Elana Sztokman

In today's YnetTomorrow morning, as my youngest child starts first grade, I am doing what perhaps I should have done long ago: I’m taking my child to the farm. She will be spending her school days at the Ecological Farm in Modi’in, the first class in a fledgling experimental school called “Ma’ayan,” literally, “spring.” There, in a house made of clay and recycled materials in which the toilets do not flush but their contents are re-entered into the ground, where a goat my daughter fell in love with named Maya gave birth last year to twins “Rami” and “Levi”, where the surrounding sounds are not of cars honking and teachers yelling but of mules, chickens and dogs communicating, where young adults come from all over Israel to work as organic farmers – this is where my five year old child is beginning her formal schooling. Read the rest of this entry →

My 16-year-old daughter pierced her nose today. After months of negotiation and debate, in which her family members tried a variety of methods to deter and discourage her (ranging from the rational, “Won’t it hurt when you sneeze?” to the more primal “Eeewwww!”), I finally made a deal with her. I said she can do it on the condition that she lets me blog about it. How’s that for 21st century parenting? I figure, if she gets freedom of expression, so do I…. READ THIS POST ON THE SISTERHOOD BLOG OF THE FORWARD Read the rest of this entry →

As the air changes and we start to feel the occasional cool breeze marking the end of summer, I soak in the bittersweet emotions of milestones passing, the world shifting, and life moving on when we weren’t looking. This summer was my daughter Yonina’s bat mitzvah. The third in the family – we now have a houseful of teenagers, it seems – each event was marked differently, reflecting not only our evolution as a family but also the changing climate in Orthodoxy around girls in synagogue. Read the rest of this entry →

Last week, President Obama named 16 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, including Mary Robinson, known for publicly opposing Israel. Below is Hadassah National President Nancy Falchuk's letter to President Obama regarding this choice: Read the rest of this entry →

It's not every day that I get to stand in line behind a snuggling couple in the supermarket.At first I thought the couple in front of me today were father and son because of the apparent age difference. But I quickly realized, it was not parental affection I was witnessing but more like the wanna-jump-your-bones type. Now that was novel, and quite nice, actually. So gay life has finally arrived in Modi'in. It took the tragic, horrific terror attack on the LGBT club last week to remind Israel that this is a vilified community that deserves widespread support. Read the rest of this entry →

For many Americans, "Women to the back of the bus" echoes of Rosa Parks and the racially segregated American south. For others, Jerusalem's "holiness" requires special considerations. Still for others, the violence that women face when they get onto the bus -- tired, hard-working women, who just want to sit down and are often harassed by haredi men -- is its own, new brand of an Israeli social ill that needs to be seriously redressed. All these perspectives and more came up on Nettie Feldman's Anglo-Israeli Internet radio program, "Rusty Mike." Nettie's Afternoon Shmooze show is broadcast live on the www.rustymikeradio.com site each Thursday, from noon to 2 pm, when she plays great 60s/70s music, chats and presents a topic for the week. Listen to the July 23 schmooze on gender-segregated (mehadrin) buses here. Read the rest of this entry →