Articles written by andrew silow carroll
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I'm dreaming of a Chanukah song as good as 'White Christmas'
(JTA)—A Facebook friend is looking for nominations for the Great Chanukah Song. I’m not impressed by the candidates. The classics—“Maoz Tzur (Rock of Ages),” “Oh Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah,” “Sevivon” and “I Have a Little Dreidel” --...
How Valerie Harper's Rhoda embodied a very Jewish type
(JTA)-Theater folk in England are debating a recent revival of the musical "Falsettos," asking whether non-Jews should be playing its Jewish characters. In an open letter, critics of the...
It can't be anti-Semitism if you're not an anti-Semite, right?
(JTA)—Earlier this month—or 16 years ago in Trump years—the White House disinvited a cartoonist named Ben Garrison to a meeting of right-wing media influencers. It had been pointed out that Garrison had once drawn a cartoon that could be interp...
Top Trump officials headline conference focusing on the 'new anti-Semitism'
WASHINGTON (JTA)-U.S. Attorney General William Barr called anti-Semitism a "cancer" at a Department of Justice summit on the topic notable for its focus on anti-Israel activity and for speeches by...
Your guide to Shavuot, now with 50 percent less facts
(JTA)—In terms of popularity, Shavuot is the National Hockey League of Jewish holidays. Passover, the High Holidays and Chanukah are the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, while Shavuot has a much smaller, albeit intense, following. I don’t know...
Don't eat off the seder plate
(JTA)—Every year at Passover, many Jews enjoy inviting non-Jewish guests to the seder, the big family meal during which they recount the tale of the Exodus. Such invitations are extended in a tradition of interfaith cooperation and the conviction...
Omar is right about money in politics-wrong on AIPAC
NEW YORK (JTA)—Rep. Ilhan Omar picked a funny week to tweet about the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Last week, the Senate passed a bill that targets the boycott Israel movement. The 77-23 vote was a nice win for AIPAC,...
The Forward's woes deal the Jewish world a blow to the kishkes
NEW YORK (JTA)—My dad, who grew up in a time and place where his Judaism only marked him as an outsider, never really got my professional fascination with all things Jewish. That all changed when nearly 20 years ago I got a job with the Forward, th...
Rashida Tlaib should at least learn the history behind the dual loyalty canard
(JTA)—A great American Jewish jurist once argued against the idea of a “hyphenated American.” He said there was no place in America for immigrants and their children to hold on to differences based on “race or creed.” “[T]o keep alive...
Amos Oz is dead at 79
(JTA)-Amos Oz, one of Israel's most widely read and best-known writers, has died. He was 79. The cause was cancer, the Israeli media reported. Barely older than the country he chronicled in dozens of...
New York's 'Snowvember' and the kindness of friends and strangers
(JTA)—I don’t mean to get mushy about what for tens of thousands of people was a miserable night—and certainly won’t complain about an ugly snowstorm when dozens have died in California wildfires—but Thursday night’s “Snowvember...
Yes, anti-Semitism is a problem again-no, it is not 1939
By Andrew Silow-Carroll (JTA)—My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men...
Deportation of Nazi ignites a fight between right and left-you're surprised?
(JTA)—In the Trump era, even the deporting of Nazis can’t bring Americans together. A number of Jewish organizations and lawmakers were quick to thank the Trump administration for deporting Jakiw Palij, a former SS guard at the Nazis...
The non-misogynist, non-hypocritical case for Jewish continuity-with music
(JTA)—This is Leonard Bernstein’s centennial summer, and the Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires is staging a series of outdoor performances to celebrate its favorite son. I’m not saying that everyone who goes to Tanglewood is Jewish,...
How I learned to stop worrying and love an Israeli dance company
(JTA)-In the quiet opening of "Naharin's Virus," an hour-long dance piece by the famed Israeli choreographer Ohed Naharin, an onstage narrator tells you what the evening won't be about. You the...
Is 'non-Jew' an insult?
NEW YORK (JTA)—A few months ago I wrote a humor piece titled “Don’t eat off the seder plate, and other tips for non-Jews attending their first seder.” It drew a miffed response from a rabbi friend who often works with interfaith families and...
How Holocaust comparisons are muddying the immigration debate
(JTA)—Let me start by stating what should be obvious: Holocaust comparisons are lazy and more often than not hysterical. They diminish Nazism and genocide by making them synonyms for “very bad things.” You may regard the Trump...
The ADL's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week
(JTA)—Last week, Shabbat couldn’t come soon enough for the Anti-Defamation League. On Wednesday, Starbucks announced that the Jewish group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, seemed to have been demoted from top adviser to a supporting role in the cof...
'Nobody is talking about anti-Semitism.' You're kidding, right?
NEW YORK (JTA)—Slate podcaster Mike Pesca has a theory that whenever President Donald Trump says “everybody” it means “almost nobody,” and when he says “nobody” or “anybody” it means “almost everybody.” Try it: When Trump...
Does the Obama-Farrakhan photo matter? Does anything?
(JTA)—“Nothing matters.” You hear that a lot these days. You hear it when The Wall Street Journal reports that the president’s personal lawyer paid a porn actress $130,000, at the height of the presidential campaign, so she would stay sile...
How do you define anti-Semitism? It's complicated.
NEW YORK (JTA)—JTA doesn’t give out Person of the Year honors, but if we did I’d be tempted to nominate Michael Kadar, the Israeli-American teenager accused of making hundreds of bomb threats against Jewish community centers in early 2017. As...
What we talk about when we talk about Jerusalem
(JTA)—E.B. White famously wrote that there are “roughly three New Yorks”: the one of the native New Yorker, the one of the commuter, and the New York of the “person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something....
NY Times article shows how not to write about neo-Nazis
NEW YORK (JTA)—Did The New York Times just normalize an American neo-Nazi? That’s the charge being flung at The Newspaper of Record over its Saturday profile of Tony Hovater, 29, a “polite,” “low key” Ohio man who is a “committed foot...
Jews make news, but when is it Jewish news?
NEW YORK (JTA)—“Is So-and-So Jewish? How Jewish is she? Find out if she’s Jewish.” I often joke that JTA reporters and anti-Semitic bloggers write the same stories, only with different headlines. We proudly search down Jewish celebrities to...
Federations rally around pluralism-but wish they didn't have to
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—Leaders of North America’s Jewish federation movement kicked off their annual conference here Sunday with a tribute to the 1987 march on Washington that brought out hundreds of thousands of people in support of Soviet Jews. The...
