The Jewish Week | Features

Elicia Brown
All She Wrote | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Tween Fashion: A Modest Proposal

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.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi.
A New York Minute | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
A Decade As Israel’s Media Strategist

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of The Israel Project, announced last week that she plans to leave the organization she and two other women founded 10 years ago. During that decade, the Washington-based Israel Project has grown from an organization with no staff, based originally at Mizrahi’s former public relations firm, to one that now has 75 employees, including former journalists, and an office in Jerusalem. Its mission is to garner fairer and more positive coverage of Israel through outreach to the press, policymakers and members of the public.

Photo By Getty Images
Lens | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
A Freeze Across Europe

The headline writers are calling the cold spell across Europe in recent weeks a new “Ice Age.”

Esther Avital and Frank Gottesman.
Godsend | Monday, February 6, 2012
How Frank Met Esther Avital

 

“I prayed that God would help me find my bashert, [meant-to-be spouse]” says Esther Avital, “and my prayers came true.”

Esther Avital Gottesman was not born Jewish.  She was born Heather Fuller to Christian parents in Santa Ana, California.  Around the age of 10, she didn’t want to be Christian anymore. She didn't like having to pray through an intermediary and she had a teenage obsession with Adam Duritz, lead singer of Counting Crows, who was Jewish.  

Rabbi Yanklowitz is founder and president of Uri L'Tzedek, director of Jewish life and senior Jewish educator at UCLA Hillel.
Street Torah | Monday, February 6, 2012
A Moral Case For Brit Milah

Brit milah (Jewish ritual circumcision) may be uncomfortable to watch, and naturally makes many of us ambivalent in a time of celebration. But is it cruel? Living in California, where calls for the outlawing of circumcision have recently proliferated, I have not heard anyone make the moral case for circumcision. The Shulkhan Arukh says that “this commandment (milah) is greater than (all the) other positive commandments,” (Yoreh De’ah 260).

Rabbi Gerald Skolnik is spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center.
A Rabbi's World | Thursday, February 2, 2012
Dealing With Catastrophic Loss

 

To be effective in the pulpit rabbinate requires that one possess (or develop) an eclectic and demanding set of skills. You have to be knowledgeable in Torah, a master of synagogue skills, a good teacher, a good speaker, a good counselor, and of course it doesn’t hurt to be young and charismatic…

One-pot meals. Photos by Amy Spiro
The Nosh Pit | Thursday, February 2, 2012
One-pot dishes

Lately it seems like I don't have a free minute and it's hard to spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen. But I still like to have a hot, hearty meal and the end of each day - here are a few ways to accomplish that with minimal time.

Some can be whipped up in an instant, while others need to be thrown together and simmered for a while, but either way you keep your time in your kitchen to a minimum and your flavor to a maximum.