Why Ed Koch’s response to AIDS was very political and not very Jewish
Recent revelations about the former NYC mayor raise questions about his judgment and decency
AIDS
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Culture The AIDS crisis strained his relationship with Judaism. Now, it’s integral to his art — and activism.
In 1993, artist and activist Gregg Bordowitz premiered his film “Fast Trip, Long Drop,” a not-quite documentary that made for a biting critique of media coverage of the AIDS crisis. The film, in which Bordowitz plays a defiant talk show guest named Alter Allesman — Yiddish for “old everyman” — was shown widely at LGBTQ…
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Culture ACT UP changed AIDS activism. Sarah Schulman wants us to learn its lessons
Sarah Schulman had already been covering AIDS as a journalist for five years when she attended a 1987 demonstration organized by the newly-formed AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP. ACT UP members picketed outside New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for 72 hours in protest of the sluggish pace…
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Art How Avram Finkelstein Changed The Way We Think About AIDS — With One Pink Triangle
In the 1980’s the American Jewish artist and writer Avram Finkelstein was a co-creator of the iconic AIDS crisis protest poster which features a pink triangle with the words “Silence=Death.” How this influential graphic image was designed is recalled in Finkelstein’s new memoir, “After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images” (University of California…
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Fast Forward Mathilde Krim, Pioneering AIDS Researcher Who Fought Stigma, Dies At 91
(JTA) — Mathilde Krim, a prominent AIDS researcher who fought the stigma surrounding the disease, has died. Krim passed away on Monday at the age of 91, people close to her wrote on Facebook. The researcher founded the AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983, at a time when widespread homophobia hampered people from speaking out about AIDS,…
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Community In Their Own Words: The Beautiful Lives We Lost To AIDS
Editor’s note: Danny Jacobs wrote this article in December, 1993 and died of AIDS in March, 1994. This article was submitted by his brother, Eli Jacobs, who is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree program in Creative Non-Fiction Writing at Bar Ilan University. In the memoir he is writing for his thesis, Eli is exploring the…
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Culture In The AIDS Pandemic, William Hoffman Saw Parallels To The Holocaust
The American playwright and editor William Moses Hoffman, who died on April 29 at age 78, expressed his Judaism through dramatizations of the tragic AIDS pandemic. As Jonathan Friedman’s “Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts” notes, “Among the first dramatists to write plays about AIDS were gay Jews.” At a time…
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Fast Forward Mark Wainberg, Trailblazing AIDS Researcher, Dies In Florida Swimming Accident
Mark Wainberg, a trailblazing Canadian AIDS researcher, reportedly died Tuesday while swimming in rough water in Bal Harbour, Florida. He was 71. Wainberg, who lived in Montreal, was swimming Tuesday with his family when he started struggling with heavy surf and rip currents, Bal Harbour police chief Miguel De La Rosa said, according the the…
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