Welcome to the Forward’s Jewish News coverage about feminism and womens issues.
Feminism
The Latest
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Life How Madonna Defines the Third Wave
At a dinner party recently, a British journalist asked me to quickly define the difference between second- and third-wave feminism. I stumbled a bit, muttering about diversity and post-modernism and something about sexuality. But now I realize I should have just told him that the difference is Madonna. To second-wavers, Madonna is all wrong. She…
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The Schmooze Anti-Feminist Remarks From Israeli Activist
She is one of the most successful religious women in the media, but Shulamit Melamed wants everyone to know that she’s no feminist. The director of the pro-settler news network Arutz Sheva, Melamed runs the organization’s news site and oversees the newspaper Basheva, which is distributed weekly in an enormous number of synagogues and community…
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Life Challenging Fatherhood’s Low Standards
It is worth noting that for the the majority of my childhood and adolescence, I did not have a vagina. I had what my mother referred to as “front of me. ” (as in,”You shouldn’t wear underwear to sleep so you can air out the front of you.”) I spent a lot of time being…
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Life When Women Are Attacked for Speaking Out
“A Woman’s Opinion is the Miniskirt of the Internet.” That is the title of an op-ed piece in Britain’s “The Independent” that a friend of mine recently sent me. It is by Laurie Penny, a 25-year-old writer known by many for her blog, “Penny Red,” and is about the horrific hate mail she receives on…
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Life Back-Room Rabbinical Court Deal Bars Women
For the first time in 12 years there is no woman on the committee responsible for appointing judges to Israel’s rabbinical courts, after the Israel Bar Association failed to elect a woman as its members’ representative. This is being viewed as a tremendous blow to promoting the rights of women who must face these courts…
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Life Blu Greenberg Q&A: Not Enough Change
In 1997, Blu Greenberg chaired the first International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy. About 400 attendees were expected and more than 1,000 showed up, hungry for a community of other women committed to both traditional Jewish life and their own religious potential. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, which was born of that first gathering and…
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Life Looking Past Fashion for Social Messages
While my son’s religious yeshiva recently invited mothers to an evening of mother-son learning, my daughters’ mixed-gender school decided to hold an event for women that revolves around “styling.” The flier reads: “Dear community chaverot (meaning either female members or female friends), you are invited to a unique evening on the subject of ‘Style Together’…
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Life Katie Roiphe Gets (Part of) it Right
Katie Roiphe’s call in the New York Times for more tolerance for risqué behavior and dirty jokes at work inspired a pretty unanimous dismissal in the feminist blogosphere. (DoubleX, Jezebel, Pandagon, Feminisiting, and here on the Sisterhood.) In her piece, Roiphe declares that our limited tolerance for the capacious concept of sexual harassment, which could…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Books In ‘Something We Said,’ Richard Pryor’s daughter finds words to discuss the unspeakable
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
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News How Iran is outsourcing terror plots against Jews
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