Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Rebecca Epstein-Levi
Not just JD Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’: Jewish communities also undervalue childless people
Some key rabbinic texts treat having children as a prerequisite for serving in communal leadership positions.
It’s not just J.D. Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’: Jewish tradition also undervalues people without children
The leading platform for local news and information. By using cutting-edge technology that learns users’ preferences to curate tailored content for them, NewsBreak gathers community-focused news and information from over 10,000 sources in a timely, accessible, and easy-to-use way at no cost to users. NewsBreak does not allow any content that expresses hate or promotes false information. Instead, we strive to give businesses, communities, and users accurate and reliable local news and information.
Fertility Archives - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
“Be fruitful and multiply” obscures the important ways different people contribute to the future of their communities, write two scholars who have focused on Jewish ethics, family and infertility.
“Someone is Wrong About Sex on the Internet”: Online Discourse and the Role of Public Scholarship on Jewish Sexual Ethics
ABSTRACT Regnant public accounts of Jewish sexual ethics—both external and internal—fall short of what they could accomplish. Using a Twitter thread on sexual ethics which falls into some key errors as a case study, I argue that Jewish ethicists are poised to address the thread's errors by offering sources for alternative moral frameworks.
Citing Jewish Law, Florida Synagogue Challenges Abortion Ban - But Here’s the Problem With ‘Religious Requirement’ Arguments
Days before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates Jews’ religious freedom. Halakhah, or Jewish law, the suit argues, often permits and sometimes requires abortion if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s health. Thus, any ban infringes on Jews’ right to free exercise.
Distance Learning Isn’t a Last Resort. It’s an Opportunity.
Young teen doing schoolwork at home after U.K. schools close due to the coronavirus. (Photo credit: Annie Spratt/Unsplash) Rebecca Epstein-Levi is Bitch Media’s 2020 Sacred Writes Writing Fellow When I was preparing my fall 2020 courses for remote delivery, I was—to be perfectly honest—overwhelmed by all the possible platforms, course-management gimmicks, and other tools that people seemed to suggest would be crucial parts of #PandemicPedagogy.
Fandom Draws Us Together in a Time When We’re Apart
Daria, left, and Jane from MTV’s Daria kiss in a fanfiction comic (Illustration by Christo L Hiver) Rebecca Epstein-Levi is Bitch Media’s 2020 Sacred Writes Writing Fellow A lot of people developed odd fixations or hobbies in lockdown. Me, I read—and, soon enough, wrote—a whole lot of fanfiction. This wasn’t my first excursion into fandom.
COVID Highlights the Folly of “Individual” Risk
Young couple wearing face masks waiting in airport area (Photo credit: izusek/Getty Images) Rebecca Epstein-Levi is Bitch Media’s 2020 Sacred Writes Writing Fellow American society has a massive risk problem. Our tendency to understand risk in all-or-nothing terms has been typified in modern decades by the perseverance of abstinence-only rhetoric around sex and drug use; the most recent iteration of this tendency, however, has come into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Cuties” Sparked a Moral Panic. It Shouldn’t Have.
Fathia Youssouf as Amy in Mignonnes (Photo credit: Bien Ou Bien Productions) Rebecca Epstein-Levi is Bitch Media’s 2020 Sacred Writes Writing Fellow Sexual depravity—real, imagined, and all the miry ground in between—is, as ever, in the news. Especially where any hint of teenage and preteen sexuality is concerned, America’s collective imagination, primed lately by child sex–trafficking conspiracy theories, is quick to spot sinister intent.
Not Like Other People: How the Talmud Helps Us Think About People Who Believe They're Above the Law — The Revealer
It was the night after his wife died, and the leader of the Sanhedrin—the rabbinic court— took a bath. His students were puzzled. “Our rabbi,” they asked him, “didn’t you teach us that this is not done? Isn’t a mourner forbidden to bathe?” The leader of the Sanhedrin told his puzzled students that the rule he had taught them did not apply to him, the Nasi, Rabban Gamaliel. “I am not like other people,” he said. “I am delicate.” *** What does it mean when the rules don’t apply to you?
In the Time of Covid-19, Ventilators Are Scarce. How Do We Decide Who Gets Them?
A social ethics expert weighs in on the devaluation of disabled lives during epidemics. How much your life is worth? In an emergency, is your life worth saving? Or are you already too broken? These sorts of questions are bioethicists’ bread and butter, and they are about to become increasingly acute as the wave of the COVID-19 pandemic breaks in full force across the United States, and we face the kinds of crises, such as ventilator shortages, that have contributed to killing thousands in Italy.
Philo-Semitism Is Bad for the Jews
Dammit, I did not want to write an article on this. Seriously, I didn’t. Public discourse on anti-Semitism, especially anywhere near the subject of Israel/Palestine, is lately and largely a blighted land from which no sojourner can hope to emerge unscathed, let alone edified.
How Ancient Rabbis Can Help Combat STI Stigma
You have herpes. Or, at least, you probably do, given that according to the World Health Organization, nearly 80% of people worldwide have one of the two most common strains of the Herpes Simplex Virus. Yet herpes, especially when it shows up on the naughty bits, is stigmatized all out of proportion to how common it is, and the same is true of most sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
How Ancient Rabbis Can Help Combat STI Stigma
Religion Dispatches History/Theology Aug 26, 2019, 2:27pm Rebecca Epstein-Levi The sages, or rabbis, whose teachings were collected in the Mishnah, had a concept they called 'tumah,' or ritual impurity. This term, which to some readers might conjure visions of judgmental tub-thumpers, isn’t at all equivalent to today's abstinence warriors. You have herpes.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Rebecca
Contact Rebecca, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack