Books
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
(JTA) — In their Krakow home, Anna Makowka Kwapisiewicz and her husband, Piotr, skim through an online article about Poland’s recent ban on kosher slaughter. What they find even more disturbing than the actual news are the comments posted by other readers. Hundreds of comments calling on Jews to leave Poland have appeared beneath news…
On a recent Friday afternoon in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, groups of teenage girls headed toward the ocean as shirtless men on boardwalk benches sent occasional catcalls their way and children walked by licking ice cream cones. For much of this seaside neighborhood of Russian immigrants, the rites of summer appear unchanged nine months after Hurricane…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illluminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 1913 •100 years ago An Affair in the Bronx David and Bessie Aberman and…
Joshua Faudem was having drinks with friends at Mike’s Place, a favorite of the English-speaking community on Tel Aviv’s beach, when two suicide bombers entered and added the popular hangout to the list of Israeli venues that had fallen victim to second intifada terror attacks. A decade later, Faudem, a dual citizen of Israel and…
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward director of digital media, Dave Goldiner, to discuss the futures of Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. Then, staff writer Paul Berger speaks with Henrik Greenberg about the Yiddish poet Naftali Herts Kon, whose works have recently been returned to his daughter after…
Some congregants at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla., are asking whether current or former rabbis knew of the allegations that followed accused pedophile Richard Andron to their community. “The rabbi needs to explain to all of us, how and why this situation occurred and what will be done in the future to (ensure) that…
To the Orthodox boys of Englewood, N.J., and Monsey, N.Y., Richard “Ricky” Andron was unbelievably cool: a 30-something bachelor and martial arts expert who hosted Sabbath sleepovers at his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where they played cards and looked at pornographic magazines. But Andron’s apartment, just off Central Park, was a trap, according…
When Shmuel, my sixth child, arrived with Down syndrome, I cried bitterly as I imagined myself dead and him homeless; I played hostess to numerous other fantasies, my own and those of other women, who came to cry by my childbed. But when I returned to life and found my husband distressed and exhausted, I…
A Federal Communications Commission commissioner has proposed sweeping reforms to the E-Rate program, a school and library technology subsidy that was the subject of two Forward exposes this year. The proposed changes to the program, announced by Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai at the American Enterprise Institute on July 16, would entirely reshape how the…
There won’t be any skydiving for 92-year-old Aaron Rosloff this year. He spent his past two birthdays jumping out of planes as part of a fundraising mission for the South Brunswick Food Pantry in New Jersey. He planned to celebrate his 92nd birthday, July 3, with a third jump, but after he broke his ankle…
100% of profits support our journalism
