Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.
Helen Chernikoff
By Helen Chernikoff
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Life Can a Woman Be a Mensch?
What does the word “mensch” really mean? Of course, everyone knows its connotations of decency, kindness and humility; these are not gendered qualities. Yet in common usage, the word is often applied more to men than to women: There’s the children’s toy, a male doll named “Moshe” wearing a prayer shawl, the Mensch on a…
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News Meet the Jewish ‘Paleoconservative’ Who Coined The Term ‘Alternative Right’
The term “alt-right” is a hipper-sounding version of the original notion of the “alternative right,” which Paul Gottfried, a Jewish academic, coined in 2008. Today his notion — of a new home for conservatives who saw themselves as too extreme for the mainstream movement — has become the “alt-right,” whose adherents include a range of…
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News Is the ‘Alt-Right’ Reaching Out to Jews — and Why?
The term “alt-right” is everywhere right now. Donald Trump has been tied to it. Hillary Clinton made a speech about it. On August 25, when Clinton gave her speech, the phrase “altrightmeans” trended on Twitter all day, precisely because most people didn’t know how to complete that sentence. Turns out, the “alt-right” is a loose…
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Breaking News Anti-Semitic Rat Graffiti Returns to DC Streets for Third Time in One Week
Street art became anti-Semitic graffiti in Washington, D.C. for the third time in one week after vandals wrote “Jew” on images of rats meant to evoke the Chinese Zodiac. On Monday morning, Twitter user Michael Villafranca noticed that a graffiti of a Chinese Zodiac rat with the word “Jew” on it had reappeared on the…
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News In D.C., Chinese Zodiac Symbol Becomes Jew Rat Graffiti
Street art became anti-Semitic graffiti in Washington, D.C. after vandals wrote “Jew” on images of rats meant to evoke the Chinese Zodiac. Passerby first noticed the graffiti at the intersection at 7th and H Streets in the heart of D.C.’s Chinatown on Aug. 3, said Eli Schechner, a Princeton University junior who’s doing an internship…
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News Trump Advisor: Republican Presidential Nominee Will Not Hold a Grudge Against AIPAC
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will not hold a grudge against AIPAC after the pro-Israel lobby apologized to President Barack Obama after Trump’s speech during its annual conference in March. In a joint interview to the Jewish Link and JNS.org, Greenblatt criticized AIPAC for its decision, but when asked directly by an interviewer if Trump…
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Life New PAC Has Message for Mediocre White Men — Don’t Run for Office
“People ask me sometimes, ‘When do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is when there are nine,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said. Yup, nine. Just all of them, that will be enough, thanks. That’s the chutzpah that makes RBG the…
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News Despite Withdrawal of Hillel Support, Jewish Students Hold Nakba Commemoration Event
Jewish students at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design decided to hold a May 11 event at their Hillel building focused on the Palestinian experience of Israeli independence in defiance of what they called “pressure” from Hillel International, according to two students with direct knowledge of the event who spoke anonymously to protect…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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