![Karen Loew](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/center/author/cropped/kloewheadshot-1481068391.jpg)
Karen Loew is a journalist and urbanist in New York. Follow her on Twitter @karenloew.
Karen Loew is a journalist and urbanist in New York. Follow her on Twitter @karenloew.
Burt Gitlin, 58 North Bergen, N.J. Job: Actively looking Previously: CEO of Bond Bedding, a small custom mattress and box spring company Gitlin was CEO of Bond Bedding in Hudson County from 1999 to 2012, when it closed due to the economic downturn. Since then, he has volunteered in the wake of Hurricane Sandy while…
Jane Trigere, 64 South Deerfield, Mass. Job: Textile artist and community volunteer Previously: Director of the Hatikvah Holocaust Education and Resource Center in Springfield, Mass., now closed. After leading the Hatikvah Center from 1997 to 2000, Trigere earned a master’s degree but was unable to find another job in the museum/arts administration field. She has…
Donald Sylvan, 64 Toronto Job: Executive Director, Hillel Ontario Previously: President and CEO of JESNA, the Jewish Education Society of North America Early this year, Sylvan moved to Canada to direct the umbrella organization that oversees Hillels at colleges in Ontario. He’d recently left the helm of JESNA, which he led for over seven years,…
On a recent late-winter afternoon, the workers’ center on the second floor of a nondescript office building in New York City’s Chinatown was full and busy. Everyone had just eaten lunch; warm soup was welcome after picketing in the cold outside an offending restaurant, Saigon Grill on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the rear of…
Along the broad boulevards and dignified streets of the largely liberal, Jewish Upper West Side, sweatshops don’t seem to be sprouting. From Riverside Park to Lincoln Center, from Harry’s Shoes to Zabar’s, the neighborhood appears to be a civilized place where the days of residents, working folk and visitors unspool in familiar, reassuring rhythms. To…
Garment industry sweatshops are hardly a thing of the past in New York City: They are a feature of commerce today. The New York State Department of Labor has found it necessary to maintain particular vigilance for several decades, founding the Apparel Industry Task Force in 1987 to monitor the city’s largest manufacturing sector. Today,…
Gal Beckerman?s comprehensive history of the popular movement to save Soviet Jews in the latter half of the 20th century is the winner of the Jewish Book of the Year Award, the Jewish Book Council announced January 11. ?When They Come for Us, We?ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry,? written by…
How can young people’s first experiences of Israel be at once profound and revelatory, yet predictable and banal? This conundrum was well in place before 2000, when Taglit-Birthright Israel began offering free 10-day trips to Israel to qualifying diasporists aged 18 to 26. But the Birthright machine mass-produces the phenomenon — and now showcases it…
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