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
-
Opinion Israel Has a New Worst Enemy — Twitter
Shortly after Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza, Anne Barnard, a New York Times reporter who has covered wars for over a decade, stood in the emergency room of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and watched a 9-year-old girl die. The girl was alone, without family, nameless. And when the doctor finally pronounced…
-
Opinion Did Bibi’s ‘Vengeance’ Tweets Provoke Violence?
Getty Images In moments of national tension — Israelis know these all too well — one can expect a leader to measure every word on a scale that calms on one side and inflames on the other. So what are we to make of Benjamin Netanyahu’s tweets on Monday as the country was preparing to…
-
Opinion How Is This Wall Different? Pope Francis Cements an Icon
A wall can mean many things. It can divide people who want to be united. It can ensure peace and safety by keeping danger at bay. It can enclose people so they are kept under control. The same wall can also stand for all these things to different people simultaneously. Consider that most iconic of…
-
Opinion The Death of a Soviet Jewry Prophet
On the morning of May 1, 1964 — almost exactly 50 years ago — an unusual sight greeted anyone walking along 67th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A thousand young men and women in two neat rows, dressed like they were heading off to synagogue, the boys in skinny black ties, the girls in…
-
Opinion Sochi’s Olympic Games Are a Missed Opportunity
An activist wearing a mask of Russian President Vladimir Putin joins protesters on the opening day of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. / Getty Images As the winter Olympics open today, there has been a crescendo of condemnation in the West of Russia’s many human rights violations. Sadly, in spite of all the attention Vladimir…
-
Opinion Disillusioned on Capitol Hill
I almost marked the email as spam. When it arrived in my inbox, the subject head had that distinctive indistinctness of junk mail: “Invitation To Testify Before Congress….” Me? Right. But then I clicked on it anyway. And Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia’s office was indeed asking me if I would give witness to the…
-
Culture Why Gary Shteyngart Remains His Own Best Creation
Little Failure By Gary Shteyngart Random House, 368 pages, $27 It was perhaps inevitable that Gary Shteyngart would one day write a memoir. Like other authors who traffic in fiction that is thinly-veiled autobiography — or, as in Shtyengart’s case, that appears as shadow puppet projections of his own Russian Jewish immigrant story — the…
-
Opinion Pulling Back Curtain on Story of Anti-Semitism in Upstate New York Pine Bush Schools
Chalk it up to being a journalist myself, but it’s usually easy for me to discern the moment in a story when a reporter knows he or she has hit pay dirt — when they can already visualize their byline on the front page. For Benjamin Weiser, a New York Times reporter investigating allegations of…
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward ‘Rabbi rebellion’: 33 Orthodox rabbis endorse Harris
- 2
Opinion Almost all voting groups shifted toward Trump, except American Jews. Why?
- 3
Opinion I was a Bernie supporter. This year, I’m voting Trump. Here’s why liberal Jews like me made the switch
- 4
Opinion Here’s why Orthodox Jews are loyal to Trump — even if they don’t love him
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Should we call the violence against Israeli soccer fans a ‘pogrom?’
-
Fast Forward How bad is antisemitism in Europe? Amsterdam ‘pogrom’ follows rising hostility
-
News Dutch Jews grapple with ‘weaponization’ of their fear following attack on Israelis
-
Fast Forward Anti-Israel protester who allegedly threatened Jewish man on the subway gets hate crime charge
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism