Up-Front | All She Wrote

Tween Fashion: A Modest Proposal

Elicia Brown
02/07/2012
Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

My son Joel, age 7, and my daughter Talia, almost 10, lean on my shoulders, staring at the computer screen in disbelief. Here was something that didn’t fit their notion of the world. Grown men spitting? At a child? Because her long skirts weren’t long enough? A sincere and sweet boy, Joel wondered if these men, these ultra-Orthodox lunatics of Beit Shemesh, in Israel, had ever read the Torah.

That was last month.

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Present From The Past

Elicia Brown
01/10/2012
Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

I can’t think of the summer of 1985 without wincing. Being 16 and shy, with the kind of fine hair that went limp in dry desert heat, and with only one (miserable) month of overnight camp as my experience away from home, I wasn’t bound to enjoy every moment of a six-week teen tour of Israel.

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Leading By Example

Orthodox pioneer Adena Berkowitz wear many hats — attorney, teacher, “scholar-in-residence” at congregation she founded.
12/13/2011
Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

She’s not a rabbi. She has no plans to become one. She sees herself more as a teacher than a trailblazer. And yet, Adena K. Berkowitz — who at 52 is an Orthodox mother of five, a scholar of bio-ethics, a lawyer and an instructor of liturgy, to name a few of her many roles — quietly added an intriguing new hat to her collection three years ago, one that places her among a small group of pioneers: spiritual leader of an Orthodox congregation. 

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