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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A Feminist Victory … on ‘America’s Next Top Model’
A shameful admission from a proud feminist: I’ve been watching the latest season of the reality show competition “America’s Next Top Model.” I know, I know, I ought to be ashamed of myself, but there’s something about this show that is so far removed from day-to-day life that I just can’t help myself. Of course…
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Prime Ribs: No Women on Main Street; Is Birth Control ‘Preventive’?
In the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim, attempts to ban women from the main street during Sukkot has prompted protests. The “lactivist” community is calling for a boycott of Old Navy because the retailer is selling “Formula Powered” onesies. As Deborah Kolben points out on Kveller, Jewish tradition “recognizes that breastfeeding is both a…
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My Gossip Diet
For the past two weeks, during the Days of Awe, I have gone completely without celebrity gossip — no TMZ, no US Weekly, nothing. I know, it sounds like a sacrifice Cher from the movie “Clueless” would make, a tiny act of self-denial in an otherwise frivolous life. But the abstention actually proved quite revelatory,…
The Latest
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Jewish Women and the Art of Over-sharing
Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, an exhibit opening October 1 at San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, almost ended before it began. About two years ago, as I was walking through the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art’s annual expo at the Puck Building, I noticed a lot of tables where young women artists…
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The Allure of Orthodoxy
When I was a student at Tel Aviv University, during my second year of college, I spent a number of Shabbatot and holidays with new friends — young women who had, like me, grown up in the States, and were now newly Orthodox — who were learning how to be religious at Neve Yerushalyaim yeshiva…
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Paycheck Fairness Doesn’t Mean Doom for Gender Relations
Christina Hoff Sommers, noted (Jewish) anti-feminist gadfly and provocateur, is back, this time arguing on the New York Times’ Op-Ed page against one of the most common-sense pieces of legislation before Congress: the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill, a sort of companion to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, would shore up previous equal pay measures and…
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A Mikvah Lady Turned ‘Lice Lady’
As soon as the phone call came from my daughters’ school yesterday, the itching started. My knees, my shoulders, my scalp, it all itched, because the Lice Lady, doing one of the several school-wide checks she is periodically brought in to do, had found the little buggers in my girls’ hair. Turns out, my itching…
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How Rav Yosef’s Daughter Is Educating Her Father’s Flock
Just before Yom Kippur, The Sisterhood linked to this article in Haaretz profiling the life and work of Adina Bar-Shalom, founder of the Haredi College of Jerusalem. She is the eldest daughter of Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and her valiant work is bringing higher education to both men and women in the rapidly expanding…
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Asking Fewer People for Forgiveness
For many years now, since I learned about the practice of mechila, or asking for forgiveness, I’ve taken it seriously, using the weeks leading up to the High Holy Days to reflect on the ways in which I know I’ve fallen short. My personal al chet, or confession, is a long one — as I…
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Prime Ribs: Haredi Women in High-Tech; Artificial Ovaries
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s eldest daughter, Adina Bar Shalom, is helping to train Haredi women for jobs in Israel’s high-tech sector. Meanwhile, secular Israeli women have a higher rate of workforce participation than do women in any other developed country, Haaretz reports. In a discovery that could help women undergoing cancer treatment preserve their fertility, scientists…
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Where Women of All Shapes and Sizes Do the Hula
One of the most life-altering events I experienced in Maui was going to an Uluwehi Guerrero concert. Uluwehi, or Ulu as he is known to his friends, is a beloved Hawaiian folk artist who is dedicated to preserving not only Hawaiian language and music but the entire Hawaiian culture and heritage. Leslie Granat, a fabulous…
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