Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at dncnews@icloud.com.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
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Life Pesach: The Mother of Invention for the Prevention of Chametz
Who’s stressed about cleaning for Pesach? Me, me! Yes, ladies, it’s that time of year when the impending festival brings out the inner balabusta in even the most latent of homemakers. I know of women who spend weeks, and I mean actual weeks, preparing their homes to be chametz-free. Women — there may be men…
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Life Don’t Divorce the Mitzvah from Mikveh
At last Sunday’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance there was an interesting session titled “Rediscovering Mikvah: Creating a New Construct in Thinking about Mikvah.” Given my increasingly ambivalent relationship to my own mikveh practice, I slipped away from all the sessions on Orthodox women and leadership that I needed to attend to for…
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News The First ‘Rabba’ Is Given a Standing Ovation at Jewish Feminist Conference
The battle over whether women may serve in rabbinic roles in Orthodox synagogues, and if so, what these women should be called, dominated the recent Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference — where many speakers predicted that female clergy members would become increasingly common at Orthodox institutions. “The community is inspired, electrified and supportive of women…
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Life Rabbi Sperber at JOFA: Confront Halacha’s Male Bias
Early Sunday morning, I shlepped my tired self through the rain — taking the subway up to Columbia University — to cover the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. At the end of a long day, I came away energized. At the First International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy back in 1997, there was something electric…
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Life ‘Plan A’: NCJW’s Campaign for Contraception
When my neighbor told me that “Plan B” was the name he had picked for the sports bar he was opening, I just about choked. Until I told him, he had no idea that it’s the name of the morning-after pill; he went with the name anyway. So I thought it very clever when I…
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Life International Women’s Day: Whom Should We Celebrate?
Today is International Women’s Day, a day to – what? I’m not really sure. It is, according to the [official site] of the day, “a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday.” This…
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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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News Woman ‘Rabba’ Roils Orthodox World
Read an update to this story here. A prominent Orthodox rabbi who recently granted rabbinic ordination to a woman is coming under fire from top ultra-Orthodox religious authorities, and now is said to be engaged in negotiations with the country’s mainstream Orthodox rabbinic association over the issue. Rabbi Avi Weiss’s decision in January to confer…
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