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 Yizkor for Jabotinsky: The Prophet Half-Heeded
The 70th anniversary of the death of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, father of Revisionist Zionism, passed quietly this year. This was not a result of neglect; Jabotinsky simply does not need a special day to be remembered, not when most of the members of the current Israeli government would classify themselves as “Jabotinskyites.” At New York’s…
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News New Goldstone Follow-Up Probe Will Hold Hamas Accountable for First Time
A year and a half after Israel’s Gaza military operation — the focus of the United Nations’ damning Goldstone Report — a new investigation launched by the Human Rights Council and due in mid-September will finally examine what Hamas has done to account for its own role in the conflict. The Goldstone Report accused both…
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News Public Diplomat
A week after Israel’s fatal raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, which left nine dead, Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” It was not an easy assignment. Stephen Colbert plays a satirical version of a right-wing television host who regularly and mercilessly mocks his guests. In introducing…
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News No Progress Yet in Attempt To Mend Rift Over Conversion Bill
The truce worked out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to quell what has become known as “the conversion bill crisis” may be in jeopardy. The conversion bill, which seeks to codify laws for conversion in Israel, raised the ire of Diaspora Jewry when it passed through a Knesset committee with an added provision that would…
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News Israel Fights Isolation With New Measures
Israel is taking significant new steps to relieve its international isolation following the fatal raid on a humanitarian flotilla and the accusatory Goldstone Report. On August 2, the Israeli cabinet voted to participate in a United Nations inquiry that will look into the Israeli military’s May 31 attempt to stop a Turkish-led flotilla headed to…
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News Debate Over Homosexuality Now Roiling Orthodox Jews
On a single week in late July, a major flashpoint in the internal culture wars of the Orthodox world erupted in two unrelated but connected incidents. The issue was homosexuality. A group of nearly 90 Orthodox rabbis chose July 22 to release their “Statement of Principles on the Place of Jews With a Homosexual Orientation…
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News As Conversion Bill Stalls in Knesset, Jewish Diaspora Leaders Can Claim Victory
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced July 18 that he would oppose a controversial bill dictating who could perform conversions in Israel by saying that it would “tear apart the Jewish people.” This particular turn of phrase and the fact that Netanyahu’s opposition has now effectively derailed the progress of the bill mark a clear victory…
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News A Brooklyn Boxer Humbled, Not Down for the Count
When he speaks about the future of his boxing career, Dmitriy Salita gets a look of pure intensity in his otherwise mournful brown eyes. All the greatest boxers have this stare, a perfect distillation of concentration and discipline and total faith in the strength of their own arms. But in Salita, it is also the…
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