Guest Editor: Rachel Sklar
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
This fall, eight guest editors are helping to shape the Forward Forum by commissioning opinion pieces. This week it’s Rachel Sklar, who has chronicled the media world at the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, and now at Mediaite.com in her capacity as editor-at-large. A native of Canada, Sklar is a contributor to numerous anthologies and is working on a humorous book titled “Jew-ish.” She also co-hosts “The Salon” on The Jewish Channel.
Always Anatevka: In “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye, the milkman, longs for the simple times in his village of Anatevka, where traditions could be counted on and everyone knew his or her place. By the end of the play, pretty much every assumption Tevye started out with has been completely taken apart. But also, put back together — remade, reshaped, reinvented for a new time, with new players. That is what these four essays are about: evolving Jewish identity — and what is won, lost, found and created in the process. It’s not always easy and it’s not always pretty, but it is, ultimately, what always is. To that, what else can we say but — L’chaim! Right? Of course, right.
Back to Ideas on Identity
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.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
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