Sigal Samuel is the former Opinion Editor at the Forward. When she’s not tackling race or identity politics, she’s hunting down her Indian Jewish family’s Kabbalistic secret society. Her novel THE MYSTICS OF MILE END tells the story of a dysfunctional family with a dangerous mystical obsession. Her writing has also appeared in The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, and BuzzFeed. Follow Sigal on Twitter.
Getty Images “Zionism has been taken, kidnapped even, by the far right.” So says Pulitzer-winning Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander in a Haaretz interview published over the weekend. Explaining that he was “a normal Zionist until 1968,” the professor says that nowadays he can no longer call himself a Zionist — thanks to the movement’s right-wing…
Getty Images “A nice girl came to me and expressed interest in renting my apartment. She also informed me that she was in a relationship with a woman. Given her relationship status, is there a Jewish law preventing me from renting the apartment to her?” When this question was recently posted to one of Israel’s…
Chabad Lubavitchers bring religious Jewish life to Laos in 2008. If you saw the Anti-Defamation League’s scary new report on global anti-Semitism, you might have been intrigued to learn that the least anti-Semitic country in the word is…Laos. Laos? Yes, Laos. But why Laos, you ask? Good question. Maybe the landlocked Southeast Asian country has…
An extremist Jew is arrested at a 2012 rally for ‘price tag’ attacker comrades / Getty Images Over at Tablet, Liel Leibovitz is unhappy that Israeli author Amos Oz is going around calling violent Israeli settlers “Hebrew neo-Nazis.” He claims Oz’s statement suffers from “a logical flaw,” one that has “more to do with philosophy…
Sol Adler, the disgraced former executive director of Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y, has hanged himself in his Brooklyn home, the New York Post reported Sunday. His wife discovered his body on Friday morning, according to police. Adler, 60, had been fired from his position at the Y in 2012 after serving as director for two…
If Israel had a Facebook account, what would it look like? The answer can be found in a Facebook “look back” movie promoted ahead of Israeli Independence Day and made by Todd Zeff of Jerusalem U, an institution that uses film to strengthen young Jews’ connection to Israel. Or, I should say, an answer. If…
Getty Images For Benjamin Netanyahu, timing is a beautiful thing. When Mahmoud Abbas announced the formation of a Fatah-Hamas unity government on Wednesday, Bibi knew he had it made. He pulled out of the peace talks on Thursday, doing the smartest possible thing at the smartest possible moment. Not the wise thing, not the morally…
Tanya Hoffman is the daughter of Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. / Haaretz “How I Stopped Hating Women of the Wall and Started Talking to My Mother.” That’s the title of an upcoming film by Tanya Hoffman, the 26-year-old daughter of firebrand feminist and Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. The summer…
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