Sarah Seltzer
By Sarah Seltzer
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Life Is Elena Kagan ‘One of Us’?
One of the biggest questions Jewish groups and feminists have debated since the nomination of Elena Kagan is whether it’s possible to effect genuine but incremental change from within or more desirable to work outside the system. This kind of insider/outsider anxiety is particularly potent for contemporary Jews, who are mindful of our historical status…
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Life From Feminists, a Cautious Optimism on Kagan Nomination
While there’s a lot of immediate excitement in the progressive Jewish and feminist communities about Elena Kagan’s nomination — Jewish! Female! Liberal! Possibly gay! — her lack of experience as a judge leaves many people guessing as to what legal and political principles Kagan stands for. Meanwhile, we cultural critics ponder what her nomination symbolizes…
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Life The Problems With Religiously Sanctioned Sex Positivity
I read with interest Debra Nussbaum Cohen’s post about the struggles of Sara Diament, author of a book on sexuality education for young girls — a book targeted towards Orthodox Jews. I’ve had religion and sex on the brain this week. “Religious sex” was the name of a now-departed fetish boutique on St. Marks place,…
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Life Young Abortion-Rights Advocates — We’re Everywhere
I appreciate the frustration fellow Sisterhood blogger Debra Nussbaum Cohen expresses at this critical juncture for reproductive rights. I also worry all the time that pro-choicers are losing the national battle over abortion rights. But as a twenty-something feminist, I don’t have to look far to find my peers — and I certainly wouldn’t blame…
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Life An Intergenerational Battle Over Abortion
As we anticipate the possible Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan — she is Jewish, pro-choice and said to be on Obama’s short-list — pro-choice activists are preparing themselves for a tough, abortion-focused confirmation process, no matter who is nominated. Meanwhile, a recent Newsweek article has generated heated online debate, by positing that there’s an…
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Life PBS’s Anne Frank and the Heroine Canon
There’s been a lot of fantastic Web writing around this week’s PBS premiere of a brand new version of “The Diary of Anne Frank” (see the Forward’s interview with star Ellie Kendrick here). On PBS’s blog, Remotely Connected, author and researcher Alexandra Zapruder, who compiled a collection of Jewish children’s Holocaust journals, wrote about the…
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The Schmooze How Do You Keep, and Break, Passover?
In the past few years, I’ve struggled to reconcile being a non-believer with my love of Jewish culture and traditions. So I’ve wavered back and forth on keeping Passover and fasting on Yom Kippur, the two most intrinsic rituals of self-deprivation for the sake of enlightenment on the Jewish calendar. This year, after a few…
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Life Toward a More Equitable Passover
Passover — the holiday during which seemingly every Jewish family or group of friends puts its own spin on the celebration of freedom — is here. But as much as seders deviate from each other, there are some variables that remain constant. For instance, countless Jewish women have doubtless made the same joke as they…
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