Feminism on trial

A dedicated reader commented on my recent post about the flap caused by Natalie Portman thanking her fiance at the Oscars ceremony for giving her “the most important role in her life.”  His view of what he calls “modern” feminism in the US appears to be a composite of stereotypes of women who, the story [...]

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Yet another catfight

I pay little attention to Natalie Portman on the average day.  Her all-out neurotic performance in “Black Swan” left my stomach churning, and I had to put the window down in the car on the way home to battle the nausea.  I guess that means she did a good job. It was after seeing the [...]

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Anonymous was a woman

One of the many Yahoo groups to which I belong is the Digital Eve group.  A chat list for women professionals in Israel, it usually has job listings for positions I am unqualified for, and requests for advice I cannot give.  But today someone (probably a Yale alumna) posted a link to this very interesting [...]

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The geek-girl’s muse

I know this week has been the “something borrowed” week here at Shimshonit.  Once the dust has settled in my life, I vow to get back to some original content.  In the meantime, however, I have found lots of cool stuff I’m eager to share, including the following. A friend posted this YouTube video of [...]

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Book review: Haviva Ner-David’s Life On the Fringes

A few months ago, Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale conferred rabbinical ordination on Sara Hurwitz.  It created something of a furor at the time, which has since seemed to die down (at least in the Orthodox circles I inhabit).  I gave the matter some thought at the time, and wrote a post about it. I [...]

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Book review: “The Women’s Room” by Marilyn French

A couple of months ago, the Cap’n and I went to an event at the new, beautiful AACI (Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel) offices in Talpiot.  Besides offices, event and conference rooms, and a small radio studio, the AACI has a very good English library.  They receive donations from patrons, and duplicates or [...]

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Remembering the Good Fight

My mother recently forwarded an email she’d received from a friend of hers.  It reviews some of the incidents that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution granting women the right to vote.  Since this year is the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage in America, I think it’s worth looking [...]

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Never look back

I was talking with friends the other day—two women in their 40s, a few years older than I.  One has four children, the other six or seven (I forget; the youngest is still nursing, and the eldest is in the army, or beyond).  The one with four has been feeling down lately, seeing and feeling [...]

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Too skinny to model?

When I was a junior in high school, there was a girl in my class who was obsessed with modeling magazines.  She would walk around the dorm showing the other girls the latest photos in Vogue and Elle, admiring the models and clearly feeling dissatisfied with her own girlish figure.  After the summer, she came [...]

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Skirts and sports

A couple of years ago, there were a few posts on Jameel’s blog about Bat-El Gaterer, a young religious Israeli woman who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Tae Kwon Do.  Many of the writers in the comments section wrote to praise her hard work and pride in representing Israel at the Olympics. But [...]

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The ten commandments of women’s self defense

Years ago, a high school classmate of mine forwarded me an email from a friend of hers listing some principles of women’s self defense.  I had learned and taught in the self-defense world for several years at the time, and summoned some wisdom from my experience to write her a response.  In the interest of [...]

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Touch

I read with interest Viva Hammer’s article in the April 16 Jerusalem Post entitled “Every hour a kiss” in which she addresses issues of physical touch according to Jewish law. In the course of the article, she describes an incident in which a manager at work, to illustrate a point, rubbed her shoulder, put an [...]

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Feminism 101: What’s in a name?

I once knew a girl in school named Susan Smith.  While I didn’t envy her the ordinariness of her name, I did envy the fact that anyone could pronounce it. Not mine.  While I think Schnitzengruben is pronounced exactly like it’s spelled, not everyone can manage it. And since I got married, I have tripled [...]

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Hell and beauty

I just finished rereading C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.  I didn’t love it the first time and was no more thrilled with it a second time.  But one part caught my eye this time around.  In Chapter 20, the demon Screwtape writes his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon, offering advice on how to tempt his [...]

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A bus joke

As some of you may be aware, one of the great debates in Israel these days is over “mehadrin”–or sex-separated–bus lines.  Some have bitter memories of Black Americans riding in the back of the bus, of the Montgomery (Ala.) bus boycott, and of Rosa Parks.  On these controversial bus lines, women are required to sit [...]

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Women rabbis

An interesting thing turned up in my email inbox last week.  It was a forward of what appears to be an article (of unknown origin) detailing the recent ordination of a woman by an Orthodox rabbi in New York.  Here is the article as it appeared in the email: New York Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah Of [...]

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Fairy tale fathers

With three daughters, I’m keenly aware of the heavy marketing aimed at young girls by Disney and whatever products they slap the sluts princesses’ faces on.  (Dolls, nightgowns, notebooks, games, toothbrushes, even toothpaste for heavens sake!) Those tarts princesses sell more merchandise than I can guess at.  But where, may I ask, are the Disney [...]

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Who does motzi?

In Newton, Massachusetts, where the Cap’n and I adopted most of our practice and traditions for keeping Judaism modern Orthodox-style, we observed that in about half of the families we knew, the lady of the house said the blessing over the challah on Shabbat (“motzi”).  Kiddush was nearly always said by the male head of [...]

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All-girls education

I promised in a comment exchange on yesterday’s post to write about single-sex education, and here it is. Until 11th grade, I attended mostly public, co-ed schools.  I liked school, was a good student, and both because of my success in school and because I was one of the older students in the class, I [...]

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Fourth child

After bringing three girls into the world, there seems to be an impression that the Cap’n and I had a fourth child in order to have a boy. In my grandparents’ day, boys were valued more than girls. (I often got this feeling even in my day, as well.) I have a letter my grandmother [...]

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