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 Holocaust Remembrance at a Distance
A video playing on a loop at an exhibition of Julie Mauskop’s paintings shows her grandmother frying eggs. It could be any morning of any day. There is nothing significant about the moment, beyond its utter normalcy. And that’s the point. Mauskop’s grandparents are survivors of Auschwitz. Their arms bear numbers. But you won’t see…
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News Strain in U.S.-Israel Ties Spurs Anxiety About ‘Dual Loyalty’
Dual loyalty is an old and nefarious accusation. It has dogged Jews for centuries in any land where they settled and began to feel comfortable — the allegation that their allegiance is to their tribe first and not to their nation. America has been a haven precisely because the moments when this fear has swelled…
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News Facebook Now Home to New Kind of Holocaust Remembrance
Anne Frank’s Facebook page looks much like any other teenage girl’s: The profile picture shows Anne leaning against a wall; her hair is tucked behind her ears, and she stares off sideways, daydreaming perhaps, a slight smirking smile lifting up the corner of her mouth. The comments on her “wall” are typical, too. “We share…
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News Worry That New Sanctions Will Not Curb Iran’s Nuclear Goals
As another set of sanctions against Iran makes its way through the United Nations — the fourth in as many years — heads of American Jewish organizations and pro-Israel foreign policy analysts are wondering if these or any other measures will really be able to change the behavior of the regime in Tehran. In conversations…
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News Senor Decides Against Running for Senate, Citing Family and Business
The name Dan Senor triggers two associations in the minds of those people who have heard of him at all. For some, he will forever be the spinmeister responsible for selling the early years of the occupation of Iraq as a rosy time — even as bombs exploded daily and sectarian violence ripped apart the…
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The Schmooze Dan Senor: In or Out?
I’ve been finishing up work on a profile for this week’s paper on Dan Senor, who is reportedly getting ready to run for a U.S. Senate seat from New York. Multiple sources have been reporting that the former Bush administration appointee is set to throw his hat in the ring against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the…
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News Conversion Bill Sparks Unusual Push Back From Diaspora Jews
A bill now stalled in the Knesset has once again opened up a rift between Israel and North American Jewry over the question of who is a Jew. The touchy issue, exposing the divide between the pluralistic Jewish Diaspora and Israel, where the Orthodox establishment has authority over virtually all functions of religious life, was…
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News Bill Making Many Converts Ineligible Under ‘Law of Return’ Faces Backlash
A bill in the Knesset that would effectively amend the Law of Return, making many converts to Judaism ineligible, has provoked an unusual backlash from the American Jewish establishment. The legislation, drafted by David Rotem, a Knesset member from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, was originally intended to grant greater authority to municipal rabbis to perform…
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