DRIFTING RIGHT: As the Seattle Kollel marks its sweet 16, some fear that the Orthodox-run educational organization is pulling the city’s Orthodox community to the right, toward ultra-Orthodoxy. Seattle’s Jewish Transcript has the story.

SY HERSH SPEAKS: The New Yorker’s legendary intelligence reporter Seymour Hersh talks with the L.A. Jewish Journal about the Bush administration (“nobody in this government talks to me”), the future of journalism (“we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular”), how he feels about his Jewish identity (“Vague,” but he digs Saul Bellow and Philip Roth), the authors of the controversial book “The Israel Lobby” (they’re “realists,” not antisemites), and the U.S.-Israel relationship (“It is not transparent, and that is not healthy for anybody”).

LEADERS FROM CHELM: In Brooklyn’s Jewish Press, George D. Hanus thinks that Jewish leaders are fools for not focusing on expanding day-school education.

ENDANGERED HISTORY: The building that housed Phoenix’s first Orthodox synagogue is in danger, according to the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.

MICHAEL AND AYELET: San Francisco’s J. sits down with authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. Unfortunately, the author of J.’s cover story on the pair fails to broach the controversy surrounding Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” Critics — some more sober than others — have argued that the book is hostile to Israel. It’s a disappointing omission, given that some have already started casually referring (perhaps unfairly) to Chabon as an anti-Zionist. It would have been good to hear what Chabon has to say on this issue.

Also in J.: An editorial, following up on the previous week’s cover story on the high cost of Jewish life, calls for aiding “overtaxed” Jewish families.

SHIPPING SUKKAHS: North Carolina makers of prefab sukkahs ship their goods around the world — even to Iraq, The New York Jewish Week reports.

Also in The Jewish Week: Carolyn Slutsky surveys the Barnard College tenure brouhaha, and Tamar Snyder discovers that the Upper West Side ain’t what it used to be.

DAVENING DISCHARGE: An 81-year-old former law-enforcement official forgot to leave his gun in the car when he went to Erev Rosh Hashanah services. The gun discharged, with a bullet striking his 42-year-old daughter in the foot and fragments scraping two other congregants. Dallas’s Texas Jewish Post has the story.

COMING TO BRITAIN: The Christian right, a Moishe House and a Hamas official (if he and a pro-Palestinian group have their way) are all headed to the U.K., according to London’s Jewish Chronicle.

Also in the J.C.: Some British kosher poultry purveyors want their products labeled organic, but the food-certification authorities won’t allow it.

It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.

This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions. 

We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.

As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday! 

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a gift and our board will match it.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$129 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT