What makes a home Jewish? I?m not talking about the discussions, the jokes, the smell of pickled fish. I?m talking about walking into, in this case, my ailing mother?s apartment in Skokie ? the town where the Nazis marched because it was sooo Jewish ? and wondering: How do you know a Jewish lady lives…
My friend and I go to the same synagogue but almost never run into each other. “How come?” I was musing the other day. “Well,” she said. “I only go there to pray.” Aha! That explains it! When she’s walking out, I’m walking in. Yes, I’m one of those synagogue goers who arrive pretty much…
Dear Bintel Brief: I’m 18 and reside on Long Island. My parents want me to be an actuary. (I don’t even know what that is; I think it has to do with birds.) But I want to attend Tulane University, enroll in their Casino Management program. My mother (I love her dearly) hasn’t been to…
Dear Bintel Brief: I want to be a Free-Range parent, I really do. I want to let my kids have the same kind of fun I had as a child. But I am so paranoid it is ridiculous. When I was in third, grade I used to walk a few blocks up the street to…
Dear Bintel Brief, My husband and I had a Jewish home. We were active members of our synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays. My husband recently declared himself an atheist and gave up on all things religious. I still want to light candles and celebrate Shabbat, have seders, etc., but he refuses to participate….
Dear Bintel Brief: In 1995 one of my six daughters, married for the first time. We thought at the time that she was truly getting married, and I liked her young man. For maybe a dozen years before her marriage she had been leading an unconventional, “new-age” lifestyle in the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps…
Columnist and humorist Lenore Skenazy will be answering readers’ questions as the Forward’s next Bintel Brief advice columnist. Skenazy, a former New York Daily News and New York Sun columnist, now writes a syndicated column that appears in more than 100 newspapers. She also runs The Week magazine’s topical humor contest, “hat’s Next?” She is,…
• With the release of Ayelet Waldman’s “Bad Mother” and Lenore Skenazy’s “Free Range Kids,” self-proclaimed “bad” Jewish mothers are having their moment. • A breast cancer diagnosis brought Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz closer to her Jewish heritage, according to a Moment magazine profile of the Florida Democrat. • Jewess has a Q&A with Tamar Snyder, the founder…
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