Editorial & Commentary

It’s hard to believe that it is has been FIVE years since TheJewishWoman.org first launched!

As we celebrate the 4th birthday of TheJewishWoman.org, we truly are a growing family of women throughout the world...

As we celebrate the 3rd birthday of TheJewishWoman.org, we truly are a growing family of women throughout the world...

I was frustrated that there was little, if anything, specifically geared for the Jewish woman. There was plenty for women, and plenty about Judaism, but somehow the two had yet to find themselves working together...

Of the hundreds of new articles we've posted this past year, here are the ten that generated the most interest.

Of the hundreds of new articles we've posted this past year, here are the ten that generated the most interest.

To be united with other Jewish female souls in this virtual world makes me feel more Jewish, more confident and more spiritual . . .

I feel I am part of a community of healing and hope. Because those of us reading and writing for The Jewish Woman can be honest with one another, we truly understand, and learn from each other...

When I hear the word "religion," I instinctively cringe. My stomach turns. My hands become clammy. My throat dry. On occasion, I have been known to break out in hives. This tends to confuse people who know me as a Torah observant Jewish woman...

Ten, eleven, twelve. I get to the top of the staircase, say a short prayer and brace myself for the greeting that I am about to receive as I open the door. Every morning it's the same as I arrive at the Eating Disorder clinic where I work...

We all want to be heard, but it is so hard to really listen – even to ourselves! Just about all of us have come to think of education as being about bringing knowledge from the outside in, not from the inside out, but it's really an exchange between one bottomless well of wisdom to another...

"What is a Jew?" the teacher asked the class. I was at a conference in Los Angeles. Every type of Jew could attend and any attendee could present. This was my first class. His question got me thinking...

When you think pregnancy, all you imagine are stretch marks. When you hear baby, you just see flab. To you, growing a child is a "that" - not a feminine experience. This attitude is the antithesis of all that is womanly. You may have a great body, and you certainly work to keep it that way, but you're no female role model...

We all have challenges and struggles in our lives. But how we live with them or through them is what defines the kind of person that we are...

Judaism recognizes that we all have the power to change. But it doesn't happen on its own. It doesn't happen simply because we grow older...

At times they would just wobble, catching themselves and recorrecting. Other times they flat out fell, skidding across the ice until they could stabilize. But no matter how hard the fall, the same thing would always happen. They would get right back up...

Emotional translucency means that while every action may cause an equal and opposite reaction, it doesn't cause an overreaction...

I had to take my daughter Ayden to the doctor the other day. It was something I had really been avoiding. With everything going around, a doctor's office was about the last place I wanted to be...

Thousands of years of painful history have taught us how to be resilient in the face of crisis, and how to keep going, forever marching forward...

She comes closer; her finger is waving inches from my face. "I can tell," she rants, "from your hair covering and your necklace (a Star of David) you're not an American..."

It would have made most sense for Sandra Samuel to get out of there as quickly as possible. But she didn't. She couldn't. Little Moshe'le was calling her name...

We cannot change what has happened. But we can determine how we react to this tragedy. Please think about what you can do to bring more light to this darkness. Please share below what you are doing in memory of the Mumbai victims and for Gavriel and Rivka...

Today I again saw the hand of the Creator, as He directs the world in His unfathomable way. But this time with the opposite result. The worst kind.

I walked into the big room. Actually, I was led into the big room. Nobody just walks where they choose to in prison. I saw all the women, dressed in green shirts and green pants, sitting around. Quiet. Almost lifeless. Their souls beaten...

Devastating, destructive, overwhelming, historic. This has been the tsunami of the dollar and in its path it has left people uprooted and fearing the unknown...

If, when we awaken, we marvel at the fact that we are alive, then we know that while we slept, it was G‑d who gave rest to our soul, who renewed that spark within it. And since our soul has been returned, we are beginning the day with a soul that has not only seen, but has spent quality time with Him...

I wonder how far we will allow today’s miracles to take us? Will we watch hundreds of rockets fall without injuring anyone and say that it is just a coincidence? Or will we allow this war change our lives?...

My family and I live in Netivot, ten kilometers from Gaza. Netivot is hooked up to a warning sirent. When the siren rings, it means you have forty-five seconds to go into your safe room or a public bomb shelter...

Today's world demands labels. Labels make us feel important, give us a sense of belonging. But is my Jewish identity just the sum of a few labels?...

Despite the distance of a few feet between us, we are worlds apart. A few meters away, ominous even at rest, sits a parked bulldozer. It casts an enormous shadow over the playground. I look at the mother, the bulldozer. The mother. The bulldozer...

I took families out of their homes forever, I put them on buses that took them to nowhere. I remember every picture that I took down from the walls of their homes in Gush Katif. I remember every girl, every young woman and mother who I instructed to leave her home forever. On the third anniversary of the evacuation of Gush Katif, I want to ask forgiveness...

Watching him navigate the course of his life made me realize that I, too, am deaf, a different kind of deaf. Actually, we all are, to a certain degree. I am deaf to G-d's "strange movements." His actions puzzle me...

We are each alone as we prepare our thoughts. Soon we will disembark from the bus to spend a precious half-hour in prayer at this sacred holy site...

My journey has often been marked by sharp, uneven pebbles, other times lined with blooming flowers; the wisdom I have acquired along the way may be useful to some of you...

It was back to basics. Actually, it was back to much less than basics. It was back to virtually nothing...

I often find myself at odds with a culture that holds us to a standard of slickness, of airbrushed images and perfect lives. As an artist, I'm on the lookout for the shadows between the light...

The women grabbed my hands and joyously led me into the circle. It was one of my final Shabbat's in Israel after spending my Junior year abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I had decided prior to that year to become a rabbi...

We all know the dangers that alcohol can bring about. But nonetheless, a non violent person doesn’t suddenly hit, and a gentle and loving person doesn’t suddenly spew hateful remarks. For only what is in the mind and heart can come out through the mouth...

Israeli consular officials in New York have hired one of the most popular Men's magazines for the tricky task of revamping Israel's image...

I'm not going to make a Pollyannaish claim that taking four kids to the Middle East was a smooth, simple, and stress-free undertaking. But it was also indescribably beautiful and perfectly life-changing...

I see little children dressed up like adults, and made to sit quiet for way too long. I watch people risk their lives by walking against a red light to save a whole minute. And I ask myself, "Where are we rushing to?"

Like the multiplication tables we memorized, just like the laundry we never seem to stop doing, just like the seemingly unimportant passages in our daily prayers from the siddur, they are our reminders that nothing, zero, nada, gornisht, is for nothing...

During those many years, when asked who I was, or when being introduced to others, there was that long list of roles from which to select and identify the woman I had become. As a widow now, the list of the roles I play has become shorter and shorter...

Four years ago, the school decided to organize a girls' basketball team, and name it after their unorthodox uniforms...They call themselves the BCA Skirts. BCA – for Beth Chana Academy, a private Orthodox Jewish school in Orange, Connecticut. And Skirts for the traditional long dress the girls wear off the court...and on

The following words, as painful as they might be for you to hear, are coming from a place of love. I wish that I did not have to say anything, but I feel that I have no choice...

He blamed his victims. He blamed you. He blamed me. He blamed the entire world for what he did. He blamed everyone except for the one person that was to blame...

Though only in her twenties at the time, my friend, Esther, had fought and overcome two bouts of cancer. As if that wasn't enough, she had lost a child in the most trying of circumstances...

The Emmys is an event that is organized to credit, acknowledge and reward those who are the most talented in their fields. It is an evening that is intended to celebrate skill, capability, and creativity, and yet, in the end, it is just one big fashion show...

On my desk sit the pictures and the invitation. The pictures are of a past generation that never really was, and the invitation represents the future generation that may never be...

The seeds of Noah’s political ambition were sown this past school year when he began lobbying for legislation to decrease school bus pollution...

What does it mean to live a life inspired by faith? like drinking of a cool stream, it is a profoundly rejuvenating experience that can empower us in our struggles for days, or months, to come...

I used to look at the world through dark lenses. That's the reason I like wearing sunglasses, I suppose. They enable you to reach your destination without looking too closely at what goes on around you. It allows you to center yourself in your own little world...

I have managed to gather only snippets of information about her past as a child survivor of the Holocaust...

Do you know what it is like to bring five kids and a stroller on a Jerusalem bus on a summer evening? Do you know what it is like to have your entire life changed forever in one split second?

He kept mentioning “Freedom Rules,” and that’s where he really got me thinking. How can there be rules in Freedom?

This morning, a friend tells me that they built a wall in their daughters' room. A real wall. The kids were obviously not getting along. I smiled knowingly...

The world seemed to be clearly divided between those who cannot imagine why one half of a couple would change one half of her name upon entering into the holy bond of matrimony, and those who cannot imagine not doing so...

As a child I believed I sang very well, and this assumption was never threatened until I auditioned for my junior high-school choir...

What bothers me most is that everything is changing. Everything's just so . . . indefinite. My life, my job, my children. Congress, Israel and the Middle East...

Physical darkness obscures and dims our vision, significantly handicapping one of our more sensitive senses. Nighttime can be frightening and misleading. Harmless objects appear menacing and take on life-like properties...

When leaves fall off trees it may appear as though the trees are dying...but they leave behind a scar and a bud proving that they are still alive...

Most of us have come across an acquaintance and exchanged cursory hellos, been asked the customary, "How are you?" only to be left standing by ourselves, scratching our heads...

I've been a renegade since kindergarten. At university, the invite was to become a card-carrying member of (shhh… shhh) the Communist Party. And in my forties, the big-wide-world beckons that I fade the rebel's stain and dip myself in dyes of the Bourgeoisie. House, stocks, retirement fund… life insurance. All that stuff...

My daughter never saw her great-grandmother who passed away when I was under ten,, yet Bryna understood that this was a piece of her past and she was eager to touch it and embrace it...

Our guide pointed out a pale pink flower with that was literally growing out of a rock! The guide explained that despite its dry, rocky environment, the hardy rakefet could grow and thrive...

She smiled brightly at me. Her smile was contagious. She couldn't contain her excitement anymore and I put down my book to listen...

Each year, I experience my feelings of excitement anew when the rain begins to fall and I, once again, await the transformation from death to life...

The nature of any two-way relationship is that each person brings his or her strengths and weaknesses, and that is exactly why it works so well...

As much as I kneaded, massaged and soothed her muscles, I knew that there was nothing my hands could do to take away the tension. The only lesson that I could offer her was one of faith . . .