Prior to the arrival of my father and the first wave of Machalniks in May 1948, the fledgling Israeli army had taken huge losses. These losses weren’t simply because the soldiers were heavily outnumbered, but because the Israeli army had not yet become a unit: It was still a disorganized patchwork quilt of antagonistic freedom…
My father arrived in Marseilles in late July 1948, as a lace salesman from Belgium. Gloria Kessler, a nurse working at a hospital in Chicago, had decided to give up her career to smuggle herself into Palestine to help. She, too, received falsified documents from Teddy Kollek at the Hotel Fourteen and remembers sailing with…
When my father was 9, his mother, Bessie, developed cancer. At the age of 12, my father returned home from school to find all the mirrors in his home covered; Bessie had passed away, and my father was told by his father, Bennie, a fruit salesman, that Bessie had died because my father had been…
This is a story of loyalty and betrayal. It’s a story of bravery and subtlety, of mortal stakes on a global stage. It is also a thrilling story filled with “cloak-and-dagger elements,” featuring storied American men both famous and infamous: Harry Truman, Mickey Marcus, Hank Greenspun, Jimmy Hoffa and Charles Winters (the man who was…
In a development that could help tip the scales in the ongoing writers’ strike, an obscure Jewish blog has weighed in on the side of the scribes — and done so forcefully. The blog, JVoices, is following the lead of a number of TV-related blogs that suspended publication for a day in solidarity with the…
The Writers Guild picket line moves to Silver Cup Studios in Long Island City tomorrow, and none other than Nora Ephron is “supposed to” attend, according to Sherry Goldberg of Writers Guild of America East. Given that late-night writers turned out in droves to Rockefeller Center today, can we also expect appearances from some of…
Forgive us if we in the Forward newsroom are paying a little bit of extra attention to the Writers Guild strike. We’re union members ourselves, and the whole brouhaha has our favorite celebrities going all lefty on us: SNL’s Tina Fey and Seth Myers are uptown picketing at Rockefeller Center; Jon Stewart may or may…
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