12/02/2009

My article on Jack Tytell

This article was born in the following way:

After reading numerous articles and opinion pieces (for a particularly egregious example, see Gershom Gorenberg's piece here) that seek to blame the settler/ national-religious/ American Orthodox olim community for creating a monster, and after having heard several anecdotes about Tytell's early years that seemed to run counter to that presumption, I pitched an investigative piece to several well-known media outlets. The Jewish Week expressed interest (others also expressed interest, but either didn't have a mechanism for dealing with freelancers or simply wanted me to give them my sources), and we were on our way.
Clearly, as an American Orthodox oleh, I have an interest in deflecting blame away from my community, even as I readily acknowledge that this community tends to have more loose cannons than others. Nevertheless, the article is the product of dozens of hours of research, interviews, and cross-checking that gives the article a degree of veracity that goes well beyond anything you will see in any other article out there to date (starting with the fact that I spell his name correctly).

Readers are invited to leave comment here, since the JW does not yet have such a forum.

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