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 Hold the Presses: Newspapers Are Competing for Orthodox Readers
The newspaper business has been in a tailspin for a long time now — everywhere, it seems, except among Orthodox Jews. The staying power of the Orthodox press can, of course, be reduced to one simple reason: the Sabbath. “On Shabbes there is no Internet, no BlackBerry, no electronics, and people have time,” said Yitzchok…
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News Report Shows Israel Studies Flowering on Campus
American college students who want to study the poetry of Yehuda Amichai or the films of Amos Gitai are in luck. The number of Israel studies courses being offered on American college campuses has ballooned over the past few years, according to a new study commissioned by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, a…
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News Brandeis Looking For Next Leader While Facing Budget Challenge
The search for a successor to Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis University, is under way, but moving at a pace too slow for some. At the same time, Reinharz is fending off accusations stemming from the serious financial challenges now facing the school. Reinharz announced his resignation last September, promising that he would stay until…
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News Obsession With Yemeni Jews Inspires a Mideast Odyssey by College Grads
Josh Berer made a decision when he arrived in Yemen: He would tell people he was Christian. He had taken this precaution before — when he lived briefly in Jordan — but now, in the heart of the Arab world, where antisemitic rants blared at him constantly from loudspeakers and “Jew” was synonymous with evil,…
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News New Square Hasidim in Trouble, Again: Feds Shut Slaughterhouse
The shuttering of a New York kosher poultry slaughterhouse for serious sanitary violations is once again putting the spotlight on a Hasidic sect, some of whose members have repeatedly defied the law. A federal judge imposed a temporary restraining order and injunction December 29 against further slaughtering and processing at the plant, which serves the…
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News JMatch Dating Drama Comes To Life on Tube
When you think about it, the brave new world of online Jewish dating is the perfect setting for a reality show. Between the anxious chatter of the first meeting to the nervous wait for a post-date phone call (which, if it comes, only does after the requisite three-day delay), the lives of single Jews seem…
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News Local Holocaust Museums Grow Amid Worries About Future
The numbers speak for themselves: There are now 16 Holocaust museums in the United States, from Albuquerque, N.M., to Houston, to Richmond, Va. And these are just the biggest of nearly 150 Holocaust centers all over the country. The proliferation of museums detailing the story of what happened to European Jewry during World War II…
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Breaking News Peace Reigns In Meeting of Establishment Honcho and Orthodox Anarchist
An event billed by some as a ?celebrity death match? between a representative of the Jewish establishment and a self-proclaimed Orthodox anarchist turned instead into a chummy all-male evening laced with schnapps. The program, a ?dialogue? between John Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of UJA-Federation of New York and Daniel Sieradski, who started the…
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