Host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with Forward contributor Rex Weiner about the Jewish story of Ronni Chasen, a prominent Hollywood publicist who was recently murdered. Then reporter Joy Resmovits joins the conversation to discuss the Jewish job market, which is rebounding after a long period of hiring freezes. Subscribe to Forward podcasts on iTunes
Somewhere beneath the birch trees lies the Jewish cemetery of Senno. The graves have been there for 350 years, but the markers are so sunken into the earth that they look like random stones. Moss covers the Hebrew letters, and few people know about the site, which is hidden from the road by the foliage….
It was February 2010, and like many jobless Americans, Rabbi Avi Greene found himself in a bind. His digital day school startup venture had only half the funding it needed. He had been laid off from an administrative position at a Los Angeles Jewish day school almost two years earlier. So, with America’s unemployment rate…
As Israelis and Palestinians spent recent weeks blaming each other for the breakdown in peace talks, they have found themselves in agreement on one thing: Education ministries on both sides have banned a history textbook that they deemed unsuitable for their students. What is found inside the textbook that has aroused the ire of education…
As Israel makes decisions about the peace process over the coming weeks, all eyes are turning to the Sephardic-based Shas party, seen as holding the fulcrum of power to decide the country’s response to the Obama administration’s proposal for restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. With two ministers in the Cabinet, and a…
One time at the Ghent Film Festival, blond-haired and blue-eyed movie publicity maven Ronni Chasen overheard an anti-Semitic remark from an organizer of the festival. She went up to him and announced, “I’m Jewish,” in her unmistakable Bronx accent. The offender was stunned — and he apologized. “That was her. She was very proud of…
Al Franken is a Jewish senator, but is he a senator for the Jews? The comedian-turned-commentator-turned-politician first became known as one of the Jewish writers for Saturday Night Live’s original cast, later performing in the sketch “Jew, Not a Jew” and developing the character of Stuart Smalley, a nervous self-help guru. Since then, as his…
Remembering Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Man — Forgetting “Imagining Heschel,” the Play As soon as I saw the ad for Colin Greer’s new play, “Imagining Heschel” — starring Richard Dreyfuss as the theologian whom Edward Kaplan, author of “Spiritual Radical, Abraham Joshua Heschel in America 1940–1972” (Yale University Press, 2007), heralds as “one of America’s…
Books can be the perfect gift for Hanukkah. With the holiday quickly approaching, the Forward asked several authors, artists and editors about their favorite books by genre. Here’s what they said: Best Young Adult Book I am a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and horror stories were woven into the fabric of my childhood. But at…
Bullying, suicide, abuse. In recent years, the genre of Jewish teenage literature has tackled subjects once considered so taboo, not even the most progressive authors would touch them. These “problem novels,” as they are called — exemplified recently by books like “Gravity,” by Leanne Lieberman, in which a teenage girl from an Orthodox family realizes…
“The Stone Lamp” by Karen Hesse and Brian Pinkney. Hyperion, 2003 Eight powerful poems in free verse, arranged chronologically and told in the voices of Jewish children who lived during periods of crises in Jewish history. Each poem is accompanied by a succinct statement about the historical event and by dramatic illustrations. “In the Month…
