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
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
