Former Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman thinks now may be Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s “Mordechai and Esther moment.” Amid the uproar over President Trump’s blaming “both sides” for violence in Charlottesville, Foxman urged the president’s daughter and son-in-law to act like the legendary queen of Persia and her uncle, who famously blocked King Ahasverus…
I am not an overly religious person, but I do remember the biblical story from The Book of Esther. For Jews, it’s a story we hear every year on the holiday of Purim. To summarize: once upon a time there was a powerful king who was easily manipulated by his entourage. His wife, the Queen…
llustration by Lior Zaltzman I remember when I first realized I didn’t understand Esther — possibly, didn’t even like her. It was Shabbat afternoon and a group of us were reading over the text of the megillah with a woman from my Orthodox synagogue in St. Louis. I was in junior high, with several years…
Martyna Starosta Shira Dicker protests the plight of chained women, or agunot, whose husbands refuse to grant them religious divorces, during a small Times Square gathering on International Agunah Day.
Getty Images// Children in the Philippines protest against sex trafficking In the Purim story, Vashti’s expulsion, we know, is the result of her refusal to present herself before King Achashverosh. The text is ambiguous about the reason for her refusal, leaving much room for modern-day, feminist interpretation. Perhaps Vashti did not appreciate being summoned, did…
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Sonia Kanciper, a 22-year-old member of the Farband, the Labor Zionist organization and a post-graduate student at Hunter College, was chosen New York’s Queen Esther of 1952 in a beauty contest of…
Mazal Tov! Sara Netanyahu has been crowned Queen Esther of Israel. Eighteen wives of Haredi Members of Knesset penned a letter to Mrs. Netanyahu urging her to use her powers as Queen of the Israeli empire to influence her husband, Benjamin Netanyahu, Emperor of all Israelis. According to Israel National News, the women pleaded with…
Purim is just around the corner and, in my house, that means my children have been super-glued into their costumes for about three weeks. My 6-year-old son, a dinosaur fan, has been wearing his T-Rex hat and roaring at the baby non-stop. My 3-year-old daughter has been wearing her poofy, pink princess dress and tiara,…
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