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 [email protected].
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
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News Orthodox Child’s Transgender Journey From Moshe to Miryam
(Haaretz) — More than most kids, Moshe, who lived with his mom and siblings in a midsize Midwestern city with a small Orthodox community, loved going to shul. But shortly after Moshe began preparing for his bar mitzvah, he suddenly changed. From a sunny little boy to one who was withdrawn. Depressed. His grades, which…
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Culture Is ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ Opera Really Anti-Semitic?
(Haaretz) — The contemporary opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” has been fraught with conflict since its premiere, and is poised to be as divisive when it is performed by the Metropolitan Opera here in November, and simultaneously transmitted in high definition to movie theaters around the world. The 1991 opera, by composer John Adams and librettist…
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Life 18 Years of the Jewish Women’s Archive
When Gail Twersky Reimer came up with the idea for the Jewish Women’s Archive, just over 18 years ago, the voices and history of Jewish women could be found in few places outside of the types of libraries and archives that only academics are excited to trawl. Reimer wanted to create a virtual archive to…
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Life Is the ‘Man Seder’ Wrong?
Courtesy of Reuven Spolter // A scene from a ‘man seder’ in Oak Park, Michigan First there was the feminist seder. Now there is the “man seder,” many of which are centered around beer and steak. Versions were held in five Orthodox synagogues this year, with one attracting as many as 500 men. But conflict…
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Life Keeping Track of Orthodox ‘Tznius Craziness’
tznius craziness // An ad for children’s costumes shows female faces blanked out. Do you have the sneaking suspicion that an extreme focus on women’s and girls’ modesty has become the new normal in much of the Orthodox community? One man has gathered the evidence into an Evernote virtual notebook he titled “tznius craziness.” The…
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Opinion The Haredi Community Isn’t ‘Ultra.’ Really?
Ultra-Orthodox bride Rivka Hannah (Hofman) at her Jerusalem wedding in 2014. / Getty Images About 20 years ago, when I was a staff writer for JTA, the editor and I were called into Agudath Israel of America for a meeting on the “ultra-Orthodox” issue. Rabbi Avi Shafran and other Agudah representatives were unhappy even then…
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The Schmooze Welcome To The A Capella Revolution
Listen to Pentatonix, and you’ll be sure that you hear instruments. In fact, it is an a cappella quintet of young singers — four men and one woman — who perform without any accompaniment, and manage to make a remarkable range of sounds in musical styles ranging from pop to electronica to R&B and dubstep….
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News What’s Unnerving About Angela Buchdahl? She Talks About God
(Haaretz) — What has made some people nervous about Angela Buchdahl becoming the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue – one of the two largest Reform synagogues in New York and one of the biggest in the United States – is not that she’s the first Asian-American rabbi. It’s not that she’s a woman or, at…
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