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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Opinion Tel Aviv = Titanic or Pompeii or Sodom?
How many clichés is it possible to stuff into one soft feature about Tel Aviv? That was my thought as I was watching Bob Simon’s 60 Minutes segment on the city, which included, in the first three minutes, these good, old chestnuts: “dancing on the Titanic,” “the last days of Pompeii,” and “later-day Sodom.” Were…
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Opinion When National Anthems Matter
We’ve been thinking here a lot about the Israeli national anthem these days, and experimenting with some alternatives. But it’s also useful to be reminded why an anthem means so much to its citizens on a visceral, emotional level. And reminded we were when sent this feelgood of feelgood stories today. A wheel-chair bound Israeli…
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Opinion Hatikvah Redux and Carlebach Responds
When Neshama Carlebach recently recorded for us a slightly different, more inclusive version of Hatikvah (one first suggested by our language columnist, Philologos), the reaction from some was predictably pretty negative. As one commenter succinctly put it, “Israel is not a binational state. It is the national homeland of the Jewish people. I’d rather Israel…
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Opinion Thoughts on Beinart vs. Gordis
I got a chance to go to the Peter Beinart-Daniel Gordis debate last night at Columbia (you can still watch it here) and walked away with a few impressions I thought I’d share. It’s much harder to be mean to someone to their face. The tone of the Beinart book reviews have been strangely personal….
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Opinion Making Room for Another ‘Forward’
It’s not every day that the president chooses a new campaign slogan…and it happens to be the name of your news organization. But that is indeed what happened today, as the video below will attest. We are tickled, of course, by the choice. As are, apparently, the folks in Twitter-land. There are those who think…
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Culture Peter Beinart’s Big Zionist Experiment
The Crisis of Zionism By Peter Beinart Times Books, 304 pages, $26 It’s not often that the publication of a book is preceded by months of debate about its central argument. But that has been the fate of Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism,” for which defenses and denunciations stretch back to 2010. It was…
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Opinion Goodbye Tzipi, Hello Shaul
The results of the elections for leadership of the Kadima party are in and Shaul Mofaz has won a decisive victory over Tzipi Livni. With 100% of the votes counted, Mofaz won 61.5 percent to Livni’s 38.5 percent. Ouch. There was nothing really for Livni to say as she stood in front of her supporters…
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Opinion A New Yorker Cartoon Says It All Too Well
I think I just found an image for the Passover cards I was planning to send to Bill Kristol and Noah Pollak over at the Emergency Committee for Israel.
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