Each week in ‘In Song’ The Arty Semite links the weekly Torah reading — however tenuously — to classic works of rock ‘n’ roll. This week’s parsha, Naso, continues from last week with the allocation of Tabernacle relocation duties to the Levites and a census of those eligible for said duties. We then have laws…
When people talk about “Jewish hair,” they’re usually referring to the curly, thick, frizz-prone locks that are the lot of many Jewish women. Having “Jewish hair” doesn’t usually refer to guys, but in the case of Justin Kanew and Zev Glassenberg, best pals and teammates on of “The Amazing Race: Unfinished Business,” having “Jewish hair”…
These are not pity-party hats. From the looks of these colorful and whimsical head coverings, it would appear that the pity party is over and that the empty ice cream containers and cried-into tissues have been thrown away. Whoever is wearing these cloches, chapeaux, bonnets and berets is holding her head high in the face…
“Do you like the blond better? With or without the ponytail?” Wig-shopping is the new initiation into religious life for women, writes Tali Farkash, a Haredi columnist for Ynet who alternates between defending religious life and kvetching about it. If women used to accompany brides to the mikveh in order to welcome them ritualistically into…
Jewish women’s head covering is once again in the news, a heated topic among rabbinic men who are obviously not afraid of a little invective when it comes to women’s bodies. The latest item is an incendiary letter by a Canadian Haredi rabbi named Shlomo Miller. Miller was responding to a scholarly article by Rabbi…
The first Torah scroll written entirely by female scribes, six of them, has been completed — seven years after it was begun. Danielle Berrin, over at The Jewish Journal’s “Hollywood Jew” blog, thinks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and “The Social Network” writer Aaron Sorkin are hanging out with the wrong Jewish women. Many women of…
For the most part, body hair as a political statement has fallen out of favor with third-wave feminists who, unlike their second-wave sisters, seem at home with a shaven armpits and legs. The New York Times recently had an article about women’s mixed feelings about visible body hair on women. The news hook was Mo’Nique’s…
The buzz about “Good Hair,” Chris Rock’s new documentary about black hair, has got me thinking about “Jewish hair”: what it is, what it means, and where I — a straight-haired woman — fit into this curious piece of Jewish identity. “Jewish hair” is a tricky thing to define, since Judaism can include people from…
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