2010 could rightfully be called the year of interconnectedness. Phones are no longer just smart: Some of them seem to have Ivy League degrees. Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg drew more attention than ever before, from The Social Network to his $100 million donation to Newark...
By Symi Rom-Rymer A group of young Hasidic men hang out at the foot of the subway stairs at a station in Brooklyn, New York. Soon, another one joins them and the conversation quickly turns heated. “Do you bite your thumb at us...
By Adam Chandler Before escaping to Israel in 2003, Ephraim lived in a camp with 15,000 other Eritreans. Like a growing number of refugees from Eritrea as well as the Congo, Darfur, and Southern Sudan, Ephraim set off to evade the lethal farrago...
by Lily Hoffman Simon Jewish immigrant communities coming to North America around the turn of the 20th century faced many problems, including poverty, anti-Semitism, and poor living conditions. Most immigrants congregated in densely populated urban neighbourhoods. Today, many immigrant areas are undergoing processes of gentrification, with...
by Daniel Kieval I recently heard a lecture by J. J. Goldberg, senior columnist for The Forward, about the current state of American Judaism and its relationship to Israel. Goldberg spoke about intermarriage and what he termed the "Seinfeld effect," in which the national popularity of...
By Steven Philp Today, President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise when he signed the bill repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” (DADT) the 17-year-old policy barring LGBT citizens from coming out while serving in the armed forces. A handful of Jewish groups have supported the effort for...
By Symi Rom-Rymer In a recent poll, 30% of Israeli Arabs, out of 700 questioned, don’t believe the Holocaust happened. As the Associated Press reported earlier this week, Yad Vashem is trying to change that. The poll’s creator, Sammy Smooha, insists that the high rate...
by Daniel Kieval On Monday night, a few days after thousands marched for human rights in Tel Aviv, Israel deported about 150 refugees back to their country of origin, Sudan. Israel has said that all of the people involved are leaving voluntarily, that it has ensured...
By Steven Philp As governments process the information illicitly made public by Wikileaks, the legal release of conversations recorded during the Nixon administration may seem irrelevant. Many of the recorded conversations released this week by The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum were recorded shortly before the...
By Symi Rom-Rymer The story of Jewish Eastern European immigration is a familiar one. Even if one never had the chance to know their relatives from that generation, all one has to do is watch Fiddler on the Roof to see what they must have experienced:...
