Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman
Gal Beckerman
By Gal Beckerman
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News Hollywood’s Latest Holocaust Project Splits Survivors’ Heirs
Think “Erin Brockovich” meets “Schindler’s List.” That’s the pitch for a new film in development by Sony Pictures that may star Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock. As improbable as it sounds, the movie will tell a suspenseful story about insurance companies and the Holocaust, an epic battle that led to one of the largest programs of…
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News Top Genocide Scholars Battle Over How To Characterize Israel’s Actions
Did Jews commit genocide in 1948? The question is provocative, and the answer for most people is an unequivocal no. But a debate over this idea has formed the crux of a heated argument among the most eminent genocide scholars in the world, and led recently to the censure of an Israeli professor by the…
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News Hebrew-Language Charter Schools Overcome Stigma and Plan To Proliferate
Hebrew charter schools are not going away. Enthusiasm for these publicly funded institutions, which are aimed at immersing a diverse group of students in Hebrew, is rising with the general tide of support for charter schools all over the country. They appear determined to ride out any controversy they may have provoked and prove they…
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News Tireless Activist for Soviet Jews Now Needs Lifeline of Her Own
When I started working on my history of the Soviet Jewry movement almost seven years ago, the task seemed overwhelming. I was a young writer, just 27, attempting to tell an epic story that took place over three decades (mostly before I was born), involved a cast of thousands and demanded I describe how the…
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News Creator of Neutron Bomb Leaves an Explosive Legacy
In the 20th century, Jews created bombs. Weapons of mass destruction. Most famously, there was J. Robert Oppenheimer who ran the Manhattan Project, which gave the world the atom bomb. After him came Edward Teller, the Hungarian Jew who engineered an incredibly destructive upgrade: the hydrogen bomb. And then there was Samuel T. Cohen, the…
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News Even the ACLU Says Judge’s Action Argues for New Rubashkin Trial
Sholom Rubashkin has never lacked for passionate defenders, but he surely never thought the ACLU would one day be among them. The former executive of the now-defunct Agriprocessors kosher meat company is serving a 27-year sentence without chance of parole after being convicted last June of bank fraud in a case that began with a…
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News Palin and the Elusive ‘Mot Juste’
When do we stop being surprised by Sarah Palin and the strange things that emerge from her mouth? The latest is her invocation of the words “blood libel” in the course of a videotaped speech denouncing both the shooting of 20 people in Tucson, Arizona and the blame she has taken for contributing to violent…
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News From Siberian Cell, Khodorkovsky Makes Mother Russia His Cause
As Mikhail Khodorkovsky stood in a glass cage in a Moscow courtroom, listening to the judge extend his sentence in a Siberian prison by another six years, he smiled at times. It was a gesture that many of his supporters read as a sign that he accepted his fate and the role he was meant…
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