Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Irene Katz Connelly
By Irene Katz Connelly
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The Schmooze Why didn’t Jared Kushner denounce antisemitism at Capitol riots? Here’s what Sarah Silverman thinks
In the latest episode of her eponymous podcast, comedian Sarah Silverman applied her analytical skills to one of the most inscrutable enigmas of our time: Jared Kushner’s Jewish identity. Her conclusion? “It’s a conundrum,” Silverman said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sarah Silverman (@sarahkatesilverman) During the podcast, one caller asked why…
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Culture To understand André Aciman, try reading Thucydides
If this interview aired on television, André Aciman would have earned himself a perfect score on Room Rater. The novelist, memoirist, essayist and scholar greeted me from the Upper West Side study where he spends most of his time. It’s the kind of home office about which most of us only fantasize: an Oriental-carpeted study…
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Culture Is everything bagel ice cream bad for the Jews?
It was already dark when I laced up my boots and trudged over to Union Square. I trod carefully, and not just because of the icy sidewalks. Hanging from my shoulder in a reusable shopping bag was precious cargo: Four pints of ice cream more artisanal than any I’d ever tasted, each of which cost…
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Culture They remember their last big vaccine — for polio
My father isn’t one to proffer childhood anecdotes, but there is one story he likes to tell: it’s about his polio vaccine. He was in elementary school when the Sabin vaccine (named for Alfred Sabin, the Jewish scientist who developed it) became available for general use. He lived in a small Connecticut town where crowds…
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The Schmooze Drop everything — Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” is coming to Disney+
If you knew me as a child, you knew one thing about me: I was Not Allowed To Watch Disney Princess Movies. My parents, who envisioned me growing up unhindered by gender norms to become a computer-coder-slash-marine-biologist-slash-WWII-historian, instituted a blanket ban on tales of marriage-minded aristocrats. And I embraced it — for several years, it…
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The Schmooze The Bernie meme lives on — in snowman form
If you thought Bernie looked cold on Inauguration Day, wait until you see the snowmen. After a nor’easter swept through large parts of the U.S. on Monday, many people built snowmen shaped like the Vermont senator, whose Burton parka and recycled mittens, aside from their other merits, were the inaugural outfit most easily rendered in…
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The Schmooze Golden Globe nominations foretell big wins for subsequent moviefilms — maybe
The 2021 Golden Globes should be Sacha Baron Cohen’s big day. The British actor, possibly the only person Jewish enough to dress up as an antisemitic stereotype without getting smacked down by the ADL, received two big nods from the awards program. He could snag a Best Supporting Actor award for his role in the…
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Culture Can an American Jew capture life in the West Bank? Debut novelist Rebecca Sacks is still figuring it out
The author Rebecca Sacks is very interested in Janus words. Named for the two-faced Roman god, Janus words contain two opposite meanings: One can use the word “cleave,” for example, to signify cutting something apart or binding two things together. Hebrew is rife with Janus words, Sacks told me over Zoom, rattling off examples with…
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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 The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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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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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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