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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Searching for a Safe Place To Talk About Jews, Wealth and Class
I have a particularly vivid memories of visiting New York City as a small child. We’d take a bus, my mother and grandmother and I, early in the morning, from Western Massachusetts, where we lived. We took this trip every year from third grade until high school, planning our consumer attacks on Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s…
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Digest: Rewriting the Book of Ruth; Shavuotinis; Women of Valor
Sisterhood Digest: • New Israeli census numbers are out, showing that Jewish Israeli women bear fewer children, on average (2.1) than their Muslim (3) Christian (2.2.) and Druze (2.7) counterparts. • The Gloss sits down with Tamar Reich, an observant Jew and former Krav Maga instructor who recently opened New York City’s first all-female performing arts…
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Kagan’s Bat Mitzvah Marked a Watershed Moment
I’ve been loving the coverage of Elena Kagan’s youthful challenge of her rabbi over her right to have a bat mitzvah. I love it because it confirms what I’ve always believed — that the chutzpah of young girls is not just pre-teen attitude but a sign of inner strength and a harbinger of great things…
The Latest
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‘Give Her a Get’: Punk Band’s Message on Agunot
Punk movement’s Jewish roots are hardly a secret and have long been explored. But a punk band that creates music videos to promote the importance of freeing agunot — women tied to unwanted marriages because their estranged husbands refuse to give them a get, or a religious divorce — is something new. An under-the-radar band…
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Why a JAP-y ‘Jersey Shore’ Makes Me So Nervous
I think many of us saw this coming. Really, how many other cultural clichés could lend themselves as easily to the outrageousness and garishness displayed by the self-proclaimed “guidos” and “guidettes” on the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore”? The “Jewish American Princesses” just had to be next. And now they are. Radar Online recently got…
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Does Judaism Endorse Female Genital Cutting? No, But…
In an effort to prevent female genital cutting, the American Academy of Pediatrics last week released a policy statement endorsing the use of a “ritual nick” on a female baby’s genitals. Doing so, the Academy writes, could “save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life-threatening procedures in their native country.” The cutting, which is also…
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From Feminists, a Cautious Optimism on Kagan Nomination
While there’s a lot of immediate excitement in the progressive Jewish and feminist communities about Elena Kagan’s nomination — Jewish! Female! Liberal! Possibly gay! — her lack of experience as a judge leaves many people guessing as to what legal and political principles Kagan stands for. Meanwhile, we cultural critics ponder what her nomination symbolizes…
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Help! The Times Square Car Bomb Plot Makes Me Scared To Leave The House
Dear Bintel Brief, With the recent events in Times Square (the foiled car bomb plot) I’m feeling anxious about leaving the house. I know that no one can control for these kinds of things, but do you have any advice about what I can do to calm my nerves? Nervous North of Times Square Steve…
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Claiming Mothers Day
As a child, Mothers Day was about making my mom the kinds of crayoned cards and beaded necklaces I now relish receiving from my own children. As a teenage and then adult daughter, it became about honoring my mother and grandmothers by visiting with them. We would go out to New Jersey, where I grew…
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The Supreme Court and the Single Gal
It’s hard not to get excited about the nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. If seated, she would bring the number of women on the Supreme Court to three, the number of Jewish women to two, and the total number of Jews on the bench…
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Notes on My First Mother’s Day as a Mother
On Sunday morning I got an e-mail telling me not to go near the dishes and instead give myself a pat on the back. “This is your special day,” read the note from one of the many parent sites to which I now subscribe. The reason for the kudos was Mother’s Day. And, well, I’m…
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