A Year of Curses and Many Blessings
The Most Important Democrat on Capitol Hill The electoral earthquake that derailed the political establishment on Election Day did not deliver to Sen. Chuck Schumer what he so desperately wanted — a Democratically controlled U.S. Senate. But Donald Trump’s triumph does leave Schumer in line to be the most important Democrat on Capitol Hill, perhaps…
Triumphant Return With a New Novel To a world that, despite his best-selling books and major movies of the millennium’s first decade, had moved on without him, Jonathan Safran Foer has recently announced, “Here I Am.” In 2002, when Foer published his first novel, “Everything Is Illuminated,” at the age of 25, he earned a…
Writing About Jews and Fighting for Gay Rights When Masha Gessen, 49, fled Russia as a teenage refusenik to come to America, she probably never imagined that she would someday become one of the Kremlin’s primary antagonists. But three decades on, she has emerged as one of the loudest and most eloquent critics of autocracy,…
Pinning the BridgeGate Scandal on Chris Christie If they made a movie about David Wildstein’s roller-coaster political career and ties to high school classmate Chris Christie, it might be called “Revenge of the Nerd.” In October, Wildstein, 55, abandoned his political guru when his testimony in the explosive Bridgegate trial helped prosecutors secure convictions against…
Captain of America’s Olympic Gymnasts Aly Raisman tumbled into victory this August after helping Team USA nab an Olympic gold medal in women’s gymnastics. The 22-year-old Massachusetts native also took home two silver medals of her own, pulling in second for her floor routine and all-around floor competition. With six medals to her name, Raisman…
Holocaust Historian Reaches the Red Carpet Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt finally got to walk the red carpet this year. The painstaking scholarship on Holocaust denial that she’s pursued from her perch at Emory University for decades has garnered headlines in the past. Now, she’s being played by an Academy Award-winning actress (Rachel Weisz) in a…
The Craft of The Atlantic’s New Editor Washington journalist Jeffrey Goldberg had a productive 2016. In March, he published “The Obama Doctrine,” a 20,000-word essay on President Obama’s foreign policy, in The Atlantic. Drawing on hours of conversations with Obama and dozens of aides, critics and foreign leaders, the piece aimed “to see the world…
Helping Us Age Wisely When Rabbi Rachel Cowan turned 75 earlier this year, she threw herself a birthday party in keeping with her character. She asked friends and family members to celebrate with her at The Brotherhood Sister Sol, a nonprofit focused on youth development in Harlem, on whose board she sits. She fed and…
The Book Writing Broad of Broad City This season, “Broad City” took comic aim at Birthright in the episode “Jews on a Plane.” The show’s creators, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, starred in a two-episode arc that featured their characters going on a free trip called “Birthmark.” “We’re going to Israel,” Jacobson, 32, herself a…
He Has Become a Jew of Stature, By Design Once teased by the other boys in his modern Orthodox Brooklyn day school, Isaac Mizrahi became a person of standing in the community this year, when the Jewish Museum dedicated an exhibit to the fashion designer’s work over the decades. Including costumes he created for several…
The Breitbart Writer Who Protested Anti-Semitism At the age of 32, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro added to his resume a title he’d never wished for: the No. 1 target of anti-Semitic attacks aimed at journalists. According to an Anti-Defamation League study, Shapiro, a former rising star at Breitbart who turned against Donald Trump, was the…
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