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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How Do I Handle ‘Idiot’ Coworkers?
Dear Bintel Brief, Some of my male colleagues make tasteless office jokes about women. They focus on something inappropriately sexual in nature, or say they think women should tend house rather than earn a living. This is hard for me to understand — I grew up valuing gender equity, and those values have yet to…
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The Tragedy of ‘Suicide Girls’
I spent too much time the other day talking to my children about death and suicide. My oldest daughter went to the funeral of her former youth group counselor, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who took her own life. A seemingly bubbly, optimistic and activist young woman who became clinically depressed over the past…
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The Health Care Bill: Women’s Gains and Losses
Last night’s congressional debate and votes on health care reform was riveting TV, from the shouts and hollers in the crowd to impassioned speeches on both sides to the final, triumphant arrival of Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, who had just achieved what no other speaker in decades of trying had…
The Latest
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Child Nutrition Seders Fight Hunger
Ten O’clock in the morning might be a little early for a Passover Seder, especially if one intends to drink all four glasses of wine. But this was a Seder with a cause, and for dozens of Capitol Hill staffers, anti-hunger activists and students, its seemed just right. The Congressional Seder on March 18 was…
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Our Favorite New Ad — and What You Still Can’t Say on TV
A new advertising campaign by U for Kotex has done what no menstrual product company has done before: create an ad that is not only straightforward about menstruation, but also pokes fun at its own history of vague and sanitized ads. Both reasons make this ad campaign groundbreaking, but for some reason, you still can’t…
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Why Sara Hurwitz’s JOFA Speech Was ‘Retrograde’
There was an exciting energy at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. Speakers in both the plenary and individual sessions, such as emerging star Lisa Schlaff, made far-reaching statements and bold suggestions about issues ranging from marriage and sexuality to halachic ingenuity. Participants responded in kind with creativity and courage, revealing what seems to be…
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Don’t Divorce the Mitzvah from Mikveh
At last Sunday’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance there was an interesting session titled “Rediscovering Mikvah: Creating a New Construct in Thinking about Mikvah.” Given my increasingly ambivalent relationship to my own mikveh practice, I slipped away from all the sessions on Orthodox women and leadership that I needed to attend to for…
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The Women in the Crosshairs of ‘Freedom of Religion’
While much of the weekend’s news cycle was devoted to Bibi-Bidengate, another event in Israel this weekend caught my eye: the protest against sex-segregated buses, which fellow Sisterhood blogger Allison Kaplan Sommer writes about here. In the Sisterhood’s earlier coverage of the issue, Elana Sztokman rightly called the so-called “modesty” policy on public buses deeply…
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Bus Segregation Inspires ‘Stop in Time’ Protest Movement
The government’s continuing toleration of gender-separated buses, with men sitting in the front and the women in the back, has struck a nerve with the Israeli public, sparking an angry reaction that has been gathering momentum in recent weeks. A large demonstration against the separated buses has taken place, a hotline has been set up…
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In Linda Richman’s Footsteps: ‘Ronna and Beverly’
As much as I love the whole Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Ben Stiller, Judd Aptaow schlemiel genre I always shudder a bit when finding out, again and again, that their co-star is a semi-serious perky blond. (For the most recent example, see the new movie “She’s Out of My League”, where the real-life half Jew…
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Rabbi Sperber at JOFA: Confront Halacha’s Male Bias
Early Sunday morning, I shlepped my tired self through the rain — taking the subway up to Columbia University — to cover the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. At the end of a long day, I came away energized. At the First International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy back in 1997, there was something electric…
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