Amid Zara's 'concentration camp' shirt debacle, Swedish retailer's sold-out T-shirt is more homage than exploitation.

Hannah Dreyfus for The Jewish Week

What do H&M and Jewish Voice For Peace have in common? Mishnaic sage Hillel, of course.

Both the Swedish retail giant and the far-left political group are using “If not now, when?” the rhetorical question found in Chapters of Our Fathers [Pirkei Avot]: H&M as a T-shirt slogan and JVP as a hashtag.

A large billboard in Times Square features Hillel’s urgent question, the third in a series after “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?” written in oversized black letters on a slinky tank top selling for $9.95. But the t-shirt isn’t in the store.

“That’s been one of our most popular items this summer,” said Kiera Elliott, H&M saleswoman in Times Square, who explained the shirt’s conspicuous absence from sale-racks. “We sold that item out weeks ago, but people keep asking me about it. It obviously made a lasting impression.”

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The Mikveh Lady Has Left The Building

The Mikveh, Lady

by DeDe Jacobs-Komisar for MayyimHayyimBlog.com

I’m going to be honest – before I found this place I was totally ambivalent about the mikveh. Growing up Orthodox, we teenage girls were taught to venerate the mikveh as a mysterious, holy, beautiful thing.

We toured mikva’ot on school and camp field trips, where mikveh ladies would show us how gorgeous the rooms were, how intimate and spa-like the experience. That we would immerse monthly, for niddah, after marriage, was a foregone conclusion that did not even require discussion.

I confess that I barely remember my first immersion, which was the night before my wedding. I recall meticulously running down the checklist of preparations, worrying that I forgot something and that I wasn’t clean enough. My next memory is of emerging from the mikveh itself, underwhelmed. Was there something wrong with me? I shrugged it off and figured it would get better with time.

It didn’t. I’ve been married almost ten years now, and in that time, I’ve been to mikva’ot in four states and two countries. Nice ones, not-so-nice ones, nice mikveh ladies, intimidating mikveh ladies, one who yelled at me for not cutting my nails short enough. One who came equipped with her own cart of wipes and proceeded to, unasked, wipe my face down to remove any errant makeup.

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Busting the Shtetl Myth

What you think you know about Jewish life in Eastern Europe is wrong, argues a fascinating (but problematic) new book.

By Andrew N. Koss in Mosaic Magazine

“Deconstructing Fiddler on the Roof” is a favorite gambit of professors introducing students to the history of East European Jewry: begin with what they think they know about life in the shtetl, and then start busting the myths. Were matchmakers women? (No.) Did Russian police instigate pogroms? (Rarely, if ever.) Is there a single documented case of shtetl residents singing “Sunrise, Sunset” at a wedding? (Come on.)

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, a historian at Northwestern University, has given us a vigorous, well-documented, and entertaining new version of this trick in his recent The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe. In fact, he uses Fiddler on the Roof as a foil, beginning and ending with references to the musical while devoting the bulk of the book to everyday shtetl life in the half-century from 1790 to 1840.

The word shtetl refers to the small market towns where, for several centuries, a large portion of East European Jews lived. (The shtetl was a “Jewish town” only in the sense that Jews usually made up about half the population; it was not in any sense a ghetto.) The story of the shtetl begins in the second half of the 17th century, when Jews in Poland-Lithuania began to forsake the countryside for population centers that were assuming growing importance as hubs of commerce and manufacture, linking agricultural villages to major trade routes. Encouraged by the Polish nobility, Jews played a crucial role in these activities throughout the 18th century. When, between 1772 and 1795, Russia, Prussia, and Austria systematically dismembered their hapless neighbor, Poland-Lithuania, the majority of shtetls came under Russian rule. It is these that form the focus of Petrovsky-Shtern’s book.

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Orthodox Women Turn to Other Orthodox Women During Pregnancy and Childbirth

Observant mothers-to-be hire doulas who share their religious practices and understand their specific needs

By Kylie Jane Wakefield for Tablet Magazine

Miriam Shapiro was on all fours in her hospital bed reciting Tehillim—Psalms—when she felt another contraction. She summoned her doula, and together they placed a quarter into her tzedakah box. After that, she knew that the baby was ready. She took a deep breath and started reciting prayers. “Right when I was pushing Adina out, my doula reminded me, ‘It’s a good time to pray,’ ” Shapiro told me in a recent email interview. “When you’re pushing a new life into the world, it’s like all the gates are open upstairs.”

Doulas, who offer women advice and companionship during their pregnancies and then coach them through labor, have been growing in popularity among pregnant women for several years—and Orthodox Jews are no exception. But since Orthodox women have a unique set of needs during childbirth, they’ve been turning to doulas who are themselves Orthodox women, to provide mental, emotional, and spiritual support before, during, and after they give birth.

For these women, Orthodox doulas are preferable because they understand what the mothers are going through from a halachic perspective. For instance, when an Orthodox woman gives birth, her husband cannot touch her because she is niddah, or bleeding, and it would go against the laws of family purity if her husband held her hand or rubbed her back. If a doula is present in the delivery room, however, she can massage the woman, do breathing exercises, adjust her tichel (headscarf), or fix her clothing to ensure that she is still upholding the laws of modesty, even during childbirth.

According to Chana Barak, an Orthodox doula in Texas, observant doulas understand the distinct rituals surrounding birth, especially family purity. “It can be hard to explain to someone that your husband won’t be nearby for the birth or that he won’t hold your hand when you are in pain,” she said. “A Jewish doula already knows these things and respects [them].”

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Jew Hatred: Understanding the World’s Insanity

Anti-Semitism renders irrelevant the justice of Israel’s war in Gaza.

by Sara Yoheved Rigler for aish.com

Joan Rivers was stopped by an impromptu interviewer and asked about the war in Gaza. She answered that if New Jersey were shooting rockets at New York, “we’d wipe out Jersey.” The interviewer continued to pry her with questions about Gaza’s civilian casualties. Joan, incredulous, erupted, “They started it. You’re all insane. They started it!!”

In the eyes of Israel’s advocates, the necessity for the war against Hamas is as indisputable as a mathematical equation. Support for the ground invasion of Gaza spans Israel’s political spectrum. According to a poll taken last week, 91% of Israeli Jews support Israel’s military campaign (the first time in anyone’s historical memory that 91% of Israeli Jews agreed on anything!). To us in Israel it is simple and clear: Hamas, committed to the destruction of Israel in its Charter and in its actions, poses an existential threat to our lives and the lives of our children.

Yet, no matter how clearly Israel’s advocates state their case, diplomats around the world, leading news outlets, the UN, and even the American administration, all people who are certifiably sane and even smart, don’t seem to get it. In Israel it feels like we’ve fallen down a rabbit hole where everything is topsy-turvy, and nothing makes sense.

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The Jews Who Carved the Carousel Horses

By Jenny Levison for Jewniverse

There’s nothing like mounting a horse, tossing your head back, and riding off in the California surf. Unless, of course, your horse is handcrafted by Torah ark woodcarvers, and mounted to a pole in the heart of New York City. That’s right, the carousel horse you loved to ride as a child might have been carved by Jewish artisans.

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Star of David: A common symbol for Judaism and Israel

From MyJewishLearning.com

The six-pointed Star of David is a common symbol for both Judaism and Israel.

Known in Hebrew as a Magen David (shield of David), geometrically it is two triangles superimposed on each other, forming the shape of a hexagram.

Though today the symbol popularly communicates Jewishness, its associations with Judaism are newer than one might think. Some historians trace it to Jewish communities in the Middle Ages, but these claims are neither fully substantiated nor widely accepted.

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