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Dual Identity, Double the Questions

These days, more American families are adopting from China than any other foreign country, and a large number of those families are Jewish. A wave of girls is now coming of age, starting to face challenging issues of identity.

Orthodoxy Has Chance to Reshape Role

Jewish community. With courage and vision, we need to act on this opportunity by understanding the important changes that have occurred over the last decades and rethinking the way we engage the broader Jewish community.

Do We Have Anything Left to Give?

Do the Jews have anything left to give to America?\n\nThis question was on my mind recently, after I was on a panel at Brandeis-Bardin Institute to discuss the Jewish influence on American culture. The popular view on this subject is invariably, \”Just look at all the Jews who run Hollywood and the media; look at the humor, the attitude, the Yiddish terms, etc. Jews are everywhere.\”\n\nThis is true, but when you start to look beneath the surface, you see a more complicated picture, one that suggests the waning influence of Judaism and the need to re-examine the Jews\’ role in America as we begin the 21st century.

Read Your Way to Cultural Literacy

Julie Sandorf recalls her immigrant grandparents telling her that they learned to be Americans at the public library, where they improved their English and learned more about American culture.

A New Model for Jewish Identity

Economically and socially successful insiders, Jews are part of a pluralist society in which the primary factor determining ethnic and religious identity is individual choice. We need a new, more helpful descriptive model that recognizes the vital role that personal decisions play in Jewish American identity construction.

Japane wish American Reflections

If there is such a thing, I am your typical Japanewish American Princess.

My Mom is Japanese American, my Dad is ethnically Jewish and, in a wonderful embrace, I came to be. Growing up in a town in which racial and religious combinations were not the norm, my two heritages naturally blended into one. Kamaboko (fish cake) and matzah ball soup were just as normal to me as they were odd to everyone else. On several occasions, my brother and I would joke about being double-teamed by our parents, whose academic standards were sky-high. Mom and Dad seemed to be the only ones on the block who strategically transformed games of report cards and SAT scores into two-on-one situations. But no matter how much I still accuse them of being ruthless, they didn\’t team up to be mean — they just wanted us to be the best we could be.

Anxiety about Jewish Literature

As long as the Jewish people lives, it will generate a living culture, and as long as that culture values the written word, Jews will write books.

Well Versed

The trouble with reading Judith Viorst\’s delightful new book of verse, \”Suddenly Sixty, And Other Shocks of Later Life,\” is that you recognize another decade has gone by in her life and so, presumably, in yours as well. \”Suddenly Sixty \”follows on the high heels of those earlier guideposts – \”It\’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty,\” \”How Did I Get to Be Forty,\” and \”Forever Fifty\” – and like them charts the changes and new quirks in her life as another 10 years flit by.

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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.