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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Israel News Rabbis Shape Up
Rabbis are not generally known for having buff physiques. They’re valued more for the strength of their sermons than for what they can bench-press at the gym. And judging by the way things look at many rabbi conventions, moral fitness often takes precedence over physical fitness. If the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly has anything to…
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Life Paid Maternity Leave Should be a Right, Not a Privilege
Oh to be a working mother in Israel, where women who give birth will soon get 14 weeks of paid maternity leave. Fourteen weeks? I’d have been happy to get 14 days of paid leave in this country. In Jane Eisner’s Forward editorial this week, she writes about Israel’s move to extend legally mandated maternity…
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Life Masorti Leaders Challenge Oren’s Remarks on Tallit Arrest
Leaders of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel today sent Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. a letter questioning recent remarks which seemed to criticize accounts of a woman who was arrested at the Kotel for wearing a prayer shawl. Ambassador Michael Oren, speaking at last week’s convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative…
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Life New Israeli Hotline Opening for Complaints About Sex Segregation
In response to haredi efforts in Israel to increasingly segregate public areas by gender – the latest move is to make psychiatric hospitals single-sex only, which you can read more about in the Forward’s article here, an Israeli feminist organization is setting up a hotline for women to call to file complaints about discrimination or…
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Life Fathering a Child After Death: Kosher in Israel
A family court in Israel has issued a decision that the sperm of a long-dead man may be used to inseminate a woman, who apparently never even met the father of her potential future baby. According to this article in Yediot Achronot: The sperm in question belonged to a 22-year-old soldier who died of cancer…
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Life When a Child Asks ‘Are You Jewish?’
An interesting new post on the New York City Mom’s Blog, here, explores a mother’s feelings about her 4-year-old daughter asking people, “Are you Jewish?” Of course the little girl has lots of company – shout out Lubavitchers! – who apparently find my Brooklyn neighborhood fertile territory for fishing for Jews. So many young Chabadniks…
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Life Must-Reads on Judaism and Gender
Two fabulous Jewish magazines have new issues out that are must-reads for anyone interested in Judaism and gender. The first is Lilith’s new issue, which proclaims, in big black letters on a red background, that “Boys are the New Girls.” It’s an interesting premise, highlighting the much-needed attention paid lately to boys. Boys — and…
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Life Celebrating Thanksgiving, the American Jewish Festival of Freedom
There is no more Jewish holiday than Thanksgiving. It’s my second-favorite Jewish holiday. (My most favorite is Sukkot, because it’s so much about culture and history, welcoming friends and family to our temporary “home,” having time to cook, and it’s focused on the intangibles rather than the material.) I love Thanksgiving because a) there’s no…
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