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 Oy! Jackie Mason Has Family Drama
The Forward goes backstage at “702 Punchlines and Pregnant:” Every weekend, Ginger Reiter, a redheaded high school English teacher from South Florida, flies to New York to watch a stage production re-creating her 10-year love affair with Borscht Belt comedian Jackie Mason. Even stranger, her role in the production is played by the love child…
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News HRW Targets Businesses on the West Bank
For the first time, a Human Rights Watch report on the West Bank is calling on businesses to withdraw from there if they find themselves part of what the study describes as a “two-tier system of laws, rules and services” that favors Jewish settlers at the expense of Palestinians. This is a new move for…
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The Schmooze Forward Fives: 2010 in Non-Fiction
In this, the second annual Forward Fives selection, we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in film, music, theater, exhibitions and books. Here we present five of the most important Jewish non-fiction books of 2010. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. As…
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News Does Declaring It ‘Palestine’ Lead to a State?
As peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority remain at an impasse, the Palestinians seem to be moving closer to their ultimate goal on a separate front: international recognition of their own independent state. In just the past few weeks, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia have recognized Palestine within the borders that separated Israel from…
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News New Study Finds More Jews in the United States Than Previously Thought
There are more Jews in the United States than widely thought — 20 percent more. That’s the major finding in a new study conducted by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University, which says that there are now 6.5 million Jews in America, 1 million more than the last time a major count was…
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News Why Kissinger Favored ‘Quiet Diplomacy’
In this excerpt from Gal Beckerman’s “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry, Henry Kissinger is introduced as the main opponent to the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a piece of legislation that would force the Soviet Union to liberalize its emigration policy if it wanted to receive Most Favored…
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News A Year of Captivity in a Cuban Jail
Every Friday night, Alan Gross pulls out a photograph of a group of friends enjoying Sabbath dinner. Isolated in a Cuban prison cell, he intones the blessing over the bread and wine and stares at the photo of the people, a few families in Maryland that he and his wife used to gather with every…
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News Why Kissinger Said U.S. Jews Acted ‘Traitorously’
Among the many enigmas that have surrounded Henry Kissinger over the years is the question of how he, a German Jew, managed to survive in the Nixon White House, a place where he was called “Jew boy” to his face. Now, with the release of a new batch of Nixon tapes, revealing more of the…
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