Gordon Haber writes about religion and culture in addition to editing the CANVAS Compendium, a newsletter on Jewish arts and culture. He does not live in Brooklyn.
Gordon Haber
By Gordon Haber
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Opinion Of Course Bernie Sanders Is Grumpy, It’s His Genetic Imperative
On Tuesday June 7, Bernie Sanders got crushed by Hillary Clinton in the California Democratic primary. Since then the pundits have been lunging at keyboards and cameras to explain why he refuses to concede the nomination race. Many focus on his personality — with the most notable attack coming in a Politico piece that describes…
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Culture How to Send Your Jewish Kid to College — Without Stressing Out
While it’s never easy sending a kid off to college, you have to wonder if these are particularly trying times for Jewish parents. Alongside the usual concerns about academic success, laundry and the massive cost, Jewish families also contend with issues of assimilation, anti-Zionism and even anti-Semitism. After decades of normalization, Jews have, in recent…
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Books ‘How I Stopped’ Reading Shlomo Sand’s Crackpot Memoirs
How I Stopped Being a Jew By Shlomo Sand Verso, 112 pages, $16.95 ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew” is the strangest book that I have ever reviewed. I used to grant that distinction to the memoir by the psychic who claimed that aliens healed her anal cyst. But this one is even stranger. At…
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Culture Israel and Circumcision Top List of Concerns in New ‘Pewish’ Plays
The Pew Survey of American Jewry came as a shock to the chattering classes (or kibbitzing classes) of professional Jews, the pundits, academics and culture boosters that make a living by analyzing or promoting Judaism, myself included. Of course, anybody with eyes could see that interest in the religion has dwindled and many American Jews…
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Culture A Personal History of Blood Libel in Poland
Some years ago, an obsession with Polish poetry led me to two ideas: First, that I should visit Poland, and second, that someone else should pay for it. So I wrangled a Fulbright fellowship and spent a year traveling in Poland. (I mention the Fulbright not to brag, but because it bugs me when travel…
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Culture How the Other Half of America Still Lives
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives By Sasha Abramsky Nation Books, $25, 368 pages In 1962, Michael Harrington, a freelance journalist, published a book that hit the American public like a slap in the face. In a prosperous time, “The Other America: Poverty in the United States” described the tens…
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Opinion Jewish Exploitation of the Educated Underclass
Right now Jewish academics in the U.S. are preoccupied with the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israel. But very few Jews in academia — or Jews in any position of moral authority — have spoken up about an academic scandal that has been quietly building for decades: the exploitation of adjunct instructors at American colleges…
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News The Jewish History of Futures (and Options)
Everyone’s heard of derivatives, options and futures, but the details of how they might save or destroy civilization are so daunting that the simple facts get lost. Let’s get down to business: A derivative is a financial security (tradable itself) whose value is based on that of an underlying asset. In other words, instead of…
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Fast Forward Halal restaurant opening in Congress is like ‘Muslim conquest of Jerusalem,’ says GOP congressman
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Fast Forward Germany formally classifies far-right AfD party as extremist, in blow to Nazi-linked populist movement
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