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This is an Archival Site
There is now a new Rogovoy Report home
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Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21
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Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
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Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
Doug Trumbull to be Feted by BIFF
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Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend
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Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....
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Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak
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[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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Review by Seth Rogovoy
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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Eagle steps up against swastika attack
4.18.06
Today, a full eight days after the incident occurred, the anti-Semitic vandalizing of the Berkshires' only Jewish day school (in Pittsfield, Mass.) finally made it to the front page of the Berkshire Eagle, the local newspaper of record. The incident also caught the attention finally of the Eagle's editorial page, which responded to the news with an unusually tough, candid appraisal of the state of bigotry that exists in the Berkshires and the world at large.
Apparently bowing to pressure, the incident, which was only first reported in the Eagle yesterday in a brief item buried on the back page of the paper's second section, leapt to today's front page, below the fold, a day after the paper's news and editorial offices were bombarded with howls of protest in the form of letters and phone calls and blogposts complaining about the paper's lack of serious attention paid to this threatening incident, which happened on the eve of the Jewish festival of Passover and just a few days before Easter weekend -- for anti-Semites, the traditional time to launch attacks against Jews.
Indeed, while the news story on the front page, weakly titled "Hate Symbol Discussed," once again omitting the word "Nazi" even though a swastika defaced the school's playground, not quoting any city officials or religious leaders, and mostly just reiterating the contents of a letter drafted by day-school leaders responding to the incident and quoting those same school leaders, the editorial, "A Swastika at Sinai Academy ," on the other hand, used the language of the preacher's pulpit to excoriate the offenders, put the incident in its proper historical context (e.g., "The swastika is the symbol of the Nazis, who exterminated an estimated 6 million Jews," "Easter...has inspired acts of often brutal anti-Semitism down through the ages. Pittsfield has added one more to the list..."), and subtly hinted that the communal response to the incident has been tepid at best ("We know that Pittsfield's church leaders and city officials...will express their support for the Jewish community...").
Will they indeed? To quote Brian Eno/David Byrne, "America is waiting...."
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