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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Finding a Friend’s Forgiveness on Facebook
I plug her name into the Facebook search engine and there she is: my former friend, Bea. The years have been kind to her: She’s not looking too much older, I see essentially the same face that was smiling next to me in my wedding photos when she served in the role of unofficial maid…
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Hatzalah Should Allow Female EMTs
“Modesty” is again holding back women in the Haredi community. Although I don’t agree with it, I can sort of understand how the prohibition against women sitting in the front of a bus, walking on a certain side of the street or talking on cell phones in public can relate to tsnius, or modesty, and…
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Will Jews Wearing Burkas Open Pandora’s Box?
Are the practice of forcing young girls to walk around draped in black sheets, denying them formal education and coercing them into early marriage the markings of a cult? Should such communities that do these things be illegal, and should girls whose parents join such a community be removed from their custody? Israelis are now…
The Latest
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Why ‘Can’t’ Is no Longer a Four-Letter Word
A few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, my older sister invited me to join her family and our mother in New Jersey for the holiday. “Is it a three day Yom Tov?” I asked, referring to when a holiday is followed immediately by Shabbat. “I don’t think I can handle that,” I said. My sister, though…
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Q&A: Hanne Blank’s Quest for Body Acceptance
Hanne Blank’s books include the forthcoming “Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality” (Beacon Press, 2012) and “Virgin: The Untouched History” (Bloomsbury, 2007). She has been an advisor and editor at Scarleteen, a sexuality education and support organization and website, where she offered advice on kosher sex. Blank’s classic sex and body-acceptance book, ”Big Big…
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Wigging Out Over the Sheitel Business
On Rosh Hashanah, Jewish liturgy tells us that we can avert the evil decree in the coming year through tefillah, teshuvah u’tzedakah (prayer, repentance and charity). However, after reading a recent article in the New York Post, I was left to wonder how some Orthodox women have any money left for tzedakah after they spend…
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If Jewish Women Were Scandalous as Men
What if Jewish women behaved as badly as their XY chromosomal counterparts? What if we were to flip the genders of Eliot Spitzer, Bernie Madoff, Anthony Weiner and Dominique Strauss-Kahn so that it was a Jewish woman who paid for sex, who swindled billions, who sent nudie pics via Twitter and who assaulted a hotel…
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Sexy Wins Over Tragedy For Marilyn Monroe
The New York Times recently confirmed what I had been starting to suspect. Marilyn is back. In “A Marilyn Obsession,” Austin Considine writes about Marilyn Monroe’s new ubiquity, and points to a new movie, book, television shows and clothing lines that all revolve around the actress in time for the 50th anniversary of her death….
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Why Do Hasidim Live Like Saudi Women?
It looked, this week, like there might be progress for women in Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah granted women the right to vote, and to run for election to municipal councils and be appointed full voting members of the Majlis Al-Shura, a government advisory group. According to a New York Times editorial this week, however, women…
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Do We Care How Sarah Jessica Parker ‘Does It’?
The studio that made the movie “I Don’t Know How She Does It” knew they could bank on women like me to buy a ticket. When I read the novel after it first came out in 2002, I confess that I could relate: as the working mom, I chuckled in recognition at the heroine, Kate…
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My Newborn Diet
'Has your weight changed in the last six months? If so, please explain'
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Fast Forward South Africa’s chief rabbi supports Donald Trump — but says his refugee program for Afrikaners is a ‘mistake’
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