By Avital Norman Nathman, Kveller.com (Kveller via JTA) — Whether you weave in one, a few, or all 10 of these tips, consider honoring the matriarchal roots of Judaism this Passover with a little girl power fun at your seder this year. Add an orange and coffee bean to yourContinue Reading
By Hanna Rais, The Media Line In Afghanistan, dozens of men marched through the streets wearing head-to-toe sky-blue burkas to show their identification with restrictions against women. In Iran, women took to social media to “reclaim feminism.” At the West Bank Qalandia crossing, 1,000 Palestinian and 500 Israeli women triedContinue Reading
By Ron Kampeas, JTA World News Service CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (JTA) – Jewish campus groups were ready for the painful national dialogue that took place in the wake of murky rape allegations at the University of Virginia. That’s because organizations like Hillel and historically Jewish Greek houses such as Alpha Epsilon Pi, ZetaContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound Fresh out of Israel and already scooping up a first place award at the Tribeca Film Festival is “Zero Motivation,” a darkly delightful girl-buddy comedy about the banality of daily life in Israel’s defining institution, the army. “M*A*S*H” meets “Orange is theContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service JERUSALEM (JTA) – On the surface, the tour looked much like a standard Birthright Israel trip: Participants celebrated Shabbat in Jerusalem’s Old City, swam in the Dead Sea and ascended the ancient mountain fortress at Masada. The trip was mostly free and organizersContinue Reading
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JTA World News Service (JTA) — Surely the Torah’s redactors never imagined that their Dinah — voiceless daughter of Jacob and Leah, rape victim avenged by her brothers — would one day be portrayed on the small screen as a lusty young midwife’s apprentice who takesContinue Reading
Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound Following the discovery of Washington, D.C. rabbi Barry Freundel’s breach of privacy for spying on women preparing for immersion in the mikvah and his subsequent arrest, the Rabbinical Council of America voted to appoint ombudswomen across the country to support women in theContinue Reading
By Elana Sztokman, JTA World News Service MODIIN, Israel (JTA) — With the news that Rabbi Barry Freundel, a prominent Orthodox rabbi, has been arrested for peeping at the naked bodies of his female congregants through a secret camera in the mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, many disturbing questions areContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service TEL AVIV (JTA) — For approximately a half hour at the beginning of her El Al Israel Airlines flight last week from New York to Tel Aviv, Elana Sztokman watched as the haredi Orthodox man seated next to her rushed up and downContinue Reading
NEW YORK (JTA) – For years, Melissa Duchan had found the dress code for girls at her Orthodox school in Brooklyn, the Yeshivah of Flatbush, onerous. But it wasn’t until recently that Duchan, 16, felt that scrutiny of female students had crossed the line from irritating to what she calledContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — All women of Ashkenazi descent should be screened from age 30 for the BRCA gene mutation that causes breast cancer, an Israeli study recommends.The study, by a research team headed by Ephrat Levy-Lahad of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, was published last Friday in the journal ProceedingsContinue Reading
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Joan Rivers, who broke barriers for women in comedy and on television, has died. Rivers, 81, died Thursday a week after being rushed to Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital after her heart stopped during throat surgery at a clinic. Doctors at the hospital put her in an inducedContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist Even when work is going well, personal problems always seem to rear up. At least that is how it goes for these female and Jewish protagonists — whether in the 21st or 16th centuries — featured in a crop of newly published novels. SharingContinue Reading
By Melanie Notkin, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) — We had just closed our Haggadahs to begin the dinner portion of the Passover seder when the conversation abruptly, yet not surprisingly, turned to my singlehood. There is a curiosity to some about a single, childless woman in herContinue Reading
