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 IDF Turns To Human Rights Watch for Help
As human rights organizations continue to be vilified by an Israeli government still smarting from the effects of the Goldstone Report, the Forward has learned that the Israeli military has been in conversation and even actively working with Human Rights Watch, the international organization that has been often — and loudly — denounced by the…
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Life From Russia, With No Love
Well, there go my plans of drinking vodka in St. Petersburg this month with Natan Sharansky and the rest of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors…The quasi-governmental body in charge of Jewish immigration to Israel announced yesterday that its plans to hold one of its board meetings in the canal-lined city (Peter the Great’s window…
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News Israel, Hamas Respond Differently to Goldstone
Meeting a deadline of February 5 set by the United Nations, Israel and Hamas have offered their responses to what has become known as the Goldstone Report, the controversial 547-page investigation of the Gaza incursion in 2008-09 that accused both combatants of war crimes. The two sides, not surprisingly, emerged with vastly different interpretations of…
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News Israel Moves To Shut Down Demonstrations Against Security Barrier
Palestinian activist Mohammed Khatib, who has been leading weekly protests against the path of Israel’s security barrier through his home village, Bil’in, was arrested last night in a pre-dawn raid. The arrest — the latest in a series of late night army raids in Bil’in in which protest activists were arrested — was reported by…
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Life When Lieberman Taught Palin About Rav Soloveitchik
Much of the juiciest material contained in “Game Change”, the new dishy chronicle of the 2008 election by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, has already made it’s way into the media. Elizabeth Edwards was prone to angry outbursts, Sarah Palin was an ignoramus, and Bill Clinton was … well, Bill Clinton, the lovable loudmouthed and…
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The Schmooze J.D. Salinger, Reclusive Author, Rabbi’s Grandson, Is Dead at 91
J.D. Salinger, a grandson of a rabbi and an author whose fiction has held the deep affection of generations of readers, died January 27 at age 91. So extreme was the reclusion of the author, who wrote such books as “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Franny and Zooey,” that there will be no funeral…
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News Obey Civil Law, Say New Orthodox Kosher Rules
The crimes that brought down the Agriprocessors kosher meat company and could put its owner, Sholom Rubashkin, in jail for life, still reverberate. An echo was heard in the Rabbinical Council of America’s January 21 announcement establishing a set of ethical guidelines for how agencies supervising kosher food production should behave beyond ensuring that the…
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Life Aboard Plane, Tefillin Causes ‘Security Situation’
It might be time for some religious training for the brave stewards and stewardesses that fly the lately not-so-friendly skies. In what was dubbed by police a “security situation,” a Chautauqua Airlines flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Louisville, Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia this morning when an observant seventeen-year-old from White Planes tried…
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