Tag Archives: American Jews

Jew of the Week: Barbara Walters

In Memory of an Iconic Journalist

Barbara Jill Walters (1929-2022) was born in Boston to Jewish parents who were the children of immigrants from Russia and Poland (the original family last name was Waremwasser). Her father worked in show business and moved the family around many times, having also made and lost his fortune several times. After earning her BA in English, Walters worked for a small NBC-affiliate in New York. Her first production was a 15-minute kids show. In 1955, she moved to CBS to work as a writer for The Morning Show. Six years later, she switched to NBC’s The Today Show. Eventually, she went from writer to “Today Girl”, meaning a female journalist who relayed only local news and weather, since in those days it was thought a woman could not deliver “serious news”. Walters did eventually break through to be taken as a serious reporter. By 1971, she had her own show called Not for Women Only. Three years later, she became the first-ever female co-host of a national news program. Hugely popular, Walters was soon able to sign a whopping $5-million deal with ABC, making her the first American female news anchor and the highest paid news anchor of all time (male or female). In 1979, she joined 20/20, and turned it into one of America’s most-watched shows. Walters was famous for her interviews of presidents and global leaders. In 1977 she interviewed both Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. She would go on to interview the likes of Yeltsin and Putin, Castro and Gaddafi, Thatcher and Indira Gandhi. Her interview of Monica Lewinsky in 1999 is still the most-watched news program of all time, with 74 million viewers having tuned in. Walters was co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of The View, which won an Emmy for Best Talk Show in 2003. She also won an Emmy for Best Talk Show Host. Walters retired from 20/20 in 2004, and from The View in 2014, and her final official interview was with Donald Trump the following year. She wrote the bestselling book How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything, as well as a popular memoir. Walters received many honours, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, induction into the TV Hall of Fame, a Disney Legends award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Sadly, she passed away last week.

Falling in Love with Judaism in Cameroon

In a Monastery, a Menorah Brings a Jew Back Home

Words of the Week

Only he who has been a force for human goodness, and abides in hearts and souls made better by his presence during his pilgrimage on earth, can be said to have lived, only such a one is heir to immortality.
– Rabbi Dr. J.H. Hertz

Jew of the Week: Milton Friedman

The Great Liberator

Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish immigrants from what is today Ukraine (then part of Hungary). He graduated high school at just 15 and earned a big scholarship to Rutgers University. Initially wishing to be a mathematician, the Great Depression inspired Friedman to become an economist instead. After post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and a fellowship at Columbia University, Friedman headed to Washington to work as an economist for the government. To help pay for World War II, it was Friedman who introduced the payroll withholding tax system (“pay-as-you-earn”), where income taxes are deducted automatically from an employee’s paycheck. (Friedman later regretted it very much and said he wished it hadn’t been necessary.) He also spent much of the war working on weapons design and military statistics. He finally earned his Ph.D from Columbia after the war, following which he took a professorship at the University of Chicago, where he taught for the next 30 years. He wrote a popular weekly column for Newsweek, for which he won a prestigious award. His 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom was an international bestseller and made Friedman world-famous, while his A Monetary History of the United States became the standard textbook for understanding the Great Depression and the effects of monetary policy. Friedman argued passionately for a free-market economy and for the government to stay out of business. He proposed such important concepts as the permanent income hypothesis, the quantity theory of money, floating exchange rates, sequential sampling, and the natural rate of unemployment. He also argued for abolishing the Federal Reserve, whom he blamed for many economic ills. He was opposed to minimum wages and foresaw that they would actually lead to increases in unemployment. He is also credited with bringing an end to America’s military draft, transitioning the US military into an all-volunteer paid army. He believed conscription was unethical and prevented young men from choosing their own life path. Friedman later said abolishing the draft was his greatest and proudest accomplishment. Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. After retiring from the University of Chicago the following year, he continued to do research in San Francisco, and also worked on a popular ten-part TV show called Free to Choose (the companion text of which was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1980). Friedman was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, and was called the “guru” of the Reagan administration. In 1988, he won a National Medal of Science and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Friedman stayed busy until his final days, and his last article for The Wall Street Journal was published a day after his death! He has been called “the Great Liberator” and has been compared to Adam Smith. The Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty is named after him. He is widely considered one of history’s most significant economists. Today was his yahrzeit.

The End of World War I and the Beginning of the Jewish State

Words of the Week

A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty.
– Milton Friedman

Jew of the Week: Ben Shapiro

America’s Top Political Pundit

Ben Shapiro (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (b. 1984) was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family of Russian and Lithuanian heritage. His family became Orthodox when he was 9 years old, and Shapiro has been a Torah-observant Jew ever since. He skipped two grades and graduated from high school at 16, and from UCLA at 20 with a degree in political science. That same year, he published his first book, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth. By this point, his political column was nationally syndicated, and Shapiro still has the distinction of being the youngest person in American history to have a nationally syndicated column. Shapiro then went to law school at Harvard, after which he worked as a lawyer for several years. In 2012, he became the editor of Breitbart News, though he resigned in 2016 over disagreements over Breitbart’s direction. He subsequently became the number one target of anti-Semitism in America, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Since then, he has been the editor of The Daily Wire, which is currently the top news page on Facebook (and has more engagement than The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News and CNN combined!) He is also the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, now the second most popular podcast in the US (ninth-most in the whole world!) and carried by over 200 radio stations across the country. Shapiro is famous for his many stimulating speaking engagements on campuses, and for his quick wit and debate skills. Altogether, Shapiro has written 11 books thus far and is among today’s leading conservative commentators. He has sometimes been confused with the alt-right, who he actually strongly opposes, and has been a frequent target of. Shapiro is an avid violinist (see a 12-year-old Shapiro play “Schindler’s List” here). Last week, he was in Israel for a CPAC conference and several thousand people crammed into an auditorium to hear him speak. He also made sure to visit the Temple Mount and pray there.

7 Reasons Why Ben Shapiro is So Hard to Debate

Ben Shapiro: Why Kids Can’t Choose Their Own Gender

Investment Advice from the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Words of the Week

Before the thinkers of Athens came along, the Torah arrived at the notion of equality before the law. All public institutions in the Torah – the judiciary, the priesthood, the monarchy, the institution of prophecy – are subordinated to the law. Moreover, the law is a public text whose dictates are meant to be widely known, thus making abuse of power more obvious and safeguarding the common citizenry… the most important body of authority in the polity envisioned by the Torah is none other than the people themselves.
– Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman (Ani Maamin, pg. 174)