This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish women and women’s issues.
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News The Ladies in Grey and Blue
About 10,000 Jewish men fought in the Civil War, for both the Union and Confederate armies. When these soldiers set off for battle, they left behind their wives, sisters and daughters, who stayed to raise the children and run the households and, sometimes, the family businesses. But not all these women stayed focused on only…
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Life Why Judaism Needs Feminism
This is the fifteenth entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. I’m a Jewish feminist for a lot of reasons. On the one hand, given that feminism is about removing external hindrances to the project of everyone living out their highest, holiest, Divinely-given potential —why wouldn’t I be? There’s still plenty of homophobia, transphobia…
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Life Looking Forward, Reaching Back
Having recently edited and contributed to a book about women who “reconstructed” American Jewish education, i.e., transplanted Mordecai Kaplan’s views on American Judaism into classrooms, children’s books, camps and women’s organizations, I’ve had to wrestle with the “F” word. Feminism is hard enough to define. What is Jewish feminism? If feminism is about going where…
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News Tefillin for Women, by Women
When Molly Moses graduated from Harvard University in 2011, she wanted to pray each day wearing tefillin. But she couldn’t afford the several hundred dollar investment required to buy a pair of the leather-covered boxes, which contain tiny parchments with handwritten Torah verses. Moses had borrowed tefillin from friends in the past; now she wanted…
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Life Authentically Egalitarian
This is the thirteenth entry of an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. I am a Jewish feminist because my mom decided to put on a tallit and tefillin when I was 10. I remember that she asked my younger brother and me if we were okay with this decision. After all, she was also our…
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Life ‘Jewish’ and ‘Feminist’ Don’t Share Borders
This is the twelfth entry of an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. This is embarrassing and something I should never admit because it betrays a lack of commitment to passionate principles and also a resistance to deep thinking. But here it is: “Jewish” and “feminist” exist in two different boxes for me, and I have…
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The Schmooze Video: Zosia Mamet on ‘Girls’ and Dating Horrors
Zosia Mamet recently stopped by Conan to answer the question that fans of her HBO show “Girls” have been asking since the series debuted: Is dating in your 20s really as bad as the show makes it look? “It’s a little worse,” Mamet replied. “It’s pretty f**king bad.” On Girls, Mamet plays Shoshanna, the fresh-faced,…
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Life My Feminist Foremothers
This is the eleventh entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. My own attachment to Jewish feminism arose from my relationship to the women in my family — my grandmothers, my mother, and my sister — during my childhood and teen-age years. I was very close to my two bubbes (grandmothers), both of whom…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Fast Forward Israeli far-right minister orders Arab village evicted after saying ICC is seeking his arrest
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Culture In celebration of David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, a very Jewish song
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Fast Forward Barney Frank’s final warning on Israel: ‘America’s effort should be to support the opposition to Netanyahu’
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Yiddish ייִדן פֿלעגן באַשווערן רוחות און שלאַנגען אויף ווײַסרוסישJews used to conjure spirits and snakes in Belarusian
בײַ ייִדן איז פֿאַראַן אַן אַלטע טראַדיציע צו שרײַבן רײַסישע סגולות מיט ייִדישע אותיות.