I spent years learning how to be happy and healthy — to take care of myself, pay attention to my own needs, see a therapist and take anti-anxiety meds — before I met Jeremy. By the time we got married, I was two years out of my eating disorder with no relapses. It seemed I…
Despite my oath to myself to not write another blog post about babies, the recent TIME article about women and couples who have made the conscious decision not to have children struck a chord with me, too. A running theme in the article is the constant expectation these people come up against that eventually all…
Jewish life and death in Israel will cost more, starting next month, as fees rise for religious services such as burial, marriage registration, ritual immersion and kashrut supervision. That, according to an internal Religious Services Ministry document obtained by Haaretz. The ministry confirmed the planned increases, attributing them to “price rises, linkage to the Consumer…
For many years — for most of my life, in fact — I wanted to live in Israel. My elementary school was so successful in teaching its students to be Zionists that it eventually had to close down; too many of the students and families moved to Israel. I myself was a convert to Zionism,…
In the insular Jewish world there is constant buzz around the so-called shidduch (marriage) crisis, where Orthodox are single despite wanting to find a mate. This marriage worldview manifested itself in a recent letter, published on the Jewish news site Shmais, in which an anonymous “older single girl” describes her shame and depression for being…
Usually, when gender equality is discussed, it’s often in the context of how women can obtain equal rights and opportunities in society and in the workforce as men. I’m married to a man who wants that, sure, but his objections to gender inequality go further: Jeremy wants a world where men get the same opportunities…
Some years ago, Israel Segal, a writer and journalist who was brought up Orthodox and became secular, summed up what he described as a secular defeat. “The all-out war has indeed come to an end, in my view, with the defeat of the secular public,” he wrote. “We are living under an occupation government of…
There are many crises happening around the world right now — coups and civil wars, Spitzers and Weiners and what-have-you. But the real serious crisis involves the old Jewish maids crying their eyes dry because no nice Jewish boys will marry them. The yeshivish Orthodox world has been embroiled in the so-called “shidduch crisis” for…
