Anti-Semitism In My Own Back Yard
Being A Mom in the Midst of War
Hanukkah's Hottest Hebrew Hotties
Jews Far More Promiscuous Than Muslims
What Makes A Family?
Why I Screened Myself for Breast Cancer Markers
Police Shackle Anat Hoffman
Defending Michelle Obama's Arms
Why I'm Nostalgic for Hasidim
What's Wrong With Modern Dating?
The Case for Premarital Sex
When DIY Was More Than DIY
Sisters in Skivvies: A Graphic Review of 'Unterzakhn'
Chabad 'Likes' Facebook, But Not for Girls
Meet the 'First Lady of Fleet Street'
Video: Meet Chaya Mushka, Yet Again
'Raising a Bilingual Kid Is Harder Than I Expected'
Nir Hod's Anguished 'Mother'
Attachment Parenting's Star Evangelist
A Male-to-Female Jewish Journey
How Men Cornered the Baby Manual Market
Bubbe Cuisine Goes Local
Editorial: Defending Contraception
Should You Be Blogging Your Baby's Illness?
Video: Where Fashion Is Frum, Not Frumpy
The Case for Jewish Daycare
Saying Farewell to Filene's
The Bintel Brief Takes Comic Form
Editorial: Where Are the Women?
Video: Mah Jongg's Jewish Journey
Podcast: Adrienne Cooper's Musical Life
America's Most Influential Women Rabbis
The paperback version of Deborah Tannen’s latest book “You Were Always Mom’s Favorite: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives”, is just out from Ballantine Books. In this interview, conducted over email, Tannen — a Georgetown linguistics professor, who has studied the quirks and patterns of the “New York Jewish conversational style”— explains why women feel competitive with their female siblings, and what they can do about it.
Hinda Mandell: It seems like Jewish mothers represent such an iconic symbol in both Jewish and broader American culture. Yet when I think of sisters in Jewish culture, the only thing that comes to mind is the biblical story of Rachel and Leah, and Jacob’s love for the younger sister. I know that the Ten Commandments instruct us to “Honor thy mother and thy father,” but why is it sometimes hard for two sisters to treat each other with respect?
Everyone’s talking about “The Social Network”, the movie chronicling the founding of Facebook. It was the weekend’s #1 movie and is an Oscar favorite It’s also attracted notice for its (non) portrayal of women. Feminist writers have weighed in thoughtfully, explaining that the movie’s women are mere props, that the creators of the film loaded the story with more misogyny than actually existed in reality, that female programmers and businesswomen were ignored, and mostly that the shallow images of women as mindless groupies undercuts the otherwise subtle, well-drawn aspects of the film.
I have to agree. Like most viewers, I loved “The Social Network.” First of all, as someone who was at Harvard when the movie took place, I thought it captured certain aspects of our bizarre, anachronistic undergraduate life and, by extension, the larger Northeastern privileged “striver” academic milieu, with an uncanny accuracy. I particularly liked the way the brilliant, eccentric (Jewish) Facebook founder — Mark Zuckerberg, a character who bears little resemblance to his real-life avatar — simmered with resentment towards the remaining WASPy scions who walked to same halls that he did with an easy, jovial entitlement he couldn’t possess.
A dear, and shockingly young, friend of mine was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer last year. She has undergone chemotherapy and surgery, and is now dealing with radiation and a second round of chemo in advance of more surgery.
I’d do anything I could to support her and the scientific work that might one day make breast cancer less common.
But I’m not much of a ribbon-wearer, so still won’t be adding a pink ribbon to the lapel of my jacket this month, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And when I saw the headline of Chanel Dubofsky’s Sisterhood post, “Why I Hate Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” it grabbed me like a mammogram grabs, well, you know what it grabs.
Despite what you think you know about the 2008 presidential election, the recently released book “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women” (Free Press) by Salon.com senior writer Rebecca Traister, proves there is still much to learn. Allison Gaudet Yarrow asked Traister about her thoughts on the bitterness toward women during the election and about Jewish women’s duty to feminism.
Allison Gaudet Yarrow: Your book chronicles how the 2008 election reinvented women and power. What changed?
Rebecca Traister: Our sense of how women could behave in public and political life. Suddenly so many more models for public femininity are possible.
Why do American women want our female leaders to be better versions of ourselves, but when they’re not, we’re their harshest critics?
Dear Breast Cancer:
I am aware. It’s not because of the extremely effective marketing, with the pink ribbon campaigns. It’s because I lived in your house, and you lived in mine.
It seems that my mother’s breast cancer was just bad luck, and not genetic. Even if my mother didn’t have one of the genetic mutations for breast cancer most common in Ashkenazic Jewish women — and didn’t pass that gene onto me — I’m a woman, and one in eight of us will be diagnosed with the disease in our lifetime. That means that I should feel moved to light a candle and walk around a track with a lot of other people. I should love October, I should welcome a chance to spread more “awareness” of breast cancer.
One of the great sporting events in Orthodox synagogues is correcting the layners — i.e., the Torah readers. The cantillations on the Torah are an intricate, lovely cultural heritage, one of our most treasured. But they are also difficult to master, require practice and are performed in front of an unmarked scroll — that is, no vowels, punctuation or cantillations marks. It is very hard to layn well, and understandably, mistakes happen. But forgiveness does not. In most Orthodox synagogues, although there are generally two people standing at the podium for the purpose of correcting the layners, more often than not, corrections are barked from all across the sanctuary, like a real spectator sport.
Orthodox boys are inducted into this practice at the tender age of 13, when the message of “Now you are a man” conflates with the experience of being barked at and then being expected to just, well, keep going. As one man told me in the context of research I conducted on Orthodox men, boys learn that to be a man means not to cry, not to get upset, and not to even feel the experience of an entire congregation barking at you. You just keep performing. Orthodox girls, however, are not inducted into this emotionless performance, and that has some interesting repercussions.
Water has no color, and yet it contains the rainbow. Transparent and reflective, water reveals the myriad shades of cloud, sky, and light; the rosy glow of dawn, the orange burst of sunset. The soul has no color, and yet it imbibes the flavors, melodies, and histories of humanity. Intangible and sacred, the soul is never generic; each one tells its own story and sings its own song.
Yavilah McCoy’s African-American family has, four generations and counting, been on a journey into Jewish living. Along the way, she and her ancestors transformed and enriched the Jewish community in ways that are only starting to be felt on a broader stage. In “The Colors of Water,” a theater piece with music, Yavilah recounts her family saga — and sings its beautiful songs — in her own powerful voice
Anita Diamant, a best-selling author, is the founder and president of Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center. This was originally published on Jewish Women’s Archive’s Jewesses With Attitude, blog, which crossposts regularly with The Sisterhood
Israel is mulling a ban on face veils.
The editor of the online Jewish women’s magazine 614 is out with a new book about how single women can stay sane in our wedding-obsessed culture — not to mention our reproduction-obsessed faith.
Abstinence-only sex education is dead. Long live abstinence-only sex education?
Kvelling (or boasting) about their children — “She aced her nursery school entrance interview, my little genius!” — is one of the things Jewish moms and dads do very well. So it’s fitting that a new website for parents of young Jewish children went with the title Kveller. The site is part service, with information on why Jews frown on baby showers and a guide to Jewish baby names. And it’s part lifestyle magazine, with lively essays on adventures in parenting and a Jewish celebrity parent gossip column. I recently interviewed the site’s editor Deborah Kolben — full disclosure: she was my colleague at the late, great New York Sun — about her vision for Kveller, the site’s focus on Lower Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn, and why she thinks it will appeal to parents like her.
Let’s begin at the beginning. How did you come up with the name Kveller?
At Shabbat dinner in traditional Jewish homes the hymn “Eshet Chayil,” meaning “Woman of Valor,” is sung to the woman who runs the household. It concludes with the line “Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.”
According to the mysterious group Jewish Women Watching, — the organization’s members remain anonymous “to focus attention on the issues, not ourselves,” according to the group’s mission statement — leaders of Orthodox organizations in the U.S., and leaders of the State of Israel, are hypocritical because they presumably sing this even as they deny women the ability to serve in positions of religious leadership, not allowing them to enjoy the “fruit of their hands.”
“Religious Jewish women devoted to Torah, worship, and communal leadership are victims of constant sexist backlash,” said JWW in a press release the group distributed as the High Holy Days began. The release went on to say, “In this season of reflection and repentance, JWW calls on mainstream Orthodox leaders to do teshuvah [repentance], atoning for their actions that suppress valorous women.”
The first time I saw Tefillin Barbie, — the brainchild of Torah scribe Jen Taylor Friedman — she was on the back of the stub of an entrance ticket to the Jewish Museum Berlin. She wasn’t on my ticket stub, but rather on that of my companion. But seeing that I just had to have her, I arranged for a quick exchange. My colleague didn’t seem to mind — he wasn’t as taken by the photo of Tefillin Barbie as I was.
It’s a bit hard to say why exactly it was love at first sight for me. It couldn’t have been nostalgia; I was not exactly a big Barbie fan when I was a girl.
I think in large part, it probably had something to do with my having recently seen Tiffany Shlain’s film, “The Tribe,” which uses Barbie (based on the German “Lilli” doll) as a symbol for 20th century Jewish American identity and acculturation. Perhaps, when I laid eyes on Tefillin Barbie, while standing there in the once-Nazi capital, I heard her proudly say, “Look at me! I survived! I am a beautiful woman, a beautiful Jewish woman. And I have gone on to do great things, such as changing ways in which we Jewish women see ourselves and our roles in the Jewish community.”
Boychik, as a rabid Yankees fan, usually avoids discussing the Mets (or Red Sox) unless they’re losing to his favorite team, but he was so amused by the recent tale of Mets rookie first baseman Isaac Benjamin “Ike” Davis, that he shared it with me.
Davis, whose mother is Jewish, and who identifies himself as “culturally Jewish” but not religious, was asked by Mets management if he would play on the Friday night of Yom Kippur and he, winning a spot in the Great Jewish Sons Hall of Fame, told them to ask his mother. She indicated that she preferred he not play on Yom Kippur, but left the decision to her 23 year-old-son.
Actress Cara Buono, who plays Dr. Faye Miller, psychologist and new paramour for Don Draper on “Mad Men,” has been making the interview rounds recently as her character’s role expands. Despite her cool blond exterior, Dr. Miller is a girl from the neighborhood, and she may even be a Jewess.
Some have noticed the distinctly Yiddish origins of a particularly salty kiss-off Dr. Miller shouted from a payphone as well as the New York ethnic accent that slips out when she’s heated or vulnerable. We know her dad is a candy-store owner with Mafia connections, and that like Don, her chic exterior hides a less privileged past. So of course, we’ve been wondering: Is she really a Jewish girl, or did she just have Yiddish-speaking neighbors in the borough of her youth?
Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism at the Jewish Museum in New York — reviewed here in the Forward — features canvases, and a few sculptures and decorative objects, influenced by several waves of feminism over the past 80 years. The exhibit’s curator, Daniel Belasco, spoke recently with The Sisterhood about the Jewish Museum’s history of acquiring self-consciously feminist artwork, and gives a virtual tour of some of the show’s stand-out works.
The slideshow is best viewed in fullscreen mode.
Inspiration: Feminism from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.
The High Court in Israel has come down with a decision that formally recognizes the right of the rabbinical court to use charity funds to pay off recalcitrant husbands who are blackmailing their wives in exchange for agreeing to a divorce. That is, the Beit Din is not only supportive of the blackmail process in theory but fully enables it.
This is a process in which the woman says, “I want a divorce,” the man says, “I’ll give it to you for a price,” and the rabbis say, “We’ll pay some, and the woman will pay the rest.” The money comes from a not-for-profit fund controlled by the Beit Din that is called, outrageously enough, The Aguna Fund. Just thinking about our rabbinical justice system in action gives me a migraine.
A shameful admission from a proud feminist: I’ve been watching the latest season of the reality show competition “America’s Next Top Model.” I know, I know, I ought to be ashamed of myself, but there’s something about this show that is so far removed from day-to-day life that I just can’t help myself.
Of course I try to assuage my guilty conscience by providing a running feminist commentary as I’m watching, but I can’t deny the blatantly obvious: I’m still one of the consumers who’s caught up in this warped perception of feminine beauty.
And yet, there is a small feminist victory in all this — and it has nothing to do with the inclusion this season of a Modern Orthodox contestant.
In the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim, attempts to ban women from the main street during Sukkot has prompted protests.
The “lactivist” community is calling for a boycott of Old Navy because the retailer is selling “Formula Powered” onesies. As Deborah Kolben points out on Kveller, Jewish tradition “recognizes that breastfeeding is both a burden and a blessing.”
Beginning this week, federal regulations require health insurance companies to provide free preventive health services — but those preventive services do not include free birth control, at least not yet.
For the past two weeks, during the Days of Awe, I have gone completely without celebrity gossip — no TMZ, no US Weekly, nothing. I know, it sounds like a sacrifice Cher from the movie “Clueless” would make, a tiny act of self-denial in an otherwise frivolous life. But the abstention actually proved quite revelatory, allowing me to see just how deep I had sunk into the ocean of useless information.
My habit evolved slowly. First I just read the cover of tabloid magazines if I happened to be waiting in line at a drugstore or airport bookstore. Then I started flipping through them. After that, I started checking the celebrity gossip websites once or twice a week as a reward for a busy day or strenuous effort. Once or twice a week somehow turned into to daily habit, which then turned into a few times a day, which was the case for the previous year — until a couple of weeks ago.
Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, an exhibit opening October 1 at San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, almost ended before it began.
About two years ago, as I was walking through the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art’s annual expo at the Puck Building, I noticed a lot of tables where young women artists with Jewish last names were presenting their work. Most of the cartoons were confessional, raw and pretty revealing. They were also beautifully rendered, sharply written, and completely engaging.
A few days after interviewing seven or eight of the cartoonists for a story on Jewish women cartoonists for Jewish Living magazine, the publication folded. Luckily, the Forward’s arts and culture editor accepted the pitch. After the article ran I received an email from a doctoral candidate named Sarah Lightman, who is researching autobiography in comics at the University of Glasgow. Had I considered turning the story — “Graphic Confessions of Jewish Women” — into an exhibit of some kind?
When I was a student at Tel Aviv University, during my second year of college, I spent a number of Shabbatot and holidays with new friends — young women who had, like me, grown up in the States, and were now newly Orthodox — who were learning how to be religious at Neve Yerushalyaim yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood.
Reading Elana Sztokman’s recent post about how good it felt to be counted in a minyan for the first time brought some of those memories back, though in a kind of reverse way.
I know how it feels to be attracted to the other side of Jewish life. I’ve always been fascinated by and attracted to deep religious experience and the meaning it brings to those who aren’t satisfied skating on the surface of life.
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