Sunrise, Sunset
The folks at Guilt & Pleasure, the quarterly journal published by Reboot, declare themselves “peddlers of writings and ideas on the issues of community, identity, and Jewishness in America today.” This month’s pushcart, as it were, is devoted to issues of “Health” — and, of course, its absence. Excerpted here is one of the highlights, a feature on the last seniors living in South Beach by photographer Naomi Harris.
The issue also features an essay by David Rakoff about his life as everyone’s confidant (“Oh, the Trouble I’ve Heard”), as well as work by graphic artist Rutu Modan and essays by Etgar Keret, Howard Jacobson and Gawker.com editor Emily Gould. There is also a beautiful, excruciating missive from Mireille Silcoff, the journal’s founding editor, about her own experience of illness. In it, she relates telling a cabdriver that she is suffering from “something like whiplash — a lie much easier than explaining that the skin of my spinal cord has decided to imitate Swiss cheese, that the operations had only made the holes bigger, that i was leaking spinal fluid until I had none, no cushion around my brain, soft brain knocking against hard skull, no buffer, and every car ride felt like a prelude to an aneurysm.”
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
