A Year of Curses and Many Blessings
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…
The American Member of the Knesset Who Wants the Temple Mount Back In November 2014, Yehuda Glick was shot at point-blank range by a Palestinian assailant who wanted to kill a prominent proponent of Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount. Glick not only survived the attack, but this year he was voted into the Israeli…
The Snapchat Billionaire At 22, a Jewish student drops out of his Ivy League school to turn his social media idea into a business. Fast-forward a few short years: He’s a billionaire. Sound familiar? No, the student in question isn’t Mark Zuckerberg, but in (very) similar fashion, Evan Spiegel left Stanford to pursue what began…
Black Swan Actress Comes of Age as a Director Israeli-American Natalie Portman, 35, has long been a darling of screens small and large. She’s also been a major Jewish icon, publicly celebrating her identity as a member of the tribe. This year, her exploration of what it means to be a Jew, as well as…
The Voice of Michelle Obama As Michelle Obama prepares to leave the White House, where she made history as the country’s first African-American First Lady, she’s also consolidating her position as one of the nation’s most beloved public figures — thanks in part to speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz. In October, feeling angry after listening to the…
The Rabbi Whose Ordination of Women Is Pushing the Envelope of Orthodoxy In 2016, Rabbi Daniel Landes pushed the envelope of Modern Orthodoxy in Israel by ordaining women rabbis in an Orthodox-style ceremony. The former head of the Pardes Institute — a coeducational beit midrash, or religious institution of Jewish study — Landes has been…
(JTA) — At 6:30 Wednesday morning, Oklahoma City Rabbi Abby Jacobson received a text from one of her teenage congregants expressing sadness at the presidential election results — and fear. “She said, ‘I’m sorry for texting you, rabbi, but I can’t say any of this at school,’” related Jacobson, the spiritual leader at the Conservative…
