Eli Pariser has an aw-shucks wholesomeness born of his upbringing in small-town Maine. He also has a razor-sharp knowledge of the Internet that quickly won him an eight-figure injection of venture capital. He’s even faster at garnering a million online signatures to end an injustice in some far-flung corner of Kansas or Kazakhstan. At 32,…
(JTA) — The conservative political blogger Ken Berwitz was enraged last month, but not by Democratic malfeasance, his favored bugbear. No, he was irked by the policies of an Oklahoma-based chain of craft stores. Berwitz was bothered not only that Hobby Lobby was keeping Hanukkah tchotchkes off its shelves, but that a clerk at a…
I sat in a tent in the desert and waited for travelers to arrive. They came on government buses, dehydrated, exhausted, covered in blisters and bug bites. We welcomed them into our large, white tent and offered bandages, water and clumsily wrapped burritos. Abraham welcomed three strangers into his desert tent. Each day, I welcomed…
David Rothenberg has little doubt that old people are invisible. But invisibility is not all bad, he explained cheerfully in the lobby of his building, in New York City’s Greenwich Village: “See how I’m dressed? It’s great. No one notices,” he said. Yes, his baggy knee-length shorts and loose-fitting, nondescript shirt are not high fashion,…
Like all large groups of people, American Jews are complex and irreducible despite some aspects of shared culture. Recently, the Jewish Women’s Archive made an interesting choice to focus a new curriculum on Jewish involvement in the labor and civil rights movements — without cheerleading or focusing solely on women’s involvement — thereby shining a…
Having retired from the Passover-cleaning and Seder-making business, my in-laws have, in recent years, chosen to spend the holiday at a hotel abroad, every year at a different destination. My husband and I packed up our three kids this year and joined them for 10 days of matzoh-eating and sightseeing in Provence. Since the holiday…
I first read the Joyce Antler’s book “The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America” as an undergraduate, deep in the thrall of Jewish feminist academia. It was an enormously important part of my uncovering and understanding what Antler calls “the cultural chain” of my identity as a Jewish woman activist. Joyce Antler is…
A dear, and shockingly young, friend of mine was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer last year. She has undergone chemotherapy and surgery, and is now dealing with radiation and a second round of chemo in advance of more surgery. I’d do anything I could to support her and the scientific work that might one day…
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