Mira Fox

Boston

Journalist @jdforward, covering religion and culture from art exhibits to memes. Vice chair @ForwardGuild — solidarity forever. ♎️ /♏️ cusp. she/her.

Articles

Will the next pope be good for the Jews?

2 days ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

It's hard to guess what direction the Catholic church might go after the death of Pope Francis Monday morning. Francis was a liberalizing changemaker in the church, speaking out - sometimes very sharply - about climate change, immigration and LGBTQ+ acceptance. But he was divisive as well, cracking down on the growing "tradcath" movement so strictly that .
Harvard is defying the Trump administration

1 week ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Harvard is making headlines this week for defying a series of sweeping demands from the Trump administration, which responded by suspending $2.2 billion in federal funding. "No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," Harvard's president Alan Garber said in a statement Monday.
Jews thought Trump wanted to fight antisemitism. Why did he cut all of their grants?

1 week ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Christina Crowder was in London, presenting on her work with the Klezmer Institute at a conference, when she got the news that the federal grant funding the trip had been terminated by the Trump administration. That meant that the cost of the flight she'd already taken and the hotel where she was staying would not be reimbursed.
Nazis are praising Hitler's art prowess. But was he really any good?

1 week ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Now that social media is barely moderated, speech is freely flowing, full of slurs and praise for various dictators. For example, as one viral tweet posited, how Adolf Hitler's paintings were actually way better than more lauded Jewish artists such as, in this example, Mark Rothko.
The only good Jews in this hit Christian TV show are the ones who follow Jesus?

2 weeks ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

"What is Passover and how do we celebrate it?" a gentile asks the apostles in The Chosen, the blockbuster TV show about Jesus and his disciples. The question, of course, is asked for the benefit of the show's Christian audience. The fifth season, releasing in three parts theatrically, is focused on the Last Supper; its opening weekend box office receipts put it in the top 10.
I'm scared about antisemitism, but my friends just want to talk about the war

4 weeks ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Dear Bintel,I'm a student in an American public school, and I'm an Ashkenazi Jew. My family perished in the Holocaust, but some of us managed to get to the U.S. So, obviously, I'm pretty sensitive about antisemitism.When my friends talk about the racism or discrimination they face, I'm always by their side 100%. Hate - whether toward Christians or Muslims, African-Americans or Asians - is completely unacceptable.
Would the Talmud have told Jeffrey Goldberg to stay in the Signal chat?

1 month ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

"I'm not supposed to be here," seems to have been Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg's first thought after he was accidentally added to a group chat. That would be a normal response to finding oneself in the midst of, say, strangers planning a dinner party. But the group chat in question, on the encrypted messaging app Signal, was composed of members of the Trump administration planning a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen.
How one man discovered his Jewish identity through sweating

1 month ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Growing up, British playwright Nick Cassenbaum had a hard time connecting with his Judaism. He tried all the traditional things: He went to Jewish summer camp. (But he felt put off by the violence and aggression in the camp's reenactment of the raid on Entebbe.) He cheered for the Tottenham Hotspurs, a soccer team with a very Jewish following. (But he found the game boring.) He tried leaving his Judaism behind and moving to a hip artsy neighborhood.
Why this was a bad week in antisemitism

1 month ago | stljewishlight.org | Mira Fox

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. Over the weekend, Ye, f.k.a. Kanye West, tweeted a Ku Klux Klan uniform and asked whether it matched better with Timberland boots or Jordans. Then he put out a casting call for his newest tour looking for dancers who were comfortable wearing swastikas on stage.
Why this was the worst week in antisemitism

1 month ago | forward.com | Mira Fox

Over the weekend, Ye, f.k.a. Kanye West, tweeted a Ku Klux Klan uniform and asked whether it matched better with Timberland boots or Jordans. Then he put out a casting call for his newest tour looking for dancers who were comfortable wearing swastikas on stage.