Editor’s Choice: The Real-Life ‘Argo’; Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies
Image by Courtesy of the Jewish Journal
The Forward is partnering with other Jewish newspapers to offer our readers a peek at some of the best stories from around the country, as selected by the editors at those papers. We will offer a selection of unedited links with brief introductions from the editors of the papers.
Tony Mendez is no longer a spy for the CIA, but the qualities that helped make him one of the best — his wit and unassuming personality — were on full display Oct. 8 at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, at an event hosted by 30 Years After, a local Iranian-American Jewish group.
Mendez’s heroic rescue of six Americans hiding in the Canadian ambassador’s residence in Iran during the 1979 revolution there made him famous via the Ben Affleck film “Argo,” which won three Academy Awards at the Oscars this year.
At the theater, Mendez and his wife, Jonna Goeser, who was also a CIA agent, took the stage to discuss his career. Before the event, Mendez, 72, and Goeser sat down with the Journal to discuss the art of spy craft, their work with the CIA and how they met on assignment in Thailand. Read the full story here.
From J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California
Erin Hyman, 41, is the wife of a congregational rabbi in San Francisco who was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. She’s just published “The Day my Nipple Fell Off,” an anthology of essays by women under 45 in the Bay Area with the same diagnosis who meet monthly to laugh and cry together. In honor of National Breast Cancer Month. Read the full story here.
U.C. Berkeley — hotbed of anti-Israel activism, stomping grounds for the BDS movement, home of a student Senate-sponsored divestment bill — is opening its first Center for Jewish Studies next week. They still have no undergraduate major and no Jewish studies department, but it’s a start. And the chancellor is giving them $1 million in seed money. Read the full story here.
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