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
-
The Politics of ‘Bad Shoes’
Elissa Strauss’s post on high heels and power opened a proverbial shoebox of worms for me on this fraught subject — a topic that writer Leora Tannenbaum wrote an entire book about: “Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them.” It’s true that high heels are fun and flattering, and like anyone else, I stop…
-
What To Do With Your Leftover Farfel: Make Mom’s Granola
My personal Jewish holiday observance is usually acknowledged through the cooking of holiday-specific food: Hamantaschen for Purim, latkes for Hanukkah. While chametz abounds in my cupboard, I have a non-traditional Passover recipe for granola that I regularly make at this time of year. It doesn’t have a place on the Seder table; it is a…
-
On Fashion’s Abiding Love Affair With the Stiletto Strut
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an interview with Glamour magazine’s editor in chief Cindi Leive about what she wore last weekend. The title of the piece was “… And Heels, of Course.” “I always wear heels to work. Once I had a bum ankle and was ordered to wear flats; I felt as if I…
The Latest
-
Should Young, Unmarried and Sexually Active Women Frequent the Mikveh?
This Forward article about Yeshivat Hadar and its attempt to lead students toward a sexual ethic based on classical Jewish texts omits one central question: What about mikveh? Hadar Dean Rabbi Ethan Tucker says, in the piece, that he and his colleagues are trying to create a community “that discusses current sexual norms while taking…
-
On Passover’s Role in Fostering Female Friendships
I hadn’t realized how significant Passover has been in forming friendships in my life. Two different friends reminded me this week about how the holiday was significant in the creation of our relationships. They both bave had such big influences on me that I thought it is worth talking about them both. Dr. Chaya Gorsetman…
-
Even Atheists Love Passover
I have been reading Passover reflections on womanhood, liberation and the holiday’s meaning by Elana Sztokman here at the Sisterhood and by Elyssa Cohen at Jewesses with Attitude. It seems that for so many of us, Passover serves as a time of reflection and rebirth, a call to free ourselves from dismal patterns of indifference…
-
Wild and Crazy Hats for Women Battling Cancer
These are not pity-party hats. From the looks of these colorful and whimsical head coverings, it would appear that the pity party is over and that the empty ice cream containers and cried-into tissues have been thrown away. Whoever is wearing these cloches, chapeaux, bonnets and berets is holding her head high in the face…
-
On Passover, Rethinking Liberation
Passover always makes me wonder whether life is meant to be hard. This thought starts rearing its head often before Purim, when those who take seriously the mission of spring cleaning are already on schedules of windows, curtain, light fixtures, and the drawers in the corner of the closet that have not been touched since…
-
The Breakfast Club: Jerusalem Edition
On a recent Friday, Karen Lakin, an English teacher who made aliyah to Israel from Connecticut with her husband and two teenage children in 1984, invited me to a café on the Giv’at Ram campus of the Hebrew University to meet the others in her breakfast club. Eight of its nine members were in attendance,…
-
Newsweek List Takes a Page From ‘The Sisterhood 50’
Newsweek magazine, this year in conjunction with its sister publication The Daily Beast, has just published its annual list of America’s 50 “most influential” rabbis. It’s Newsweek’s fifth such list but the first time that a woman — writer Abigail Pogrebin — has been directly involved in the selection, which no doubt explains why the…
-
At Jewish Radicalism Conference, Coming Face-to-Face With Formative Feminists
I was reading on the subway last week and missed my stop. The beautiful irony here is that I missed the stop because I was reading Carolyn Heilbrun’s biography of Gloria Steinem, while on the way to the “Women’s Liberation and Jewish Identity: Uncovering a Legacy of Innovation, Activism and Social Change,” a two-day conference…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Is Pope Leo Jewish? Ask his distant cousins — like me
- 3
Opinion It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump
- 4
Opinion The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture How Hitler and Ye sent a wish for fortune and good health straight to ‘Heil’
-
Opinion Two writers offer strikingly different views of the ‘state of the Jews’
-
Fast Forward Trump names 4 Orthodox rabbis among advisors of his new Religious Liberty Commission
-
Fast Forward Jewish mayor returns from Israel trip as City Council decides to fly Palestinian flag at City Hall
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
