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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What Makes The Hasidic Community Choose Tribe Over Offspring?
About 10 years ago, right around the time the tectonic plates beneath my structured world began to shift, eventually destroying my entire existence as I knew it, there was a campaign in my hometown of Kiryas Joel and beyond to “save the neshama of a young girl.” The young girl, a toddler at the time,…
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How Shabbat Teaches Us To Work Less And Achieve More
When behavioral economist Dan Ariely once found himself in Johannesburg, he requested a meeting with South Africa’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Warren Goldstein. A secular Israeli-American Jew, Ariely asked the standard question that he liked to pose to rabbis: “If I was going to keep only one religious commandment – which one would you recommend?” Goldstein,…
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After Many Miscarriages, I Didn’t Want To Complain About Motherhood, Ever. And Then I Became A Mother.
“I was so tired I just wanted to throttle her,” one mom said with a little laugh to show she wasn’t planning on harming her toddler. “And then when I finally went to the living room she’d spilled rice all over the floor!” The moms at the party nodded in complicity, adding their own tales…
The Latest
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How Can Men Help End Rape Culture? By Emulating Abraham.
As I read through the growing stream of #MeToo posts last week, I was among the many men unsure of how to respond. The experiences behind each post describing sexual harassment; some horrific, others horrifically commonplace, reflect a state of our culture that must reckon with how we allow men to treat women. Lest we…
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I Hated Halloween. Until I Became Orthodox.
Growing up in a secular family, I spent many Halloweens of my youth dressed as a Jack-O-Lantern. But that doesn’t mean I liked the holiday. I actually hated how showy people got with single-use costumes, the obsession with spooky things, and the overall lack of meaning in the celebrations. And then, of course, there were…
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Luxury Setai Hotel Opening In Tel Aviv Jaffa Area — In A Crusader Fortress
The building was originally built by the Ottomans to serve as a prison; but now you can get a luxe massage there instead. If you’re booking a trip to Israel in 2018 — and looking for a luxe experience — check out Tel Aviv’s Setai hotel, which will be opening in the historic old Jaffa…
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The Origins Of Halloween Are Pagan. But That Doesn’t Mean We Should Avoid It Entirely.
When my children were young, they attended preschool at our local Jewish Community Center. While there, with the exception of Nowruz (Persian New Year), they had no in-school experience with any holiday that was not a Jewish or an American one. No Christmas or Easter. No St. Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day. And no…
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Why The Women’s Confessional Essay Is Here To Stay
Recently, there’s been a lot of debate about the value of the personal essay – especially the women’s personal essay – a genre which has taken over online media publications with vigor in the last decade. Jia Tolentino, in her New Yorker essay in May, “The Personal Essay Boom Is Over”, wrote about the increasing…
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How Halloween Taught Me Self-Determination After Leaving Orthodoxy
After the weeks of Jewish holidays, the last thing I wanted was another celebration. “Why can’t we trick-or-treat?” my kids wanted to know a few days before Halloween. “It’s not a Jewish holiday,” I answered automatically, the same words that I’d always spoken and that my mother had once spoken to me. Until this year,…
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Is The Orthodox Community Really Facing Mental Health Head-On?
When people tell me, again and again, that the Orthodox community has gotten better with regard to mental health issues, I secretly cringe. They point to the Jewish magazines, the organizations, the public talks, the community initiatives, as proof that Orthodox Jews, as a community, are no longer afraid to look mental illness in the…
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I’m A Child Of A Holocaust Survivor. Halloween Horrifies Me.
I hate Halloween, though I’m unlikely to mention it to you in person. Let me explain why. My Dad is a Holocaust survivor. He was born just as the war was ending, and he spent the first several years of his life in a rat infested refugee camp in Austria. His parents had spent the…
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