Newt Minow was not the most famous Chicagoan who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 22—it’s hard to be more famous than Michael Jordan—but he has certainly left his impact on both his city, his country, and, especially, the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama. In the summer of 1988, Minow was a…
This year’s overlap of the Jewish and Gregorian calendars has landed Hanukkah directly on top of Christmas. While also inspiring many pithy mashup titles, this has helped illustrate a truth that undercuts one of the polite fictions of Jewish life in America: that Hanukkah would look anything like how we celebrate it today if Christmas…
Princeton professor Mitchell Duneier came to town to talk about his new book, “Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea,” and sign a few copies. But certain events in the week preceding Duneier’s November 12 presentation, at the Chicago Humanities Festival, have added extra weight to a discussion about the nature…
Whether you love or hate the result, the election is over, and it’s time to find comfort and re-focus. A historical festival in New York, talk with Masha Gessen in San Francisco, and Israeli film festival in Chicago might prove just the ticket; if you’d rather stay home (we don’t blame you), unwind with the…
The day that it all happened could have been yesterday. In fact, it really feels like it was. I’m on a bus in Jerusalem, headed to the Tachaneh Markazit to catch another bus to Beit Shemesh. I’m ignoring everyone else on the bus, because that’s what you do when you’re sixteen. You ignore everyone but…
The celebration was already in progress when the Chicago Cubs arrived back home at Wrigley Field at 6 AM Thursday morning following their historic World Series victory over Cleveland. There was already a crowd to greet them. Or, rather, there was still a crowd to greet them: The fans who had gathered outside the ballpark…
This week we start sharing events outside of New York as part of our normal roster; festivals of arts and ideas in Chicago and Washington, D.C. are up first. There’s a slew of new books to tempt you, regardless of what you’re craving – history, science fiction, some hearty Yiddish humor – and a few…
As the Cubs walked off Progressive Field Wednesday night, World Series victors for the first time since Al Capone was nine years old, the thousands of fans who had traveled to Cleveland to see them hailed their heroes with “Go, Cubs, Go” — a tune that anyone could carry and whose lyrics everyone knew by…
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