This is the Forward’s coverage of human sexuality.
Sex
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The Schmooze Dr. Ruth’s Sex Tips for Wartime
Getty Images (Haaretz) — If you were wondering what sexual position was most appropriate in a bomb shelter, don’t. That’s some of the advice Dr. Ruth Westheimer gave an audience in Tel Aviv Wednesday night. The sprightly 4-foot-7, 86-year-old lost her parents in the Holocaust and was a sniper in the Haganah, prestate Israel’s underground…
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The Schmooze Inside Dr. Ruth’s 86th Birthday Bash
When is a swan not a swan? The question raises mental images of Correggio’s 1531 painting of a nude woman with a swan on her lap, his elongated neck between her naked breasts or William Butler Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan.” But for the answer you need to go to Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s latest…
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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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Opinion Mamdani has made ample efforts for Jews. How come no one is telling that story?
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Yiddish אַ קאָנפֿרענענץ אין וואַרשע גיט זיך אָפּ מיט ייִדישע שפּראַכןA conference in Warsaw focuses on Jewish languages
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Books In David Baerwald’s epic tale of espionage and wartime horrors, family history is stranger than fiction
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Fast Forward Bamba blankets NYC after Park Slope Food Coop vote to boycott Israeli products. What’s next?