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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When Swine Flu Flies, Rabbis Take to the Skies
The swine flu epidemic continues to rage in Israel. Referred to by its scientific name of H1N1 to avoid the stigma of the unkosher pig, swine flu (by whatever name) is flying through the population with 2,000 reported cases and five reported fatalities. To fight this, a group of rabbis and mystics took to the…
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Inglourious References
Roseanne Barr as Hitler, Quentin Tarantino trailing a (satirical) Nazi recruitment film and now Rush Limbaugh says that President Obama’s logo is Nazi-like and that the Democratic party has some similarity of issues. Hello? People? Didn’t you read The Polymath talking about “how easy it is to use the Holocaust as the ultimate cheap shot:…
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Madonna at Auschwitz
The Jewish blogosphere is abuzz with reports that Madonna has plans to take her children, Lourdes (12) and Rocco (9) to Auschwitz, when the singer visits Poland as part of an upcoming tour. According to a report initially published in the British Daily Mirror, but circulated widely in the Jewish community by Ynetnews, a source…
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But Can You Breast-Feed a Baby Doll in Shul?
Just in time for those who like to stock up early on weird and controversial Hanukkah presents for their young relatives comes news of a baby doll which simulates breast feeding. On so many levels this doll strikes me as disturbing in the extreme. The name alone astounds: Bebe Gloton, which translated from its native…
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Birthright’s New High-Profile Flak
Birthright, a respected organization that sends young adults ages 18-26 on educational trips to Israel, recently hired the public relations firm 5W Public Relations. The fast-growing firm’s CEO, Ronn Torossian, is among the ranks of celebrity publicists who sometimes make the news — or at least the gossip pages — themselves. 5WPR, as it’s known,…
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Obama Making Modest Inroads With Israeli Public
The Fatah general conference, which has been extended to run until tomorrow, has been characterized by tough talk on Jerusalem. “Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers,” states a position paper which was adopted, according to reports. The paper apparently does not make…
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From Day School to Dubai — and Beyond
This week, for the second time in little more than two months, I stood anxiously waiting in Terminal 4 of John F. Kennedy International Airport for a daughter to arrive on Emirates Airlines’s morning flight from Dubai. Dubai! I don’t think I even heard of Dubai until I was 40, and now my kids are…
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Wedding as Political Statement
Everyone hopes that their wedding will make a statement. But not in the same way that Olga Samosvatov and Nico Tarosyan’s wanted. They tied the knot earlier this week at the Tel Aviv landmark Dizengoff Square, and their ceremony was a public polemic against Israel’s marriage laws. To them, the ceremony was the real thing,…
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UJC’s Kathy Manning on Gender Imbalance in the Federation System
Kathy Manning is the first woman to become chair of the board of trustees of United Jewish Communities, the central organization of the 157 Jewish federations around North America, which collectively raised $3 billion last year. Manning, an immigration attorney from Greensboro, N.C., has been involved as a lay leader with UJC since it was…
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Coco Chanel, ‘Horizontal Collaboration,’ and Outfitting Occupied Paris
The designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel had a well-documented affair with the Nazi officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, with whom she lived at Paris’s Ritz hotel throughout the German occupation of France. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the new biopic “Coco Before Chanel” (French-language trailer below), which portrays Mme. Chanel as an up-by-her-two-toned-ballet-flats heroine…
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Boteach Unloads on Chabad
Television host, sex columnist and Orthodox rabbi Shmuley Boteach is no stranger to controversy, but this week he added his voice to a growing chorus of Orthodox Jews who believe that their religious community has to take a look in the mirror in the wake of the New Jersey money-laundering scandal. In an article in…
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