Johnna Kaplan
By Johnna Kaplan
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Life Addicted to (Unrequited) Love
“Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife” by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, the most famous unrequited love story in the Bible (via Wikimedia Commons). Twenty years ago, Lisa A. Phillips found herself knocking obsessively on the door of a man who had tried to end their friendship-turned-romance relationship months earlier. The experience, she writes, transformed her “from a sane,…
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Culture The Foodlums of Connecticut
One Sunday this past August, I stopped by the farmers’ market in Morris, Connecticut. Morris is a small town (population about 2,400) in lush, hilly Litchfield County. It’s probably best known as the home of luxury resort Winvian, and its main intersections are governed only by a stop sign or a single red flashing light….
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Life The Mikveh in My Backyard
The site of the Chesterfield synagogue I’m walking towards a wooded lot almost hidden by what passes for a busy intersection in rural eastern Connecticut. The road has no shoulder, so I try to stay as close as possible to the curb. This is not a place designed for pedestrians, and I wonder what passing…
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Life Demystifying the Single Life
Sara Eckel’s new book, “It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single,” may be in the relationship section of the bookstore, but it’s not quite like its neighbors on the shelf. “It’s Not You” contains no “helpful” tips about all the things you must be doing wrong if you’re a woman of a certain age…
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Life Randi Zuckerberg’s ‘Dot Complicated’
It’s been a good (or perhaps bad) year for normal-woman outrage. I’m still pretty irked about being told to “Lean In,” and now there is yet another book by an uber-successful (and uber-lucky) woman who thinks her life lessons apply to the rest of us. If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about former Facebook marketing…
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Life Falling Through Cracks That Sandy Made
One year ago, much of the Northeast went dark in a violent rush of wind, and the water started to rise. One week after Sandy hit, I wrote about how I spent the days immediately following the storm, eating frozen Rosh Hashanah honey cake and surrounding myself with candles and flashlights. At the time it…
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Life Why It’s OK To Call Miley Cyrus Stupid
Whether you read the Jewish press, the celebrity gossip blogs, or both, you are no doubt aware by now that Miley Cyrus, most recently famous for licking objects a dog would have the good sense to avoid, told Hunger TV why she wants to be in control of her image: “It can’t be like this…
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Life Hey, I’m the 94% Too!
A little over a month ago, I began an experiment in what I thought of as Doing Jewish Things. I wondered, if I observed certain customs or ventured into areas of Judaism I had previously ignored, would it have any discernable impact on my life? Would I feel better, more engaged, less inexplicably guilty about…
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