The corner bar on my street is taking a tithe. Its sidewalk chalkboard announces that 10% of all weekend income in December will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union. The bar is on to something. Amid all the uncertainty of this new political era, one thing is certain: Whatever our social values may…
Observant Jews might soon be able to dispense with the “Shabbos goy,” the Gentile neighbor or friend who performs forbidden labor during the Sabbath, reports Orthodox news site “Vos Iz Neias” (Yiddish for “What is News?”). That’s because Morty Kohn, a Brooklyn electrician, has created a new light bulb that he says can effectively be…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Religious Zionist rabbinic organization in Israel has launched a new prenuptial agreement to help ensure that divorcing wives will receive a religious divorce, or get. Tzohar, along with the Israel Bar Association, introduced the agreement on Sunday that encourages a husband not to withhold a religious divorce, without which a woman…
Be fruitful and multiply. The Biblical command sounds so straightforward, yet it can be anything but. In order to conceive a child, some aspiring parents — be they lesbian couples, single mothers, or straight men with poor sperm quality — need a little outside help… at least a few milliliters of help, to be precise,…
*Getty Images // An Orthodox bride and groom in Jerusalem** HalachicallyYours.org is a web site opening the lines of communication about sexuality and intimacy in married relationships in the Orthodox community. I spoke with Sarah Epstein, who has been a sex educator for four years, about her project and why sex ed is still taboo…
Talia Lakritz, 20, a Modern Orthodox Jewish sophomore at Barnard College, and her two girlfriends got off a very crowded No. 3 train at Kingston Avenue in a fevered hurry of glee, as they headed to an open-mic night for women at the gallery at The Creative Soul, an organization in the Crown Heights section…
(Haaretz) — Hamutal Song would turn heads no matter where she lived. But walking the streets of Israel with two blue birds etched onto her chest and the words “you rock my world” in caps above them, she’s rarely ignored. As she puts it, decorated head to toe in colorful tattoos, “not a lot of…
I was supposed to be a low-maintenance bride. I am usually “the easygoing one.” Our florist would disagree. As I stood in front of his 20 foot refrigerator and pointed to every type of flower, telling him which to put in our arrangements, and which should, under no circumstances , even come near our venue,…
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