Articles written collectively by the Forward’s staff.
Forward Staff
By Forward Staff
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Culture Forward 50 | Brett Lockspeiser: The Torah technologist
What is ancient is new again. That’s part of the philosophy behind Brett Lockspeiser’s Sefaria app, a free digital library of Jewish texts in English and Hebrew. A secular Jew with no formal Jewish education, Lockspeiser, 37, is the project’s chief engineer behind the project. He was nominated for the Forward 50 by a reader…
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Culture Analia Bortz: Scholar Of The Human
Two weeks into medical school at the University of Buenos Aires, Analia Bortz realized she wanted to be a rabbi. “I went to the dean and said, ‘We’re learning about the liver, the heart and the lymph nodes. When do we learn about the human?’” she said. The dean told her that the big questions…
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Culture Forward 50 | Joel Benenson: Netanyahu’s Nemesis
Before entering politics, Joel Benenson tried journalism: he worked for the New York Daily News, but found he felt strongly about the issues he was covering. So he moved in communications for Gov. Mario Cuomo’s reelection campaign in 1994, and then President Bill Clinton’s in 1996. He pioneered new research methods that helped Barack Obama…
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Culture Forward 50 | Beatie Deutsch: Mighty mom of the marathon
So far, nothing has deterred Beatie Deutsch in her remarkable and rapid emergence as a world-class distance runner. Born and raised in the United States, Deutsch, 30, moved to Israel a decade ago and, in 2016, finished sixth in the Tel Aviv Marathon just four months after she took up running, A year later, while…
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Culture Forward 50 | Tal Frieden: The disobedient one
Tal Shahar Frieden, 22, lives in Providence, R.I., and was one of the first organizers of of Never Again Action, a new group pursuing civil disobedience around immigration issues through a Jewish lens. Working with a local group called AMOR, Frieden and others protested the Wyatt Detention Facility in Providence to demand it cut off…
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Culture Carin Mrotz: Justice Fighter in the Far North
As concerns about anti-Semitism on the left have grown, Carin Mrotz and her Minnesota-based organization Jewish Community Action have trained dozens of progressive activists in unconscious bias. Mrotz, in a personal capacity, also led such a training for local Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom she considers a friend. JCA’s advocacy helped strengthen tenant protection laws in…
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Culture Forward 50 | Sheila Katz: A voice for Jewish women
Sheila Katz first made headlines this year by going public with her story of being sexually harassed by a prominent Jewish philanthropist. She told The New York Times that, in 2015, when she was an executive at Hillel International, Michael Steinhardt, a billionaire she was trying to cultivate as a donor, repeatedly asked her if…
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Culture Forward 50 | Melina Matsoukas: The camera queen
In the music industry, Melina Matsoukas has long been a magic name. A renowned music-video director, Matsoukas, 38, whose father is Jewish and Greek, made a career of using her camera to reveal the radical undertones of pop, hip hop and R&B songs. Rihanna’s 2010 hit “S&M” was a (censored) radio favorite; the Matsoukas-directed video,…
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