Abby Stein is a proud Jewish woman. But growing up, she didn’t feel that Judaism had a space for people like her. Abby was raised in an ultra-Orthodox hasidic Jewish community, and as she puts it, “growing up, we had a very strong focus on studying, researching, questioning and finding answers in texts.” The Torah…
Last week, the Arkansas legislature overrode the governor’s veto to implement a heinous law that would ban gender-affirming healthcare for transgender and non-binary youth in that state. I want to share my own gender story so you can hear how access to trans-affirming health care has allowed me to live my own authentic truth. Five…
(JTA) — Samantha Zerin headed home from a Yiddish class she had taught as part of her synagogue’s adult education program on the evening of Dec. 19 and knew her life was about to change. That evening, the 775 families at Temple Emanu-El would be getting a message that she knew would surprise some of…
A Republican Congressional candidate invoked Oskar Schindler with reference to his own anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative work, according to a report in the Huffington Post. As a North Carolina State Senator, Dan Bishop attempted to establish a loophole in anti-discrimination legislation by declaring that North Carolina residents could be exempt from state laws if they felt that…
Billionaire Jennifer Pritzker never saw eye-to-eye with her family when it came to politics. The ultra-wealthy Pritzker clan are almost all socially liberal Democrats, but Pritzker was a staunch Republican donor and supporter of President Trump — until she came out as a transgender woman. A Vanity Fair feature delved into Pritzker’s history, following her shift…
During middle school, Yoni Kollin took part in “Shevet,” a Jewish teen group in Los Angeles for boys post-bar mitzvah. The program, facilitated by Moving Traditions, a Jewish organization that provides progressive educational teen programming, offered a parallel program for girls, too, called “Rosh Hodesh.” Yet for Kollin, neither program was a perfect fit. Kollin,…
There are literally hundreds of different ways of choosing, wrapping, and storing a set of tefillin [phylacteries]. Eichler’s Judaica superstore offers more than 2,000 tefillin-related items for purchase online alone, from a Swarovski crystal adorned bag, to a military camouflage case, and a strangely economical set of blinged-out gold plastic storage boxes—all to compliment the…
On Sunday night I was in the balcony of a packed sanctuary of a Brooklyn synagogue that was hosting a literary event. A loud, cracking sound split the air behind me. Another time, a disruption like that would have triggered automatic head-swiveling, that jerk of human curiosity that forces you to turn with interest towards…
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