Gabrielle Birkner
By Gabrielle Birkner
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Life L’Affaire Madoff and the ‘Enabling Wives’
In the wake of L’Affaire Madoff, writer Daphne Merkin, the sister of investor J. Ezra Merkin — his Ascot Partners fund had invested most all of its $1.8 billion with Madoff — bemoans in The Daily Beast the general invisibility of women in the world of finance. Without naming names, she writes of the limited…
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News Rabbi Arnold Wolf, 84, Was Progressive Leader
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a prominent Chicago spiritual leader and rabbi emeritus of the Reform synagogue situated across the street from President-elect Barack Obama’s house, has died, apparently of a heart attack. He was 84. A longtime champion of peace and progressive politics, Wolf participated in civil rights marches in Selma, Ala., and protested the…
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Israel News Sibling Act Steals the Show
Among the standout acts at a December 23 “Storytelling” Hanukkah event, sponsored by Heeb magazine, was that of sibling comics Eliot and Ilana Glazer, who presented two case studies of their American Jewish grandparents. The Glazers, who have been making a name for themselves in New York’s underground comedy scene — launching three ongoing comedy series…
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Life Beyond Rick Warren’s Invocation
The Orthodox Union’s Nathan Diament has some advice for Barack Obama. Writing in The New Republic, Diament — the OU’s public policy director — urges the incoming president to do more than offer religious voters symbols, like an inaugural invocation by Rev. Rick Warren. Obama, Diament writes, has an opportunity to “advance policies that are…
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Life Fool Oprah Once…
Oprah is a woman of many talents, but spotting fakes, apparently, isn’t one of them. Three years after selecting James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” for her on-air book club — only later to learn that the so-called memoir contained more than a few fabrications — the “Queen of Talk” has, once again, been had….
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News Rabbi Arnold Wolf, 84, Was Progressive Leader
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a prominent Chicago spiritual leader and rabbi emeritus of the Reform synagogue situated across the street from President-elect Barack Obama’s house, has died, apparently of a heart attack. He was 84. A longtime champion of peace and progressive politics, Wolf participated in civil rights marches in Selma, Ala., and protested the…
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Life Wither the Mega-Donor?
In the wake of Bernard Madoff’s collapse, Forward alumna Lucette Lagnado looks to the decline of the Jewish mega-donor — and the return of a more humble form of philanthropy, replete with a higher volume of “little checks” and pushkes: “For the past several years, Jewish nonprofits had been relying on “fewer — but larger…
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Life Billion-Dollar Foundation To Shutter Amid Madoff Woes
A billion-dollar foundation that gave to a wide array of Jewish causes is the latest charitable organization to announce that it is closing in the wake of Bernard Madoff’s financial collapse. The 19-year-old, Palm Beach, Fla.-based Picower Foundation, which distributed more than $23 million in 2007 — including gifts to about two dozen Jewish organizations…
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