Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at chernikoff@forward.com and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.
Helen Chernikoff
By Helen Chernikoff
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Life Sheryl Sandberg’s Mea Culpa and the Limitations of Jewish Feminism
On Mother’s Day, Sheryl Sandberg used her Facebook page to apologize to single mothers. By her own second Mother’s Day as a single parent, Sandberg realized she’d shortchanged other single mothers in “Lean In,” her her manifesto urging women to embrace opportunity at work, by not recognizing how hard it can be to do that…
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Life It Comes Down to This: A Feminist vs. a Misogynist
I woke up the morning after the Acela Primary and realized that the Clinton-Trump matchup is a dream come true. I’m a Hillary Clinton supporter, but until it became basically a certainty that she’d be running against Trump in the general election, I was not a fan. As a staunch feminist and a passionate liberal,…
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Life Bernie or Hillary? A Leftist Feminist Jewess Agonizes
I’m not like Ivanka Trump, who takes such pride in being a registered Independent voter who chooses her candidate based on the “person, not the party,” that she ended up not being able to vote for anyone, much less her own father, in the New York primary. For one thing, I’m a Democrat who proudly…
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Breaking News Video: JCC Camp Counselor Gets Scolding for Sporting Dreadlocks
Cory Goldstein sports dreads. Bonita Tindle condemns his coiffure as cultural appropriation. The interested internet might have remained ignorant of the contretemps between the two San Francisco State University students had one Nicholas Silvera not filmed their interaction. His video — the first published under that name — has garnered 2.5 million views. “You’re saying…
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Life Ladies, Ya Gotta Get Pregnant, But Not Look Like It
Amirite? As a woman, many demands are laid upon you by glossy magazines and social media. Well, here’s a new one, and it’s a doozy. You know you have to get pregnant. It doesn’t matter what else you have done, or who you are. If you don’t breed, you are lesser. And when it’s over,…
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Life For Women’s History Month, Let’s Skip the Pink
Every March, the American Zionist Movement and the World Zionist Organization celebrate Women’s History Month with an event called “FeminIsrael” that highlights the contributions of Israeli women to the world. This year’s was last night, at WeWork Soho. I’m a bit ambivalent about history months, but I’m definitely not ambivalent about this: Bad choice of…
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Life With President Trump a Possibility, Your Panties Are Political
New York City subway cars are full of ads urging women to change their bodies. To enlarge their breasts, with surgery. To shrink their stomachs, with protein supplements. But since November, straphangers have also been gazing on a very different series of posters likewise aimed at the XX set. They’re advertising THINX — “Period panties…
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Breaking News Donald Trump Compares Jewish Federations to White Supremacists — ADL Calls Claim ‘Obscene’
Pesidential candidate Donald Trump defended his refusal to repudiate white supremacist groups by comparing them to Jewish charities — a claim that the Anti-Defamation League denounced as obscene. “I don’t like to disavow groups if I don’t know who they are,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” I mean, you could have Federation of Jewish…
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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