This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish women and women’s issues.
Women
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Opinion Media Watch II: Looking at Jewish Women as the World Looks at Them
Surfing the Web for various takes on the violence in Silwan on Sunday, I looked at the coverage by the Chinese news service Xinhua, which is usually a good place for odd angles. There was nothing new about Jerusalem, but an interesting link appeared alongside the article, directing me to what it called the world’s…
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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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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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Culture The Park Slope Food Coop is fighting over another BDS resolution — and this time it may finally pass
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News Arkansas whites-only community sued by woman with Jewish ancestry
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Opinion Netanyahu is facing electoral catastrophe — and could place Israel in existential peril
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Antisemitism Decoded What does a swastika mean?