When Leah Sokolovsky was 15, she spent many Friday nights sleeping over at the home of the 20-year-old assistant head counselor of her ultra-Orthodox summer camp. The two had not been particularly close at camp. But during the school year that followed, the counselor, an ultra-Orthodox woman named Gittie Sheinkopf, cultivated Sokolovsky. Sokolovsky says Sheinkopf…
To be a “liberal Zionist” in the United States is to lead a lonely existence. It often means having few friends, aside from other liberal Zionists. It means you support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland while simultaneously supporting progressive causes in your American homeland. It means wanting to…
One day in September 1933, shortly after having been bailed out of jail, a middle-aged, partially paralyzed black man named Dennis Cross answered a knock at his front door in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His visitors, pretending to be police officers, were in fact white civilians, and they were incensed that Cross had been accused of sexually…
My great, great grandpa, Solomon Calvo and his friend, Jacob Policar, were the first Sephardic Jews in Seattle, immigrating from the island of Marmara in Turkey. But their welcome in the local Jewish community wasn’t exactly as warm as you’d expect of Jews greeting other Jews. Upon arrival, they were told they couldn’t possibly be…
I was 4 or 5 when the hot topic at dinner was the movie version of “Marjorie Morningstar.” Too young to understand why Mom was unhappy about it, I understood enough to get that Natalie Wood, a goy, had been cast in the title role in the screen adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel. But why…
For linguists, copy editors, and Hebrew obsessives the world over, this has been a marijuana-filled week. Allow me to explain: this week, the Associated Press issued guidelines on the use of marijuana in news stories — the word, not the drug. And also this week, the Academy of Hebrew Language took to Twitter to explain…
Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor By Yossi Klein Halevi Harper, 224 pages $24.99 On the front of the postcard was a photograph of Jews praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall; on the other side, a brief message: “Thank you for helping me find my way home,” it read, signed, “An American Israeli Jewish Friend.” The recipient…
I grew up in Monsey, New York, where schnorrers of all kinds go door to door, asking for help paying for everything from a daughter’s wedding to major surgery to yeshiva tuition to something as basic as feeding many mouths. The busiest times come when Shabbat approaches, on Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons. I never…
צוליב דעם וואָס ס׳רובֿ פּאַריזער אַשכּנזים שטאַמען פֿון פּוילן, קומט די ליטוויש־ייִדישע קולטור נישט אָפֿט צו רייד
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