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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Jewish Child Brides — Why the Barbaric Practice of Marrying Off Young Girls Persists
Ever since the marriage of Rebecca and Isaac over three millennia ago, the children of Abraham and Sarah have toyed with the practice of betrothing their daughters at very young ages. Of course not all scholars agree that Rebecca was actually three years old when she took the fateful decision to feed Eliezer’s camels and…
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The Times’s Infatutation With the Blogosphere’s Boys Clubs
This weekend, The New York Times profiled four prominent young, mostly progressive bloggers: Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Dave Weigel and Brian Beutler. The hook? They are all friends, they hang out together in DC and they have all emerged quite quickly in the media world — moving from bloggers to serious members of DC’s pundit…
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Poem: Have You Seen Me?
Even though she was ineligible for the Forward’s recent Triangle Fire Poetry Contest because she is a Forward contractor and is not a resident of the United States, The Sisterhood’s Elana Maryles Sztokman penned this poem in honor of the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which killed 146 people — mostly young Jewish and…
The Latest
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Surviving Being Bullied — and Naming It
Suddenly, on the heels of some high-profile teen suicides during the past year, we’ve realized that bullying is something we should be paying attention to. How it’s managed to escape our consciousness seems to be about “boys being boys,” or making kids tougher in the long run, or punishing and shaming gay kids into being…
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Goodbye, LUGs; Hello, HUGs
Well, it looks like its time to say goodbye to the phenomenon known as LUG, or lesbian until graduation, that, according to a Times piece, never actually existed. The story reported that a recent study showed that college-educated women were actually less likely to have a same-sex experience than those without high school diplomas. I…
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‘What Not To Wear’ — In Case of a Rocket Attack
Like many close girlfriends, my best pal Faye and I check in with each other every day and, even in the age of Facebook, we do it the old-fashioned way, on the phone. Our morning call usually takes place car-to-car, while she is commuting to work from the southern suburb of Meitar to her job…
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Moshe Katsav’s Sentence
It seemed as if all Israelis were glued to their televisions or radios this morning to hear the prison sentence handed down to former President Moshe Katsav, who was convicted of charges of rape, sexual harassment, indecent behavior and obstructing justice in December. At home, in stores, offices, or in my case, at the gym…
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On Not Confining Girls to a Pink Box
It seems the gender wars are trickling down…to preschool. This recent article in Slate is about a new preschool in California called “The Pink Academy” which features pink everything and no boys. Preschool founder Donna Wood told The Santa Cruz Sentinel, in this article, “It’s about empowering girls, and they like pink right now.” It…
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On Obama, Libya and Gender
President Obama’s decision to bomb Libya apparently has something to do with gender. The New York Times reports that Obama was waffling on whether to attack, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in favor, but having trouble convincing the president. It was only when she recruited two other women to form a coalition that…
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Slipping Into My Wedding Gown — 31 Years After My Wedding
This Purim, for the first time in more than three decades, I wore my wedding dress. It was a strange experience. The idea was born out of desperation. My husband and I only began thinking of costumes for the Megillah reading and Purim spiel we attend every year just hours before it was due to…
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Books Esther vs. Vashti, Austen vs. Brontës
As I prepared for the beginning of the perennial Purim question of “Esther vs. Vashti” at the same time as I delved into Jane Eyre-mania, I began to think about how women are always pushed into dichotomies. I wondered cynically how soon someone would write about the new Brontë films by declaring Jane Austen passé….
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