Gabrielle Birkner
By Gabrielle Birkner
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Life A Chat Show for Jewish Women
The Salon, The Jewish Channel women’s issues chat show, is out with a new episode — featuring actress Tovah Feldshuh (of “Kissing Jessica Stein” and “Golda’s Balcony” fame), Lilith magazine editor Susan Weidman Schneider, and comedy writer Julie Klausner. Panelists discuss whether women’s milestones, like Kathryn Bigelow’s historic Oscar win, should necessarily be celebrated as…
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News New Gallaudet President Bridges Deaf, Jewish Worlds
Jews have a reputation for talking with their hands. For most of them, it’s a matter of emphasis; for veteran educator T. Alan Hurwitz, it’s more basic. American Sign Language is his mameloshn. Earlier this year, the 68-year-old Hurwitz, who is profoundly deaf, became the 10th — and first Jewish — president of Gallaudet University,…
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The Schmooze C-SPAN’s Middle East Treasure Trove
In recent days, I’ve spent way too much time geeking out on C-SPAN’s video library, which was recently put online in its entirety. The virtual library, home to 160,000 hours of video, is a treasure trove — not to mention a great procrastination vehicle — for political junkies of all stripes. And there’s plenty for…
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Life Podcast: How Orthodox Day Schools Can Embrace Feminism
It’s a story of a Sisterhood post done good. Last month, Elana Sztokman, a regular contributor to this blog, proposed a model for infusing Orthodox day schools with the kind of feminist values that have informed partnership synagogues and have advanced women’s leadership roles within Orthodoxy. The buzz that her blog post generated secured her…
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Israel News Miss Congeniality’s Mishegas
In the category of “Latest Yiddish Word To Find Crossover Appeal,” the March 7 Academy Awards telecast produced a dark-horse winner: mishegas, which roughly translates to “madness or folly.” While introducing this year’s Oscar nominees for cinematography, actress Sandra Bullock — who took this year’s leading actress Oscar for her role in “The Blind Side”…
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Life Parsing the ‘Menstrual Slap’
For Sisterhood contributor Elissa Strauss, a recent panel discussion on marketing embarrassing products to women brought to mind an episode of the 1990s sitcom “Blossom,” in which the title character gets her period for the first time — and celebrates the occasion with her family, over Chinese food. For me, the discussion recalled the so-called…
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Life Digest: Tots Doing Housework, The New Modesty
Sisterhood Digest: • A group of religious Israeli women, many of whom live in West Bank settlements, are touting a new approach to raising children that has five-year-olds doing dishes and sweeping floors. “Based on the psychological theories of Alfred Adler and borrowing from traditional Jewish sources, [these women] aim to fight what they see…
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Life ‘28 Days, 28 Ideas’: A Better Future for Jewish Women and Girls
The Sisterhood blog began in 2009 with an idea to create a forum where Jewish women — from across ideological and denominational spectrums, in different cities and stages of life — could come together to discuss the issues impacting their lives. We’re enormously proud of how the conversation has taken shape, and the unlikely common ground…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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