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News How Do You Talk Dirty in Yiddish?
Have you ever wondered how you might say “quickie” in Yiddish? Or maybe “sugar daddy” or “one-night stand”? You wouldn’t be the first. In 60 years of researching the Yiddish language, linguist Mordkhe Schaechter collected vocabulary on every aspect of human life and developed vocabulary lists for many specialized subjects not covered in detail by…
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Opinion Talking to the Rabbis About Sex
An ultra-Orthodox bride at her Jerusalem wedding in 2014. / Getty Images This past Sunday, I spoke about sexuality and modesty in front of a group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Both professionally and personally, it was a profound moment for me, a formerly ultra-Orthodox woman, to sit there and name experiences that the ultra-Orthodox community hasn’t…
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Opinion For Orthodox Parents, Time To Talk Sex
Recent articles in the Forward have raised the issue of Orthodox Judaism’s so-called repression of sexuality. Although I thought the articles were not particularly respectful of Orthodoxy’s moral codes, they do indeed raise a point. Arguably bad mannered, they are undoubtedly on to something. This past summer, an article in The New York Times, presumably…
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Life ‘Halachically Yours’ Provides Sex Ed for the Orthodox
*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…
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The Schmooze Would I Ask the Same Question of a Man? You Bet!
Thank you, commentators, talkbackers, bloggers, and writers, for so passionately sharing your thoughts with me following the publication in the Forward of my interview with Racheli Ibenboim. Honestly, I was not prepared for such a reaction. A couple of you were on my side (thank you!), but many hundreds of you were against me. And…
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Opinion The Silence Around Sex in the Haredi World — and Its Unfortunate Consequences
It was the evening before Israel’s Memorial Day more than five years ago. I was living on Mount Scopus and waiting for any form of transportation to take me to the Kotel for the state ceremony. With little time to spare, a taxi pulled up with a Hasid in the back and a seemingly secular…
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Culture Everything He Wanted To Know About Sex Among the Orthodox
Racheli Ibenboim is a Haredi lady of the Gur dynasty, one of the most fundamentalist branches in the hasidic world. The Gur people, for one reason or another, are ever busy with ever more rules forbidding more and more “sexual temptations” of whatever kind. For example, not long ago a new prohibition was announced: A…
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The Schmooze Reactions to Dylan Farrow’s Open Letter
Getty Images Dylan Farrow has renewed her allegations of sexual abuse against Woody Allen, this time, in her own words. In an open letter published on Nick Kristoff’s New York Times blog, the adopted daughter of Allen and actress Mia Farrow (who now goes by a different name), repeated her claim that the director sexually…
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