by Rebecca Honig Friedman

Chronicling cancer. Check out Post #1 of the Cancer Chronicles, a new column on the Lilith blog in which writer I. Kramer, living in Thailand, chronicles her mother’s battle with breast cancer in America. [Lilith Blog]
Becoming a survivor of sexual assualt, and a feminist. Writer Caryn Aviv describes her experience of being sexually assualted on the 52nd anniversary of Kristalnacht and how it changed the course of her life, ultimately in positive ways, in post #3 of 5 in the Haaretz Jewish World section’s new mini-blogs. [Haaretz]
S.F. “Jewseum” opens with star-studded evening, including Jewesses, artsy and rich. The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco opened last week with “a celebration of the holiday Shavuot rolled into an all-night cultural arts festival called DAWN” that drew thousands of people, including semi-celebrities like “Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul, fashion designer Julie Chaiken, [and] museum benefactor Roselyn “Sissy” Swig.” Artsy participants included Webby awards co-founder Tiffany Shlain and Six Feet Under television writer Jill Soloway. [BlackBook]
Coming-of-age of a Jewess generation. Author Ilana Blumberg’s memoir Houses of Study “is about the coming-of-age not only of a single individual, but also of a generation of women brought up in a not-yet self-confident stream of Orthodoxy.” [Haaretz]
Nextbook’s Featured Jewesses: “In her fifties, a Hasidic Londoner becomes an artist;”
“Esther David’s novels chronicle a community of Jews in a province riddled with ethnic violence;”
“Joanna Hershon’s new novel, set in the 1860s, travels from aristocratic Berlin to the Wild West.” [Nextbook.org]
I’ll have a burka light, please. The latest trend in Orthodox Jewish women dressing like Muslim women is the “burka light” or “Ben Ish Hai look,” reports Jeffrey Woolf on his My Obiter Dicta blog. It entails covering the hair and neck but not the face. Being able to see = progress?

Posted on June 22nd, 2008 Filed under: Roundups |