Family and early life
Pogrebin was born in New York to a Jewish family, a daughter of an author and feminist activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the co-founder of Ms. magazine, and Bert Pogrebin, a management-side labor lawyer, and is the identical twin sister of New York Times journalist Robin Pogrebin. At 16, she was the youngest member of the original Broadway cast of Hal Prince’s production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along , which closed in November 1981 after 44 previews and only 16 performances. [3] She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. [4] [5]
Pogrebin married David Shapiro in 1993, and they have two children. [6] [7]
Pogrebin's sister-in-law, Alina Arenal (married to brother David Pogrebin in 1998) also had a career at a Times-related entity, the New York Times Foundation. [8]
Career
After graduating from Yale in 1987, Pogrebin became a broadcast producer for Mike Wallace, Charlie Rose and associate producer for Ed Bradley at 60 Minutes and Bill Moyers at PBS and before that for The MacNeil/Lehrer Report and Fred W. Friendly. [6] [9] Afterwards she turned to freelance journalism and published articles in magazines and newspapers like Newsweek , New York Magazine, The Forward, Tablet , and The Daily Beast. [10] [11] [12]
She has moderated conversations for The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan (JCC), the Streicker Center, UJA Federation, and the Shalom Hartman Institute. [4]
Pogrebin is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew, published in 2017, [13] [14] which was a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award, and the 2005 book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish , [15] for which she interviewed 62 famous American Jews — from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Steven Spielberg — about their religious identity. Her second book, One and the Same: My Life As an Identical Twin and What I’ve Learned About Everyone’s Struggle to Be Singular, [16] was published in October 2009. Her 2011 book Showstopper documents her time in the cast of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” and Pogrebin is featured in the 2016 Netflix documentary film by director Lonny Price, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. [17]
She served as the president of New York's Central Synagogue from 2015-2018, and in November 2019 she joined former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign as the Director of Jewish Outreach. [18] [19]
Tablet Magazine’s podcast, “Parsha in Progress” features a regular Torah discussion with Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer, who is the president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. [20] Pogrebin moderated and wrote the Tablet Magazine series, “The Minyan,” which zeroes in on one aspect of Jewish life through the voices of those who live it. She has written about antisemitism in The Atlantic and the Jewish new year in Vogue.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborations with Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics were tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg is an American journalist and editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. During his nine years at The Atlantic prior to becoming editor, Goldberg became known for his coverage of foreign affairs. Goldberg became moderator of the PBS program Washington Week in August 2023, while continuing as The Atlantic's editor.
Merrily We Roll Along is a 1981 American musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an American author, journalist, lecturer, and social activist. She is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, the author of twelve books, and was an editorial consultant for the TV special Free to Be... You and Me for which she earned an Emmy.
Patricia Biow Broderick was an American playwright and painter. She was the wife of actor James Broderick and the mother of actor Matthew Broderick.
Dara Horn is an American novelist, essayist, and professor of literature. She has written five novels and in 2021, released a nonfiction essay collection titled People Love Dead Jews, which was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002, the National Jewish Book Award in 2003, 2006, and 2021, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize in 2007.
Robin Pogrebin has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1995, where she covers cultural institutions, the art world, architecture, and other subjects.
Tablet is a conservative online magazine focused on Jewish news and culture. The magazine was founded in 2009 and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Its editor-in-chief is Alana Newhouse.
Alan P. Solow, founder of Grover Strategies LLC, is a public affairs consultant, political advisor, not-for-profit activist and former lawyer. He is a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and was a national co-chair of the successful 2012 Obama-Biden re-election campaign.
Danya Ruttenberg is an American rabbi, editor, and author. She has been called "the Twitter rabbi" for her social media presence. She lives in Chicago.
Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish (2005) is a book by journalist and former 60 Minutes producer Abigail Pogrebin. The 400-page book was published by Random House.
Marisa Scheinfeld is an American artist, photographer and educator currently living in New York. Marisa's work is highly motivated by her interest in ruins and the histories embedded within them. Her projects have taken her from the United States to Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and India. Her photographic projects and books are among the collections of Yeshiva University Museum, Lynn Kroll, The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, CA, The La Jolla Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life The Edmund and Nancy K. Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA and The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation in New York, NY.
Shulem Deen is an American author, essayist, former Skver Hasid, and critic of Hasidic Judaism. He is the author of the memoir All Who Go Do Not Return (2015), and is a regular columnist at The Forward. He is also the founding editor of Unpious, a journal for voices critical of Hasidic lifestyle and beliefs.
Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened is a 2016 theatrical documentary film directed by Lonny Price and produced by Bruce David Klein with Price, Kitt Lavoie and Ted Schillinger. Scott Rudin and Eli Bush serve as executive producers. The film tells the story of the making of the original Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along. The film is a production of Atlas Media Corp. in association with Allright Productions.
Avram Mlotek is an American rabbi, social activist, cantor, writer, actor and slam poet. Mlotek is the co-founder of Base, a pluralistic home-centered outreach program, established in nine cities worldwide, predominantly for Jewish young adults.
Yehuda Kurtzer is President of the Shalom Hartman Institute. He has written and lectured widely on Jewish history, Jewish memory, leadership in American Jewish life, and the relationship between American Jews, Israel and Zionism. In 2012, he was named one of the "36 under 36 young educators, thinkers, social justice activists, philanthropists and artists reinventing Jewish life" by The Jewish Week.
Shais Rishon, also known by the pen name MaNishtana, is an African-American Orthodox rabbi, activist, and writer. He has written for Tablet, Kveller, The Forward, Jewcy, and Hevria, as well as writing a semi-autobiographical novel under his pen name. In 2014, he was included in The Jewish Week's "36 Under 36", an annual list of influential Jews under age 36.
Unorthodox is a podcast that discusses news, culture, and politics related to Judaism.
