Further Proof that Washington Is Hostile to Jewish Life

Jeffrey Goldberg Apr 22 2009, 11:16 AM ET

No, not the Jane Harman mess (sorry I'm not blogging on it more, but I'm busy with other journalism, and anyway the whole ridiculous AIPAC case makes me ill, because it shouldn't even be a case).

This is why Washington is so un-Jewish. I meet David Ben-Gregory this morning for breakfast at Morty's, a deli in my neighborhood, and I overhear a woman in the booth behind me ask her companion, "What kind of bread is challah?" except that she pronounces the "ch" like she's saying "chapstick" (or "cholent," not to introduce another foreign concept here). I don't think she was Jewish, but it doesn't matter -- in New York, everyone knows how to pronounce challah. I'm sure by now that that 16-year-old Somali pirate in a New York jail cell knows how to pronounce challah.

Sometimes I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I want to move back to my true homeland, which is to say, 92nd St. and West End Avenue.

Jump to comments

Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, Goldberg also writes the magazine's advice column. More

Before joining The Atlantic in 2007, Goldberg was a Middle East correspondent, and the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. Previously, he served as a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He has also written for the Jewish Daily Forward, and was a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

His book Prisoners was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Progressive, Washingtonian magazine, and Playboy. Goldberg rthe recipient of the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism. He is also the winner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists prize for best international investigative journalist; the Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting; and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism. He is also the recipient of 2005's Anti-Defamation League Daniel Pearl Prize.

In 2001, Goldberg was appointed the Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation, and in 2002 he became a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.