Jewish Blogs

In the Trenches Against Abuse

Earlier this week, I attended a fundraiser for the Aleinu Family Resource Center, a project of Jewish Family Services in Los Angeles that provides an array of specialized assistance to the Orthodox community. Aleinu provides personal counseling and parental skills education, as might be expected. It also addresses the issues we are less likely to talk about: domestic violence, sexual ...

In the beginning God created… jobs?

Every time we hear about how this political policy or that one “creates jobs” — we cringe.First off, God creates things, businessmen hire people.Second off, creating jobs is an awfully minimal accomplishment.Young people want CAREERS, not jobs. They want employment with benefits, with a future, and with a modicum of ownership in the means of production.Read More: @ tzvee.blogspot.comYou might also ...

In My Window Garden: Kalanchoe From Cuttings

I have always loved Kalanchoe, with its tiny vibrant blooms, but I can’t say that I’ve been all the successful in maintaining these flowering succulents for more than a season or two. But now I have new hope, as I have managed to root some Kalanchoe cuttings and they are now producing tiny pink blooms!The funny thing is, that last ...

In Defense of Tzedakah

In this post-Hebrew Hammer world of kitscharama, Jews have their own version of pretty much everything — from Jewish delis to Jewish dating sites and beyond. Case in point (today): the Jewish Groupon site JDeal.com. And today’s deal has caused quite a stir:$38.00 for 40 consecutive days of prayer by a Torah scholar at the Kotel ($95 value)This was instantly blasted ...

In a new light: Avivah Zornberg and the tale of Joseph

I have long seen myself as the dissident daughter of an orthodox father, a truant who broke her father’s heart by turning my back on his cherished orthodoxy and living a more experimental way of life. It is therefore a delicate matter, this fascination of mine with the Other Daughter – the good girl – the one whose father did ...

Improving Moral Vocabulary

Eric Greitens is the author of The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL. He has been blogging all week for the Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning‘s Author Blog.In Tuesday’s post, I talked about how stories give us strength in trying times. Stories also have the power to repair and transform the reader and the writer.The Jewish ...

I’m no longer just an author

In his earlier posts, Adam Langer set out to write a screenplay and wrote a book in two months. His newest novel, The Thieves of Manhattan, is now available. He has been blogging all week for the Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning’s Author Blog series. Even though I finished writing The Thieves of Manhattan less than a year ago, the ...

“I’ll be Jewish for Christmas”

Last week I wrote a blog post about the “Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah” issue. But now I’m thinking we should all just disregard what I wrote because today I found this video of Katie Goodman of Broad Comedy singing “I’ll be Jewish for Christmas,” and it says everything I wanted to say and more. In song.“I’ll be Jewish for Christmas” was ...

If you saw your best friend getting raped, what would you do?

The answer seems pretty obvious, but in Hush (reviewed last week by Eliyahu Fink, because I hadn’t gotten my copy yet) it is anything but. Hush is the memoir-novel written for young adults about two best friends who grow up in Boro Park. It is written by a chassidish woman who goes by the pseudonym Eishes Chayil and I am ...

If women are forbidden to learn what do they do in seminary?

sIt is only a recent phenomina that women want to learn torah, for many years they were complacent in the kitchen, running their homes, churning the butter, dying in childbirth and tending to the chickens, all of a sudden they were given the right to vote and they became all feisty, demanding things like the ability to leave the kitchen, ...

If Only All The Mommy Wars Were This Entertaining

Big ups to my homegirl Excruciatingly Normal for turning me on to Kveller, a new Jewish mother site out of New York with delish blogs, advice and community for pregnant Jewmamas to those with preschool aged kids. ‘Course, that’s not me anymore, since Yenta Boy is grousing around like a real adolescent with his Justin Bieber swoop and Facebook page, ...

I will survive circumcision: Did you have bris late in life?

I remember hearing these stories in yeshiva about kids who found out they weren’t really Jewish later on in life, the stories centered around whether or not the kid or young adult decided to stay the course and convert or leave the path and get laid – the stories never focused on the pain and anticipation of having your foreskin ...