• Gloria Feldt writes a memo to Julia Louis-Dreyfus with some advice for her new show, "Veep":

The entire show makes Selina Meyer look like a Palinesque dunderhead, despite never revealing her political party. Meyer gives away her power in so many ways large and small. And swearing like a sailor while thinking up schemes to cut others down to size is supposed to make her look strong enough to operate in a man’s world? I don’t buy it.

Being a leader whether or not you have the formal power doesn’t require cutting others down. It means first and foremost that you have to act like one.
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• Chanel Dubofsky proposes a ban on "diet talk" at Jewish organizations over at Jewschool:

I’m proposing that Jewish organizations adopt a “No Diet Talk” policy, with the aim of moving towards a different culture around food and bodies in our organizational spaces. This doesn’t mean you can’t commiserate about your diet behind closed doors with a trusted colleague. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be on a diet. It does mean that when there’s food to be enjoyed, you let people enjoy it without talking about how you are on the quest to lose weight.
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• Jenna Zark discusses what celebrating Shabbat means, and doesn't mean at TCJewfolk:

“If your mother cooks on Shabbat and you watch TV, you’re not being Jewish,” Barry says. “You’re not being the kind of Jew HaShem wants you to be.”

I stared at the boys, having no idea what to say. They had barely talked to me for most of the year, and I still have no idea why they decided to question me. Finally, I told them I didn’t know the answer to their questions, and for some reason, that satisfied them and they went back to torturing each other. Yet this episode has stayed with me; reminding me I am still wrestling with my own notions of Shabbat and how I grew up.
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• At the Schmooze, Roseanne Barr rails against the "Mommy Wars," calling it a "fake issue."

“I almost got sick to my stomach when I heard Hilary Rosen’s unfortunate words regarding Mrs. Mitt Romney,” Barr wrote in an April 16 piece for the Daily Beast. “It’s a shame that Rosen lobbed the Romney campaign a fat political softball they could smack over the gender fence. It’s especially unfortunate because Romney was on the ropes with American women, at least the ones with an IQ higher than Ramblin’ Rick Santorum’s. After the Republicans had alienated at least half the voting public by all but condemning birth control, suddenly Rosen’s remark enabled them to self-righteously assume the role of defenders of American motherhood,” she continued without mincing words.
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• Sheva Zucker is sharing Yiddish poems about mothers, in honor of her mother Miriam Pearlman Zucker (1914-2012) at her blog Candles of Song.

On January 25, 2012 (Shevat 1) my dear, sweet, gentle mother passed away. Although it is customary in the Jewish tradition to say kadish for 11 months after the death of a parent and although I do belong to a conservative synagogue it somehow did not feel natural for me, an agnostic, to say kadish for my mother, also an agnostic brought up in the tradition of secular Yidishkeyt. However, I am doing it (not totally regularly) and while I do find the act somewhat meaningful it does not essentially express who I am as a Jew and who she was.
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