Rebecca Honig Friedman
By Rebecca Honig Friedman
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Life In the ‘Comic Torah,’ God Looks a Lot Like Sharon Rosenzweig
One of the more creative takes I’ve seen on the weekly Torah portion is G-dcast, an animated Webcast that invites a different writer each week to offer their own 4-minute narration of that week’s parsha. It’s a brilliant idea, and often brilliantly executed, offering a unique take on the dvar Torah, and, in some cases,…
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Life Saving Women, Saving the World
Deborah Kolben’s previous post, about how her first ultrasound initially mistook her daughter for a son, brings to mind an article in this weekend’s New York Times that discusses just how complicated determining a person’s sex can be. Fascinating and freaky, the article — and my seeing a look-alike for the androgynous SNL character “Pat”…
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Life How To Behave at an Upsherin
The true test of a little boy’s character must be how he reacts when a roomful of adults come at him with scissors and start cutting his virgin locks. If this sounds like some sort of primitive tribal ritual, well, it is a ritual of our tribe — it’s called an upsherin (or upshernin, uphsernish,…
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Life Are Women Getting More Beautiful? Let’s Hope Not.
Women are getting more beautiful, and men are not, according to recent studies by Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, and Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, The Sunday Times reported last week. Relying on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and the National Longitudinal Study of…
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Life The Triathletes Leading the Pack
We Jewish women tend not to be known for our athleticism (my junior high yeshiva basketball team’s championship record in the prep school league notwithstanding. Go Rams!). So it was particularly exciting to see so many Jewish women participating in the New York City Triathlon on Sunday. Yes, I said triathlon! As in a Lance…
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Life Cronkite, Trump, and the Validity of Jewish Marriages
Ivanka Trump’s conversion/engagement to Jared Kushner may be interesting to most readers because of its wealthy-elite-hooking-up gossip factor, but their story is also quite relevant to the controversies that have been surrounding Orthodox conversion in recent years. My unsolicited advice to the happy couple, who shall heretofore be known collectively as Jivanka: Don’t try to…
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Life What Rabbi Eliyahu’s Comments Say About Men
Debra’s point in the previous post that Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu’s statements regarding modesty says “far more about the way the rabbi views men than it does women” warrants further discussion. The view of men that I think Debra is suggesting Eliyahu’s statement implies – that they are likely to be aroused by the slightest…
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Life Help Wanted: Black, Jewish and Female Formula One Racer
Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone’s been getting a lot of attention in the press for his recent comments praising Hitler for being an effective dictator who “got things done.” Besides being criticized by Jewish groups, the latest fallout for Eccelstone is a German politician’s canceling a meeting because of Ecclestone’s politically unacceptable views. But this…
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