Jewish Blogs

Apparently I’m not frum – but who really is these days?

I made a comment yesterday about how I wouldn’t date the girl who posted the shidduch resume, but I would be down with making out and I’m sure most anyone would, why not, a little tongue slurping with some cute girl is always fun – I happened to have been fooling around.I don;t just make out with random girls – ...

Apparently, All Jews Are Men

It hasn’t been an awesome few weeks for Jewish women. There has been a lot of brouhaha about the RCA finally coming out and saying they won’t recognize women rabbis. This caused an Orthodox female friend of mine to moan, “Orthodoxy is so stupid. I should just leave it. I mean, why do I want to associate with these people?” ...

Anti-Semitism of a Complex Kind

In 1893 the German writer Oscar Panizza published a story called “The Operated Jew,” a synopsis of which reads like a racially charged David Cronenberg film: a young Jewish doctor submits to a serious of painful surgical procedures to conceal his heritage, culminating with a blood transfusion from pure Ayran virgins, but just before his wedding to a blonde German woman, the operations lose ...

Anti-Semitism: Not An Attractive Employment Tactic

Both Charlie Sheen and fashion designer John Galliano both deep-sixed their careers after making anti-Semitic slurs surfaced last week:First, bipolar alcoholic maniac Sheen sneeringly called producer Chuck Lorre “Chaim Levine” on a radio interview. Lorre, the creator of the beyond-idiotic sitcom Two and A Half Men in which Charlie has inexplicably starred in for seven asinine seasons, responded by canceling the rest ...

Anti-segregationists target synagogues

I write to you from Israel – this is my view as a religious person who is deeply disturbed by the growing anti-Haredi movements among those Israeli’s who do not understand what we are for.It wasn’t enough that the anti-religious movement that is being fueled by a rabidly anti-religious left wing secular media wanted to dictate what a sincerely devout ...

Answering Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart’s “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” in last week’s New York Review of Books is an important piece – important in the same way as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s 2006 screed “The Israeli Lobby:” It will be widely quoted and pernicious in effect. Beinart begins with the results of focus groups conducted by pollster Frank Luntz with Jewish ...

Another lame attempt to blame going off the derech on the internet and “secular society”

Every few years or so, some publication in the frum community decides to do a big write up about how we are losing our children to the terrible secular society, they are going off the derech in droves and we can’t blame the frum community so let’s blame whatever current “fad” we can, it used to be drugs and television ...

Another Emma “Makes Trouble”

Pregnant women take note: There’s something about the name “Emma” that turns a girl into a prizefighter swinging her fists for human––often specifically women’s––rights, or, as we like to say here at the Jewish Women’s Archive, a “troublemaker” in the best sense of the word.For starters, think Statue of Liberty poet and immigrant advocate Emma Lazarus, one of JWA’s “Women of ...

Another Altered Photo in Jewish Newspaper

While everyone is talking about the altered photo with Hillary Clinton in the Haredi newspaper Der Zeitung, there have been other examples of these ultra-Orthodox newspapers editing photographs to suit their purpose.TIME Magazine reported on a poorly doctored photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet from 2009 in the Israeli newspaper Yated Neeman. In the photo, two female Cabinet members, Limor ...

Annie Londonderry and the bicycle as a vehicle of social liberation

Over the past couple years, we have witnessed the rise of an eco-friendly, politically progressive bike culture in the US. In March, 2011, Maria Popova wrote for the Atlantic: “As much as we love bike culture and everything bikes stand for, we may have underestimated the profound significance of the bicycle as a cultural agent of change.”Earlier this year, Sue Macy’s Wheels ...

Angry Atmosphere at Home – Rebbetzin Heller Advises

Excerpted from Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller’s Question and Answer series on Naaleh.com. Question:I find it hard to come close to Hashem due to the angry atmosphere in my home. I once heard from a Rabbi that someone who doesn’t have a good relationship with his parents can’t have a real connection with Hashem. What should I do?Read More: @ naalehupdate.wordpress.comYou might also ...

Angels in the Dark – A Mood Piece for Tisha B’Av

While all of us are conscious of the loss of the beis hamikdosh ybbb”a as the underlying cause of all national tragedy in the last two millennia, many of us still react most deeply to events closer to our day. I have seen shuls full of people dutifully reciting kinos without significant emotional connection come to life and tears arriving ...