Gabrielle Birkner
By Gabrielle Birkner
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Life The Jewish ‘Car Czar’
Kenneth Feinberg, the man who helped make peace between the Jewish Agency for Israel and Nefesh B’Nefesh, is apparently a top contender to become the nation’s “car czar.” If appointed, Feinberg would oversee the restructuring of the troubled American automobile industry. Earlier this year, the Washington-based lawyer who headed up the federal September 11th Victims…
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Life A Salve for Anglo-Jewish Angst
In between playing the dreidel spin-off “I Didn’t Know They Were Jewish” and pondering the Yiddish word for condom, The Guardian’s podcast on all things Jewish humor checks in with Forward editor Jane Eisner. In this Hanukkah-themed episode, host Jason Solomons worries aloud about the appearance of a new Jewish “cabal” surfacing in Washington —…
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News Following the Path of Many Jews Before Him, Victim Went to India Seeking
The Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries who died in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai have been the most prominent faces of the Jews murdered there. But about two miles from the apartment building where the couple and four others died, the attacks claimed the life of another Jewish victim, Alan Scherr. His story, it could be said, represents…
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News Finding God on a Roundabout Path
Danya Ruttenberg breaks for kitsch. Weeks after receiving her rabbinic ordination in the spring, Ruttenberg and her husband embarked on a road trip to explore, in her words, “all of the fun, crazy, outrageous stuff that you don’t see when confined to the coasts.” Stops included the theme park resorts of Las Vegas; the…
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News À la Mode
When Tanya Benzaquen began sketching hats in the margins of her middle-school notebooks — form-fitting hats with sequin starbursts and wide-brimmed hats with floral accents — she knew she was onto something. Fifteen years later, Benzaquen, now in her late 20s, is an award-winning hat-maker. Her designs appeal to two very different sets: Orthodox women…
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News Like a Ripe Brie, Paris’s Kosher Scene Comes of Age
Like a bottle of fine Bordeaux or a ripe brie, Paris’s kosher scene has come of age. When Polish Holocaust survivors Joseph and Helene Korcarz opened their eponymous bakery in 1948, it was one of only a handful of kosher eateries, which were relegated primarily to the narrow streets of Le Marais, the city’s historic…
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News Tracing a Tattoo Dynasty Back to Its Bowery Days
Tattooed on Marvin Moskowitz’s right forearm are a skull, a knife, a dove and — in red, white and blue ink — a small Star of David paired with the words “Never Again.” The irony of a tattoo tribute to Holocaust victims is not lost on Marvin. Still, he considers it a fitting memorial. “People…
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News More Arab Than the Arabs: Iraqi Writers Join Israel’s Literary Canon
For many Americans, Sami Michael’s novel “A Trumpet in the Wadi,” released this month for the first time in English, will serve as an entrée into literature written by Iraqi-born Jews living in Israel. But Michael’s work, which has become increasingly popular in the West, is only part of a rich array of an Iraqi-Israeli…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Yiddish שפּילן מיט פֿײַל־און־בויגן און אַנדערע ל״ג־בעומר־מנהגיםPlaying with bows and arrows and other Lag BaOmer shtetl customs
געוויסע עקספּערטן האַלטן, אַז מע דאַרף באַטראַכטן ל״ג־בעומר ווי אַ פֿרילינגדיקן מײַ־פֿעסטיוואַל
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News ‘Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to aim for elusive progress
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Fast Forward A GOP lawmaker tried to put a Holocaust denier on New Hampshire’s Holocaust education board