This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish women and women’s issues.
Women
The Latest
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Life Rabbi Avi Weiss Backs Down From Ordaining Women
It’s seems like an effort to put the rabba back in the hat. Rabbi Avi Weiss, who is not usually known for backing down from a fight, on Friday announced via a statement from the Rabbinical Council of America that after discussions with officials there, he is rescinding his decision to describe the women who…
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Life Challenging the Women of the Wall
Every time I read about the ongoing Women of the Wall saga, I am filled with sorrow. As I picture Jew fighting Jew, a woman being roughhoused by police, fingerprinted like a common criminal, my heart is heavy. Their fight is reminiscent of that of Rosa Parks. All these women want is the same treatment…
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Life Rachel Simmons on the Truths of Girls’ Lives
One of the country’s foremost experts on the lives of American girls is Rachel Simmons, a 35-year-old alumna of Vassar College and Oxford University who also attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School through high school. Her mother is Israeli, and, she says, she was raised in a “Conservative-Israeli” kind of household. Graduate school…
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Life Jewish Women’s History — The Decade in Review
Since we celebrated the beginning of a new millennium, Jewish women have continued to make important “firsts” in a variety of fields, and have made their voices heard in the Jewish community, in American culture and politics, and in forums around the world. Here are just some of the important events of this decade in…
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Life Fetishizing Jewish Women
Jewish women are hot right now. According to an article in the men’s magazine Details, “Jewish women have become the ethnic fetish du jour.” And in true men’s magazine fashion, Christopher Noxon revels in the opportunity to eroticize and exoticize Jewish women; using dehumanizing terms like “cultural mutt” and “JILF,” meaning “Jew I’d like to…”…
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Life Growing Strictures on Religious Women’s Comportment – and Their Silent Complicity
I love a good frum wedding. No one knows how to party, in the best possible way, like religious Jews at a wedding. Last Sunday, we went to the wedding of the daughter of a couple to whom we’re related by marriage and with whom we’ve become friends. It was a beautiful affair that took…
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Life On Women (and Hermaphrodites) Blowing the Shofar
One of the highlights of the High Holy Days is the blowing of the shofar, and the best shofar-blowing I ever heard was by a woman. Her tekiah gedolah was — the long blast sounded at the end of each shofar-blowing sequence on Rosh Hashanah and at the very end of the Neilah service on…
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Life Hearing the Voices of Jewish Women Who Survived Hurricane Katrina
It has been four years since Hurricane Katrina hit with devastating and deadly force, killing at least 1,836 people, destroying tens of thousands of homes, and sending 1 million people away from New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the Gulf Coast into other parts of the country. Four years later, while some areas have returned to…
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News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
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Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
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Opinion An abominable new Israeli law is a death warrant for democracy
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Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
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Culture The original anti-Zionists have been all but forgotten. Molly Crabapple wants to change that.
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Fast Forward Georgia political candidate apologizes for Passover ad that featured challah
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Fast Forward 4 killed in Haifa strike as Trump issues ‘you’ll be living in Hell’ ultimatum to Tehran
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Culture Two women race to save Persian Jewish music before it fades
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