JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
I spent my childhood summers in a small beach town near Mystic, Conn., swimming in the frigid Fishers Island Sound, catching crabs by affixing sliced hot dogs — or, in a pinch, mussels crushed beneath a paving stone — to thick white string and dangling the bait off the dock. I accompanied my older cousin…
Editor’s note: This piece was originally published for Judy Blume’s 80th birthday on February 12, 2018. We’ve republished it in honor of her 82nd birthday. It may not have actually happened this way, but this is how I remember learning about sex: My mother, when I was 11, bought me a copy of Elizabeth Forsythe…
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is becoming a movie and our sixth grade selves are clutching our Lisa Frank stickers and the Silly Bandz coiled around our wrists in joyous celebration. The endearingly raw young adult novel was released in an age when the concept of accumulating a certain amount of likes on…
Are you there, God? It’s me, a former adolescent, getting in touch to say thank you for this wonderful news, and also we must, we must, we must increase our busts (because it’s never too late for prayer). This news is better than getting your period for the first time. Better than getting paired with…
Thursday is part of the weekend, right? This week, definitely: On Thursday night, Supreme Court Justice and pop culture icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg will speak with Forward editor-in-chief Jane Eisner at Washington D.C.’s Adas Israel Congregation. While the event itself is sold out, the Forward will be livestreaming it; learn how to watch it, here….
As has been the case for two years in a row now, exactly one of our pop culture predictions for 2017 turned out to be right. Unfortunately, it began with the words “Lena Dunham will pen a well-intentioned but tone deaf open letter to someone or another,” and yes, that turned out even worse than…
I didn’t learn about changing bodies, breakups, friendship fights, and procreation from my middle school health class. That half hour was mostly reserved for the P.E. coach to talk about basketball with all the cool 13-year-old jocks. Instead, I turned to Judy Blume, who was a friend, storyteller, mentor and sex educator all rolled into…
In college, I liked to share the story of how my mom introduced me to the idea of sex: by slipping me a copy of Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey’s “A Woman of Independent Means.” It was, in some ways, the perfect approach. Hailey’s heroine, Bess, was self-assured and self-confident, and she happened to have sex, and…
