
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Why I Spent Yom Kippur at Steve Jobs’ House
I didn’t go to synagogue for Yom Kippur’s concluding services on Saturday afternoon. Instead, I went to Steve Jobs’ house. I got out of my skirt, put on some sweatpants and biked over to his house, just a few blocks away from mine in Palo Alto, California. There, I joined the crowd that had come…
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Why My Yom Kippur Is at Occupy Wall Street
On the Friday night immediately after Rosh Hashanna, my son Dan called for Shabbat dinner at Occupy Wall Street. There were about 25-30 of us who made kiddush, ate cholent (which translates these days into vegetarian chili), had tuna fish instead of gefilte fish and drank lots of juice while eating home-made challah. When a…
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A New Space for Women in Crown Heights
In a Hasidic community, where ritual life is separate for men and for women, there is lots of ‘women’s space,’ like their section at synagogue and at the mikvah. But recently there has been a new kind of space for women, one created by Bronya Shaffer. Bronya, a life-long adherent of the Lubavitcher rebbe and…
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Prime Ribs: Madonna Back at Kabbalah Center
The recent controversy surrounding Madonna and the Kabbalah Center’s charity work in Malawi seems to not have had any lasting effect on her relationship with the organization. The singer was spotted taking her kids to the Kabbalah Center in New York to observe the days of repentance according to Ynet. Zehavit Cohen, who is one…
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