Jeffrey Goldberg

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.

Lifting Liberia Out of Chaos

Global
George Boley stood in a clearing deep in a Liberian rain forest and said that he was misunderstood. "I am not a warlord," he told me in late 1994. "I don't know why they use this term to describe me." Behind the self-styled chairman of the wildly misnamed Liberian Peace Council stood 80 soldiers. Most were teen-agers, some were as young as 9. All were armed, many were drunk. "These are professional fighting men," he said, without irony. Mr. Boley, who holds a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Akron, is most assuredly a warlord, as are the other Liberian faction leaders who last week drove their country back into chaos. Read more

Yearning for the Days of Abraham Bayer

Global
In my hands is a document so mind-numbing in its irrelevance that only the apparatchiks of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council could have produced it. It makes me yearn for the days of Abraham Bayer, but more about that in a minute. The 51-page document contains the "Joint Program Plan Drafts for the 1996 Plenum," and is written in a language related to English. I have forced my way through this document in order to understand what NJCRAC does. This is an important question because NJCRAC, under the guidance of its executive vice chairman, Lawrence Rubin, is trying to expand beyond its original mandate -- which no Jew I've spoken to understands exactly -- and become an independent presence on the Jewish political scene, as a counterpart to the mainstream defense agencies, the ADL and the AJCs. Read more

Rev. Robertson Under Fire For Links to 'Jews for Jesus'

Global
NEW YORK -- Overlooked in the controversy surrounding allegations that the evangelist Pat Robertson traffics in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories is another accusation -- that the Rev. Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, is an active supporter of groups that are targeting Jews for conversion to Christianity. These groups, Christian missionary organizations that operate under names including Jews for Jesus and the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, are disliked by mainstream Jewry because they target Jews in particular for conversion to Christianity, evoking memories of past Christian attempts to destroy Judaism through conversion. Read more

New Book Twists 'The Sacred Chain'

Global
NEW YORK -- Racism is a "central doctrine" of traditional Judaism. Jewish Hollywood big shots push vulgar depictions of sex and violence on a country rooted in puritanism. "Fat and brassy" Jewish women are leaving their "designer living rooms" for the upper reaches of publishing. Jewish financiers were responsible for junk bonds. Anti-Semitism driven by class resentment is based in part on empirical truths, not just prejudice. Israelis are "shrewd" but ungenerous. Jewish billionaires regularly "jettison" their Jewish spouses for Gentile trophy wives. Had enough? Read more

Bayer, Freedom Fighter, Dies

Global
NEW YORK -- Abraham Bayer, a tenacious fighter for Jewish freedom, died last week at the age of 62 after a long battle with cancer. Bayer figured prominently in all the great struggles of post-Holocaust world Jewry -- he was a pioneer in the movements to free the Jews of the Soviet Union and Ethiopia and made numerous clandestine trips to both countries. He was among the first to push the American Jewish community to embrace the survivors of the Holocaust, and his advocacy led to the building of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Read more

Second Schneerson Will Boding Ill for Top Aides

Global
NEW YORK -- In what may prove to be a devastating blow to the fortunes of two of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe's closest aides, a second, secret will left by the Rebbe has emerged that names a previously obscure rabbi as the top administrator of the Lubavitch movement. There's just one problem -- for reasons still unclear, the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, never signed the will, a copy of which was obtained by the Forward. Even though the Rebbe didn't sign the 1988 document, any writings believed to come from the Rebbe himself are sure to be taken seriously by his thousands of followers, Crown Heights rabbis say. Read more

Battle Among Lubavitch Erupts Over Rebbe's Will

Global
NEW YORK -- Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the chauffeur-turned-Richelieu of the court of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, appears to be doing a masterful job of outmaneuvering his rivals as he asserts day-to-day control of his late master's empire -- and cracks down on Lubavitch's still-potent Messianic faction. Less than 72 hours after the death of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the streets of Crown Heights were buzzing with talk of the Rebbe's will, which was read Tuesday night to a crowd of thousands of Chasidim at Lubavitcher headquarters. The talk centered not so much on the will itself, but on Rabbi Krinsky, the man designated by the Rebbe as executor of his estate, and on the rabbis who witnessed its 1988 signing -- most importantly, Rabbi Leib Groner, Rabbi Krinsky's rival in the Rebbe's fractured secretariat. Chasidim see the Rebbe's deft hand at work in the will's construction: By having Rabbi Groner as witness, Lubavitcher insiders say, the Rebbe forestalled any challenge to Rabbi Krinsky's bona fides as executor. Read more

Chicago Censors Talmud

Global
If Graydon Snyder only knew that he would be convicted of sexual harassment for teaching the Talmud, he might have kept his mouth shut. But Mr. Snyder, a Bible professor at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, could not have foreseen the dangers that lurk in talmudic discourse, and he now stands at the center of perhaps the most bizarre and troubling political-correctness case yet. In a graduate-level Gospels class two years ago, Mr. Snyder told a story from the Talmud's Baba Kama tractate, a book that covers tort law. Mr. Snyder says the story, which contains one of the Talmud's more famous and challenging hypotheticals, helps his students understand the differences between Jewish and Christian notions of sin. Read more

Rangel Offers Olive Branch to ADL's Foxman

Global
NEW YORK -- Charles Rangel, the Harlem congressman whose fence-sitting in the Rev. Louis Farrakhan imbroglio upset many in the Jewish community -- including some of his backers -- is expressing regret for making statements critical of the Anti-Defamation League. Mr. Rangel had a public falling out with Abraham Foxman, the national director of the ADL, after the ADL set off a national controversy by printing in a New York Times advertisement vitriolic anti-Jewish remarks made by a Nation of Islam spokesman, Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Mr. Rangel publicly excoriated the Jewish group and accused Mr. Foxman of placing the advertisement to scare up donations. Mr. Rangel could not be reached for comment this week; Mr. Foxman said in an interview only that "it takes a big man to accept that he may have made a mistake and then to move forward from there." Read more

Bingo! One Man's Battle to Buy Up Jerusalem

Global
NEW YORK -- Many men have conquered Jerusalem -- Saladin, Allenby, Dayan -- but Irving Moskowitz is the first to defend his campaign in the language of the American civil rights movement -- and the first to finance his conquest in part by operating a bingo parlor. A physician and real estate developer whose charitable foundation owns one of California's largest bingo operations, Dr. Moskowitz is emerging as the linchpin of the increasingly desperate effort by right-wing Jews to buy up property in Arab-dominated East Jerusalem in advance of peace talks. Read more

Secret Will of Rebbe Confounds Followers

Global
NEW YORK -- The Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose followers believe him to be the Messiah, is harboring a most un-Messiah-like secret -- in 1987, sources tell the Forward, the Rebbe made out a will. The critically ill Rebbe wrote the will after winning a nasty court battle against his nephew, who claimed ownership of a library of priceless Lubavitcher books. According to several well-placed sources, the Rebbe, chastened by the experience, reorganized his movement's legal structure and wrote the will to protect his material goods from claims he feared others would make when he died. Read more

When Jews Sweat Labor

Global
BROOKLYN -- In a cold and windowless Williamsburg factory that houses the S&W Knitting Mill, the garment workers -- mostly Hispanic women -- smile as their boss, Issachar Weiss, walks through. "It's a real nice place," one employee tells a visiting reporter. But after work, when the bosses aren't around, workers tell a different story. "We want a free union," one worker says in Spanish. "But they won't let us have one." Read more

Kahanists Plot Weapons Deal

Global
NEW YORK -- A top leader of the radical group Kahane Chai says his organization will redouble its efforts to smuggle weapons to its allies in the territories, now that the Israeli government is cracking down on armed settlers affiliated with the Kahane movement in the wake of the Hebron massacre. Prime Minister Rabin, who already has some extremist leaders on the run, may in fact be running them all the way to America, the Kahane Chai leader, who asked to be referred to only as Mordechai, told the Forward. Many extremist settler leaders are, like Goldstein, American citizens. Read more

Farrakhan's Ally Weighs Owens Race

Global
NEW YORK -- The challenge wasn't long in coming. In the wake of Rep. Major Owens' ringing denunciation of Rev. Louis Farrakhan, a new candidate is eyeing the Brooklyn Democrats' seat -- Eric Adams, who last month condemned Jesse Jackson for denouncing an anti-Semitic speech by one of Rev. Farrakhan's aides and who last year attacked a Puerto Rican candidate for comptroller for marrying a Jewish woman. Read more

Ailing Rebbe Faces Life in Bed -- and CNN

Global
CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn -- Menachem Mendel Schneerson will celebrate the 44th anniversary of his ascension to the throne of the Lubavitch Chasidic kingdom this weekend in a spare room whose blinds are tightly drawn. He will be prostrate in bed, and, barring divine intervention, he will not speak or see. Read more

Jews Divide Over School For Satmars

Global
NEW YORK -- As the Clinton administration heatedly debates whether to weigh in on the Supreme Court battle over Kiryas Joel, sharp differences are emerging among Jewish groups, many of which argue that the nation's highest court should uphold a lower-court ban on the establishment of an all-Chasidic public school for handicapped children. Read more

Way to Go

Global
We're deep in the pit of the flu season--at least in my head we are--so I've been thinking about obituaries. It's a Jewish thing, I suppose, to worry about death on a crisp November morning as the birds make their joyful noise outside my window. Shut up, birds. Despite the traffic jam in my nose, I don't fear that death is imminent--I haven't felt that way since a cement-faced Palestinian security prisoner told me in broken Hebrew that he would really enjoy, if it is no bother, to stick a shwarma knife in my eyes. Read more

Happy Jewfest

Global
Are the holidays over yet? I'm ner vous about asking--any minute, I fear, one of my more educated friends is going to tell me that Simhat Shwarma, the annual celebration of meat and meat by-products, begins at sundown tonight, or that I'm missing a service commemorating Hag HaNudnikim, in which we gather to remember all the people we've dropped as friends over the years. Read more

The Story Never Told

Global
After much anticipation, the world will be happy to know that I have finally completed translating the three previously untranslated sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls assigned to me by the Israeli Antiquities Authority: "The Book of the Herring," "Judaism: For Lovers Only," and "Jesus of Nazareth: What's With This Guy, Anyway?" I have also finished translating several fragments of letters found in the Kumran caves that were sent to the Essenes and the Sadducees by their enemies, the Jets and the Sharks, along with several recipes written by Essene gourmands, including excerpts from their famous 1001 Ways To Cook Sand. Read more

Miami Beach Memoirs

Global
It's 10:30 a.m. on Ocean Drive, the uber-trendy heart of the hip-hop new Miami Beach, and only the ghosts are out under the scalding morning sun. Things shut down for the night just a few hours ago, at a time when most people are getting up for the day. The glittery fashion designers, actors, models and more models who jam the South Beach district by night are sleeping off their liquor in the pastel-colored hotels that, newly renovated, glisten in the Florida sun. Read more

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Jeffrey Goldberg
from the Magazine

Problem: My Neighbor Is Having Shockingly Loud Sex All the Time

Try blasting recordings of chimpanzees. Our advice columnist to the rescue.

There's a War Criminal at My Gym

Our advice columnist to the rescue