RBG's birthday

Make RBG’s Birthday a National Holiday

This March 15th, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have been 88. Over the last year of her life, she and I collaborated on a book for young readers, RBG’s Real Wonder Women: Brave and Brilliant Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, which comes out in September. Although it is about 33 amazing women, the late justice, who died after completing her part of the book, is the true star of the book. In the months since her death, I have come to believe that that the United States needs a national RBG Day. Yes, an actual federal holiday with all the trimmings, not just a monument as recently has been suggested by a group of women lawmakers in the House and Senate. Monuments are meaningful, but you have to go to a monument. Holidays come to...

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NGOs Fail Palestinian Women at the UN

By Paula Kweskin In April 2010, a 32-year-old woman was shot to death in a town in the northern Gaza Strip.  Several men, including her father, were arrested for the crime.  A year prior, a girl from a Palestinian village south of Qalqilya was smothered to death by her brother.  In 2005, a father murdered two of his daughters and badly injured a third for an alleged sexual affair.  In December 2008, two Palestinian girls were killed when militants' rockets directed at Israel fell short of their targets.  Two years later, a teenage girl was injured in central Israel when Hamas militants fired rockets on her kibbutz. Unfortunately, at the UN review of Israel’s compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in January, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) squandered the opportunity...

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Jews Support Both Life and Choice

By Steven Philp On Friday the House of Representatives passed a measure to suspend $330 million of Title X federal funding for Planned Parenthood on the grounds that tax dollars should not be granted to organizations that provide abortions. According to ABC News, votes were generally split along party lines: 240 to 185, with ten Democrats voting in favor of the bill and seven Republicans against. Debate concerning the measure was held the previous evening, including an emotional testimony by Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) about her personal experience with abortion. Responding to a graphic depiction of the procedure by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), Speier explained that she had elected for an abortion at 17 weeks. She continued, “For you to stand on this floor and to suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure...

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