Marissa Brostoff
By Marissa Brostoff
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News Black, Jewish Vote for Obama May Signal a Renewed Tie
After months of predictions to the contrary, American Jews voted for president-elect Barack Obama in higher proportion than any demographic group besides African Americans. For many Jewish liberals, this was a watershed moment, marking a return to the days when blacks and Jews were thought to have a special relationship founded on a shared language…
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Culture City Team Ramps Up
Fighting poverty and improving public education are no easy tasks, but for young activists living in such a huge city as New York, finding kindred spirits to march with at the next rally can be a challenge in its own right. A group of politically progressive Jewish 20-somethings is trying to make it a little…
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News For Blind Rabbi, an Election Night of Mixed Emotions
Demarest, N.J. — As polls closed in New Jersey on election night, the family of Dennis Shulman, a Democrat who ran for Congress in the state’s northernmost district, gathered around the television set — to cheer for Barack Obama. The results had not come in yet for Shulman, a blind psychoanalyst and rabbi with no…
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News An Unusual Field Trip: In Hitchens vs. God, Let the Eighth Graders Decide
Like many Jewish kids of bar and bat mitzvah age, the eighth graders at the Rodeph Sholom School in Manhattan have been asked in recent months to consider their own religious beliefs as preparation for their entry into religious adulthood. Unlike most, however, they took a field trip to a historic synagogue to see celebrity…
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News Kosher Plant Struggles as Owner Faces Arrest and Fines
The kosher meat giant Agriprocessors shut down major portions of its slaughter operations at the same time that the company’s former CEO was arrested and the state of Iowa imposed a $10 million fine on the meat producer. On October 30, federal prosecutors arrested Sholom Rubashkin, son of Agriprocessors founder Aaron Rubashkin. The younger Rubashkin,…
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Culture Hiding from Helsinki: An Action Thriller About a Writer of Thrillers
Captives by Todd Hasak-Lowy New York, Spiegel & Grau, 381pp, $24.95 Daniel Bloom, the protagonist of Todd Hasak-Lowy’s first novel, “Captives,” is a screenwriter who helps create specimens of an enjoyable, but frustrating genre of movie: the big-budget somewhat-better-than-average action thriller. Exhibit A, for Bloom: His most ambitious screenplay to date — also called “Captives”…
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Israel News Diamond Mogul Meets a Star-Studded Controversy
A group of A-list celebrities who appear in a new photography book wearing shimmering jewels (and not much more) have become caught in a tussle between an Israeli diamond mogul, an international poverty relief organization and a couple of highly irritated public relations firms. It all started a couple of years ago when 23 female…
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News A Book Rescues Jewish LPs From Obscurity
It’s probably safe to assume that most people aren’t familiar with the oeuvre of Johnny Yune, a Korean-American comedian who spent the 1980s making martial arts parody films — and the 1960s as a fixture on the Israeli nightclub scene in New York. Same goes for Juan Calle and his Latin Lantzmen, a band whose…
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