Zackary Sholem Berger is a frequent contributor to the Forward and the Yiddish Forward. He lives in Baltimore.
Zackary Sholem Berger
By Zackary Sholem Berger
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News Unanswered Quandaries Of Jewish Bioethics
Jeremy is a 14-year-old in dire need of a liver transplant, which in his case stands a good chance of success, but his parents are reluctant to give their consent; they are the ones who would bear the burden of the child’s long-term care, not the surgeon or hospital. The surgeon, not understanding the parents’…
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Israel News New Play About Crown Heights Blames Jews for Deadly Riots
A play blaming Jews for the Crown Heights riots of 1991 has opened at a new theater on West 42nd Street that was built in part with a tax-exempt, multimillion-dollar city bond. The play, called “Crown Heights,” portrays the murder of chasidic scholar Yankel Rosenbaum as a tragic accident in a fight in which Jews…
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News A Revived Interest in Death
Why are American Jews interested in washing dead bodies? For many, the work of the chevra kadisha, or Jewish burial society, takes some getting used to: A corpse is lovingly washed and tended to according to local custom and ancient ritual, dressed in linen shrouds and laid in the plainest of coffins. Rabbi Joel Soffin,…
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Israel News Frum Fiction: Observant Gumshoes Master ABCs of Murder
What makes a good mystery? Sex and death — but shul attendance and Sabbath observance don’t hurt either. That’s right: Orthodox Judaism has entered the world of detective fiction. There have been Jewish mysteries before, of course. Take Harry Kemelman’s haymish, if low-intensity, series of mystery novels featuring the Conservative Rabbi David Small, a 35-year…
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News Bialik’s Poetic Plea to the Joint: Save Our Schools
In 1931, the Hebrew-language schools of the Lithuanian Jewish community, known as the Tarbut schools, applied (not for the first time) for increased support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York. Tarbut’s executive committee, seeking to impress upon the Joint the gravity of the situation, turned not to a distinguished philanthropist or…
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News WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE AT 100
The Williamsburg Bridge may not have inspired the adoration that certain other bridges have — no Simon and Garfunkel songs or Hart Crane paeans — but the Brooklyn Arts Council is making sure that its centennial is celebrated in style, with a truck-sized bridge-topped cake, exhibits and discussions. Serenades to the bridge include an Italian…
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News Democracy in Israel: How Jewish Can the State Be?
How Jewish can a democratic state be? That was the question at the heart of political philosopher Michael Walzer’s recent lecture, “The Jewish State and the Democratic Tradition.” Walzer, editor in chief of Dissent magazine and a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, delivered the keynote address earlier this month at a…
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News Happy Birthday, Dear Dictionary
A student of Yiddish in Tokyo, a Yiddish songwriter in Greenwich Village and a chasidic newspaper writer in Boro Park all have one book in common — Uriel Weinreich’s “Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary,” which celebrates its 35th birthday this month. Its story starts with a question: What makes a minority language — a language that’s…
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