Life

In Other Jewish Newspapers: Sy Hersh Speaks, Visiting With Chabon and Waldman, Davening Discharge

By Daniel Treiman September 21, 2007

DRIFTING RIGHT: As the Seattle Kollel marks its sweet 16, some fear that the Orthodox-run educational organization is pulling the city’s Orthodox community to the right, toward ultra-Orthodoxy. Seattle’s Jewish Transcript has the story.

SY HERSH SPEAKS: The New Yorker’s legendary intelligence reporter Seymour Hersh talks with the L.A. Jewish Journal about the Bush administration (“nobody in this government talks to me”), the future of journalism (“we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular”), how he feels about his Jewish identity (“Vague,” but he digs Saul Bellow and Philip Roth), the authors of the controversial book “The Israel Lobby” (they’re “realists,” not antisemites), and the U.S.-Israel relationship (“It is not transparent, and that is not healthy for anybody”).

LEADERS FROM CHELM: In Brooklyn’s Jewish Press, George D. Hanus thinks that Jewish leaders are fools for not focusing on expanding day-school education.

ENDANGERED HISTORY: The building that housed Phoenix’s first Orthodox synagogue is in danger, according to the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.

MICHAEL AND AYELET: San Francisco’s J. sits down with authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. Unfortunately, the author of J.’s cover story on the pair fails to broach the controversy surrounding Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” Critics — some more sober than others — have argued that the book is hostile to Israel. It’s a disappointing omission, given that some have already started casually referring (perhaps unfairly) to Chabon as an anti-Zionist. It would have been good to hear what Chabon has to say on this issue.

Also in J.: An editorial, following up on the previous week’s cover story on the high cost of Jewish life, calls for aiding “overtaxed” Jewish families.

SHIPPING SUKKAHS: North Carolina makers of prefab sukkahs ship their goods around the world — even to Iraq, The New York Jewish Week reports.

Also in The Jewish Week: Carolyn Slutsky surveys the Barnard College tenure brouhaha, and Tamar Snyder discovers that the Upper West Side ain’t what it used to be.

DAVENING DISCHARGE: An 81-year-old former law-enforcement official forgot to leave his gun in the car when he went to Erev Rosh Hashanah services. The gun discharged, with a bullet striking his 42-year-old daughter in the foot and fragments scraping two other congregants. Dallas’s Texas Jewish Post has the story.

COMING TO BRITAIN: The Christian right, a Moishe House and a Hamas official (if he and a pro-Palestinian group have their way) are all headed to the U.K., according to London’s Jewish Chronicle.

Also in the J.C.: Some British kosher poultry purveyors want their products labeled organic, but the food-certification authorities won’t allow it.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO