When I was younger, I felt physical pain at getting my hair cut. I hated leaning my head back under hot water and feeling rough hands scratch at my scalp, taking something from me that was mine. Many spiritual and religious traditions view hair as a retainer of one’s vital essence. Rastafarians consider hair their…
This past January, Rochelle Shoretz had just celebrated her son’s bar mitzvah in Israel and returned home, when she had a routine MRI, necessary after she’d been successfully treated for Stage 2 breast cancer seven years earlier. She wasn’t particularly concerned about the scan, having already made it past the critical five-year mark with no…
Just before sundown on a Friday evening, Rachel Nathanson turned on a lamp in her living room and recited the prayer traditionally said upon kindling Sabbath candles. Then she said the blessing over the wine, allowing herself a single sip of grape juice. She purposely skipped the blessing over the challah — “I don’t trust…
I was pushing my son’s stroller along the main avenue of our Brooklyn neighborhood on a bright fall morning, when I was stopped by a bearded man in a top hat, his long black coat flapping. “Excuse me, are you Jewish?” he asked. I stared at him, stunned for two reasons: The simpler of the…
Depending on how you look at it, Masha Gessen’s “Blood Matters” (Harcourt) is either an unusually philosophical memoir of a cancer diagnosis or an unusually personal account of the complex ethical questions surrounding the issue of genetic testing. What do we want to know, and what don’t we want to know, about our own fates?…
My sister Debbie has always been gorgeous — great face, great body. When I happened to find a picture taken 20 years ago, showing us all grouped around our family’s beloved dining room table, I was thrilled at how young and fit we all looked. But I hid it from her for months. The reason…
‘Feel my leg,” said Shulamis Soffer, 27, offering up a silky, hair-free gam for inspection. The Orthodox Brooklyn native’s legs are just-got-a-wax smooth, and, thanks to the magic of lasers, they always will be. A licensed laser hair removal specialist, Soffer wants to help as many people as possible experience the same sort of razor-free…
Daniele Sullivan has made a career out of creating wigs, but even she confesses that up close she can’t tell a lace front creation from a real head of hair. So that’s what she teaches her classes. Sullivan, an Orthodox Parisian who moved to Israel two years ago with her husband and their 10 children…
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