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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21 Words And Phrases You NEED To Know Before Traveling To Israel
Interning in Israel can sometimes feel like a vacation. Close to stunning beaches and scenic hikes, trendy restaurants and historical landmarks, it’s easy to remain in tourist territory. But when you’re spending months in Israel, it’s best to try to immerse. Keep these key Hebrew phrases handy to ease into living and working in Israel:…
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This Tisha B’Av, Focus On Jewish Agency, Not Jewish Passivity
My first significant role as a Jewish educator in Tisha B’Av was as a counselor at an Orthodox all-girls camp. Resolved to offer my girls a transformative Tisha B’Av experience, I signed up to help design the programming for our entire camp to make Tisha B’Av meaningful and help my young charges relate emotionally to…
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Even Secular Tel Aviv Shuts Down For Shabbat. It’s A Powerful Antidote To Consumerism.
There are days when it’s possible to feel that Tel Aviv is just any city anywhere in the world. There are quarters that feel like Paris, and one part of town that reminds me of Milan. But not on Fridays, Tel Aviv becomes less sophisticated urban scene and more a demolition derby. Picture the rush…
The Latest
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It’s Time We Stop Blaming Parents For Hot Car Deaths And Drownings
Several weeks ago at our community pool, I had the most terrifying moment of my life. I never truly understood the phrase “it only takes a minute” until I had kids, and it never really sunk in until I added a pool into the mix. I was at the pool with my four kids, aged…
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What Not To Say When Your Friend Has A Miscarriage
I’ll always remember the dress I wore when I learned that my future baby’s heart had stopped beating. I’ll also never forget the dresses I wore when my husband and I heard and recorded the heartbeat (twice), received our first ultrasound photo, and proudly hung it on the fridge for 5 blissful weeks. Those dresses…
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What Happens When Thousands Of ‘Shidduch Resumes’ Are Leaked?
When Serena received an email announcing that that her personal information had been added to “Shidduchline,” a website she had never heard of — she was shocked. “I click the link, and I see a profile with my name, my picture, my age, my phone number and my email,” Serena, a single woman in her…
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Israeli Scientists Find That Babies Develop Empathy As Early As Six Months
If you think that an infant is just lumps of cooing, crying, smiling, sleeping and pooping, think again. Resesarchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Hebrew University in Israel found that babies as young as six months actually can exhibit empathy. In a paper published in British Journal of Psychology, researchers doing two experiments debunked the theory that babies only develop the ability…
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Can ‘Kosher’ IVF Help Prevent Fertility Mix-Ups?
When Esther and her husband decided to do fertility treatment, the modern Orthodox couple consulted with their rabbi. “We didn’t think twice about it,” said the New Jersey woman who preferred not to give her full name. She had lost a few pregnancies before starting in vitro fertilization (IVF), the medical process of extracting a…
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Meet Philly’s LGBTQ Advocate And Sex Educator, Galia Godel
In seventh grade, she came out as a lesbian – “dyke was my label”. Then, “pansexual” felt right. After that, she thought she might be straight – then bi. She finally settled on “queer”. It helps that Galia Godel’s had such a wide-ranging journey. The Philadelphia sexuality educator – and rabbi’s granddaughter – has become…
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New Israeli TV Show Explores An Ultra-Orthodox Dystopian State
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A TV series rarely makes it to film festivals, but that‘s exactly what happened to this 6-episode creation, which was featured at the NY Jewish Film Festival. Autonomies, shown on Israeli TV this fall, was created by Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky, show-runners of the highly popular…
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As Russian Jews, We Are Characters in Someone Else’s Story
As far back as I can remember, I knew that I had to hide everything about my life from my friends at school. Kids absorb secrecy around class and money like sponges, and for a small child who barely paid attention to what we were learning in school, I was amazingly sentient of what I…
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