Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York magazine and Vice. He is based in Los Angeles.
Louis Keene
By Louis Keene
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News Deni Avdija, ‘the greatest talent in Israeli basketball history’ joins the NBA
This story was updated to reflect breaking news. Deni Avdija, a 6’9” forward for Maccabi Tel Aviv, was selected ninth overall by the Washington Wizards at NBA Draft 2020, becoming the highest-drafted Israeli player ever and just the second Israeli player to be drafted in the first round of the NBA Draft. Avdija told a…
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Fast Forward The unlikely story of Ethan Berkowitz: restauranteur and Anchorage mayor, felled by sexting
Anchorage’s Jewish Mayor Ethan Avram Berkowitz announced his resignation Tuesday evening a day after a tumultuous weekend that started with anti-Semitic death threat and ended with admitting to a “consensual, inappropriate text message relationship” with a local TV reporter. That relationship turned hostile on Friday when the reporter, Maureen “Maria” Athens, posted a video to…
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News After son of criminal rabbi takes over Poway synagogue, some congregants quit
After a high-profile rabbi came under investigation for fraud, the rabbi’s son took over the synagogue and brought in three outsiders to set it straight. But the timing of the son’s takeover and the existence of his new board of directors was kept secret for months, leaving a congregation already shellshocked from an antisemitic attack…
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Culture Why a defining moment of HBO’s ‘I May Destroy You’ was scored by a synagogue choir
At the end of the eighth episode of HBO’s breakthrough series, “I May Destroy You,” the protagonist, a Ghanaian British writer named Arabella Essiedu awakes on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea, an emotional wreck stranded thousands of miles from home. A string of catastrophe and failure has led Arabella here — her rape in…
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News Some of L.A.’s Orthodox day schools set to reopen—as ‘camps’
With Los Angeles County banning even private schools from opening because of the coronavirus pandemic biting into the fall semester, at least four Orthodox day schools in the area have found a way to legally bring students to campus. They are calling it camp. The schools have opened or plan to open soon for optional…
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News Meet Mark Shepard, the Jewish college student who talked Stephen Jackson off the ledge of anti-Semitism
Nobody else was calling out former NBA star Stephen Jackson for publicly spewing anti-Semitic comments, so Mark Shepard, a 19-year-old college student, stepped up. “I said, ‘Dude you’re an anti-Semite’ to get his attention,” Shepard recalled Thursday in a phone interview. Jackson made his comments on Instagram Live after his friend DeSean Jackson, a star…
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News ‘I understand the hurt’ Stephen Jackson tells Rabbi David Wolpe
In a live-streamed conversation with prominent Conservative leader Rabbi David Wolpe, activist and basketball player Stephen Jackson walked back some of his inflammatory comments and asserted his love for Jewish people. He vowed to speak out against antisemitic rhetoric when he encounters it in the future. The conversation, which was viewed live on Instagram by…
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Fast Forward Tensions flare at L.A. anti-annexation rally
With the Covid-19 pandemic surging in Southern California and the state teetering on the verge of another lockdown, scores of protestors formed a car caravan around the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles to protest Israel’s annexation of the West Bank planned for that day. The protest started on the ground early Wednesday morning, July 1,…
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