Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.
Elissa Strauss
By Elissa Strauss
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Life Parenting Gone Wild
I didn’t want to write about Amy Sohn’s story “Modern Mothers’ Turn to Scratch an Itch,” in the New York Times’ Sunday Style section. Any “trend” piece about a handful of wealthy women whose idea of work/life balance is leaving their kids with their husbands at the summer vacation house during the week as they…
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Life Why Is Anti-Vac the New Black?
I am pro-vaccine. Very. And I think you should be, too, as a parent, a Jew and a fellow citizen. For this reason, I find myself increasingly baffled by the anti-vaccine movement that seems to be gaining steam even as study after study discredits any harmful side effects from vaccinations and children — babies! —…
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Life Childcare problems? The Jewish Organizational World Responds
In her new story “Motherhood in the ‘Lean In’ Era for Lillith, former Sisterhood editor Gabrielle Birkner takes a look at the childcare crisis and what the Jewish communal world should, and is, doing about it. Daycare programs and tuition subsidies are arguably as good an investment as trips to Israel. And there are fewer…
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Life A Jewish Way to Process Abortion
Over at Tablet, Josie Glausiusz has a reported piece on new Jewish mikveh ceremonies and rituals for women who have had an abortion. Like everywhere else, abortion is a complicated issue in the Jewish community, from the “feminists [who] don’t necessarily want to acknowledge the notion that abortion may be associated with feelings of grief,…
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Life The Inconvenient Truth of Having a Career and Kids
Judith Warner has a new New York Times magazine piece on the opt-out fallout. She looks at the lives of women who, armed with prestigious degrees and high-powered jobs, decided to leave their careers behind in order to become full-time caretakers a decade ago. (Many would call them stay-at-home-moms but I won’t, because I find…
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Life The Importance of Raising Kind Kids
The New York Times recently had two popular blog posts with very different thinking about kindness. The first was a transcript of novelist George Saunders’ Syracuse University commencement speech, which included a eloquent and heartfelt endorsement of the virtues of kindness. What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when…
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Life Oy! Latest Conspiracy Theory on Huma Abedin
Huma Abedin, woman or Rorschach test? It’s hard to tell these days. When it comes to Huma, everyone’s got a theory, and these theories do more to reveal the particular neuroses of their creators than they do to shed light on what she might actually be going through. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claims…
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Life Forget Weiner. Meet the Other Mayoral Candidates
Sick of hearing about “fool me twice, shame on me” Anthony Weiner’s approach to women? Me too. So let’s take a look at how the other front-running candidates for New York City mayor approach women and the issues that affect us. Bill de Blasio De Blasio is the only candidate that has a page dedicated…
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