Spring 2020

The Social Context of Hair: Hairstyles, Race and Status

feature

HAIR IS PERSONAL. Hair is political. To make sense of the social context of hair for Jews of color today, SARAH SELTZER talked to CHAVA SHERVINGTON, a longtime diversity activist in the Jewish community, as well as an attorney and mom, who by her own admission has become “obsessed with hair issues” as she helps her kids navigate the complex politics of their Black hair.

Taking Off My Wedding Ring

feature

I wanted to take off my ring, but I needed a ritual to acknowledge that Divinity was present, even at this moment of loss.

Head Covering: The Evolving Choices

feature

My mother’s hair is colorful ropes of cotton, carefully and methodically wrapped in a rainbow of layers growing in width as the ends disappear into hidden corners below her hairline.... Read more »

Power in Naming Names

voices

I wondered: was I really a part of my Jewish family? Because my parents divorced when I was three, this question has followed me my entire life. It always brings me back to my name, with some mixed answers. Am I even Jewish?

Gender & Ritual

voices

What happens when girls are given the option to wear tefillin?

Let My People Sing

voices

How Singing (Yes, Singing!) Can Create Radical Jewish Accessibility

Pop Music

voices

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.

The Finzi-Continis at 50

voices

The beautiful scenes are still beautiful—all those young blonde Christians at play in their elegant tennis whites on the Finzi-Contini tennis court, riding in on their bicycles when the young Finzi-Continis have been barred from the Ferrara tennis club.

“Queering the Torah”

voices

A Torah of Tears: Reflecting on Torah Informed by the Lens of Queer Experience

Language and Impact

voices

Dear Lilith: Change Your Language Around Religious Practice! I want to ask you to consider adopting a different phrase than the one deployed in your 5th paragraph [of a recent... Read more »

When Your Family Is Someone’s Boss

feature

Rabbi Mary L. Zamore on being an ethical family employer.

Poetry: Burnt Offering

feature

Poetry by Alisha Kaplan

Writing Outside the Frame

reviews

Polina Kroik reviews The Girl with the Leica.

A Journey of Mourning, and Exploration

reviews

All My Mother’s Lovers, by Ilana Masaad

Israel’s Women on the Margins

reviews

Three books on Israel’s marginalized women

A Trans Boy and His Remarkable Parents

reviews

Nechama Liss-Levinson on Mimi Lemay’s What We Will Become

Big Mouth, Big Ideas

reviews

Amelia Dornbush reviews the new Abzug bio, Battling Bella

LGBTQ Jewish Hero of Color Poster

happening

Rabbi Sandra Lawson is a veteran, a vegan, a weightlifter, one of the first queer women rabbis of color, and Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life at Elon University in North Carolina.

More Holocaust Materials

happening

Zane Buzby, director of The Survivor Mitzvah Project develops a new Holocaust education program.

happening

On average, women working full time in the U.S. are paid just 80% of what men in comparable positions are paid. Sadly, this gender pay gap also exists within Jewish institutions,... Read more »

Prayer, Your Way

happening

JOFA makes space for Orthodox women in Purim celebrations.

Displacement, Migration, Personal and Geopolitical

happening

In her solo show “Strangeness,” multi-media artist and actress Raida Adon explores human migration via a 33-minute video of the same name presenting simultaneous narratives of a group’s progress on foot... Read more »

Women Make History

happening

“Well-behaved women seldom make history,” contended historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1976, and feminist discourse enthusiastically adopted this statement. From its beginnings, feminism sought to liberate itself from silence and... Read more »

Generation 1.5

happening

Russian-Jewish-Americans—“Generation 1.5”—have their own particular identity issues. A unique adult Jewish learning program wants to empower them to explore this multilayered identity, and become leaders, volunteers, and philanthropists. Founded in 2015 by seven Russian-speaking Jews,... Read more »

Now—An Egalitarian Sefaradi Prayerbook

happening

The world’s first Hebrew-English egalitarian Sefaradi prayerbook, three years in the making, out of England, features in Volume One the entire weekday prayer service with Hebrew text, translation, transliteration and commentary. The Hebrew includes... Read more »

Jewish Deli

happening

American Jews have imported traditions, adapted culture, and built community through the experience of food. The exhibit “‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli” reveals how delicatessens became cornerstones of... Read more »

Open Up Your Seder Table

happening

Regardless of political or cultural background, almost everyone believes in mutual respect and understanding. To play your role in the fight against hate and anti-Semitism, to help heal your corner of the world,... Read more »

Digging Up the Rotten Roots

voices

I woke up and went outside to harvest. I spent the morning digging up roots, rinsing them clean, putting them into containers to store. Then I checked the news. Hasidic... Read more »

Fiction: Driving Lesson

feature

And yet, as she looked around at the paintings in their gilded frames, the polished silver candlesticks, the maid scurrying into the room with a china bowl filled with sugar cubes, she thought she might go through with it anyway. She was a milliner, after all. She had the taste for beautiful things. The possibilities tantalized her.

A Networker— Before Networks

reviews

Before LinkedIn, before social networking, before the word “networking” was even coined, there was Salka Viertel.

From the Editor

from the editor

Susan Weidman Schneider on life in a new era.

Making Yiddish Hip, Heymish & Hot

feature

Channeling her own past, the remarkable diva Eleanor Reissa is singing, directing, writing and performing Yiddish for 21st-century audiences.

A Sample Gender Email

feature

A sample email to schools and camps

Fiction: Paved With Gold

feature

So they leave, two more huddled masses sailing from old world to new. The newlyweds carry their tightly bundled life on board: Candlesticks, prayer shawl, brown crusted bread, hand-stitched lace, a family ring tightly sewn into the band of her thick wool skirt.

I’m Eleven and I’ve Lost My Hair

feature

For the last five years I have worn my hair long, thick and wavy, half-way down my back. I put it in ponytails, or I wear it down, or I... Read more »

Waxing Nostalgic

feature

In 2014, my friend Tess and I went to see a comedy called “The Other Woman,” starring Leslie Mann and Cameron Diaz. Its jokes were dumb and obvious, and although... Read more »

My Mother’s Unshaved Legs

feature

There’s an age at which you start noticing the things about your parents that are embarrassing. The fact that your dad will say something and your mom will then burst... Read more »

At the Beauty Parlor

feature

I arrive on time for my 10 AM cut-and-color, but my new hairdresser isn’t there. It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m newly unwed and I want to party, but I look... Read more »

Combing My Mother’s Hair

feature

An erotic/sensual memory trip through crackles and changing colors of her hair. Heavy frizzy… foamy blonde… long wavy auburn… short Mamie Eisenhower bangs… little girl barrettes…. Still defiantly long and... Read more »

The Books that Taught Me to Love My Body Hair

feature

When I begged my mother to teach me to shave my legs, I was nine years old. “Your body hair is normal,” she said, “And it’s not healthy to worry... Read more »

Hair-Pulling

feature

Before my hair was patchy and thinned out from years of trichotillomania, the body-focused repetitive behavior of hair-pulling, I took unabashed pride in the fact that I was blessed with... Read more »

The Weight of Shiva

feature

Sitting shiva for my father was hard. Our house was filled with people from morning until night, and I was sad. I wore the same clothing every day, with the... Read more »

Hair as a Jewish Art Form: A Parasha Haircut Project

feature

It was late October. I had been going to a new barber recently. I had seen Billy’s (@Odabu) incredible line work on Instagram and was ready to start doing bolder... Read more »

Fiction: Anniversary

feature

The longer they sat without stirring, the more concrete and real the other became. As the evening progressed it became a conversation in which they spoke in their own impenetrable, unutterable language, which only they could perceive.

Big-Mouth Bar Mitzvah

feature

prepping for bar mitzvah with a raunchy Netflix show

Spring 2020

Jewish Hair Now

In This Issue

Lilith Feature

Lilith Feature

Lilith Feature

More Articles

Sort by: Features | From the Editor | Voices | Reviews | Happening | All

feature

feature

feature

voices

voices

voices

voices

voices

voices

voices

feature

feature

reviews

reviews

reviews

reviews

reviews

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

happening

voices

feature

reviews

from the editor

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

feature

Back Issues

Shop