Author

Allison Hoffman

Senior Writer Allison Hoffman thinks being a journalist is the best job in the world. As the New York correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, she went to the Oscars, watched Bernard Madoff get handcuffed, and talked to David Lynch about how transcendental meditation can solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She’s also worked for the Associated Press, in its San Diego bureau, and The New Yorker, as a fact-checker. She began her career at the Los Angeles Times, where she contributed to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the 2003 wildfires. Allison earned her undergraduate degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2003.


Recently by Allison Hoffman

Jesus Saves!

This week in ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’
By Allison Hoffman | 11:50 AM Mar 10, 2010

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that is Millionaire Matchmaker. For previous Matchmaker coverage, click here.
Some of us have had a little trouble sleeping lately. Luckily, that wasn’t a problem last night, thanks to a Millionaire Matchmaker episode in which everyone was boring, and no one found ...

An Interfaith Coupling Hits the Skids

Your weekly ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ round-up
By Allison Hoffman | 2:00 PM Mar 3, 2010

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that is Millionaire Matchmaker.
Remember after-school specials? Do they even have them anymore? Who knows! But this week, The Millionaire Matchmaker brought viewers two very important lessons: one, interfaith relationships are tricky! Two: Jews aren’t so much into Jesus!
But before we get ...

Film

Heavy Burden

A new documentary discusses the legacy of a Nazi filmmaker with his heirs
By Allison Hoffman | 7:00 AM Mar 3, 2010

In 1939, Joseph Goebbels commissioned his favorite film director, Veit Harlan, to make an entertainment suitable for wartime. The result was Jew Süss, a historical drama about the Jewish banker Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, who was hanged in 1738 on charges of treason against a German duchy. The choice of subject matter was a retort to ...

One Woman’s Junk is Everyone’s Junk

This week on ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’
By Allison Hoffman | 12:00 PM Feb 24, 2010

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that isMillionaire Matchmaker.
Good news! Bravo reran the season premiere of Millionaire Matchmaker last night—presumably in an effort to get us all to watch the twirling Olympic sprites on parent network NBC—which gives us the chance to fill in a little blank ...

Brooklyn Rabbi Accused of Extortion

Balkany wanted $4M, leniency for hedge fund, Agriprocessors prisoners
By Allison Hoffman | 1:20 PM Feb 19, 2010

Here we go again: yesterday afternoon, federal agents arrested a prominent ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn rabbi, Milton Balkany, after he allegedly tried to extort an unnamed Connecticut hedge fund out of $4 million. Reportedly, Balkany promised the silence of a prison inmate whom federal authorities are questioning as part of an insider-trading investigation. According to a criminal ...

‘Millionaire Matchmaker’: Prince vs. Douchebag

But which is which?
By Allison Hoffman | 1:00 PM Feb 17, 2010

Last night on Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker (which I will be rounding up every week), Patti Stanger gave a woman from Greenville, South Carolina, a dose of home truth from the yenta files: “A good BJ goes a long way.” Bonus tip: “You can actually watch television and do it at the same time.”
Then Patti’s ...

Fellas: Heed the Millionaire Matchmaker

Daughter of professional Jewish yenta dispenses advice on Bravo
By Allison Hoffman | 3:00 PM Feb 12, 2010

Sunday is Valentine’s Day, when the world is divided into two categories: people who are basking in true love and people who are searching for it. If you’re in the first group, well, mazel tov! But if you’re in the second, then Patti Stanger, better known as the Millionaire Matchmaker, has some advice: if you’re ...

Film

Sympathy Pains

A new French film examines a case of philo-Semitism gone terribly awry
By Allison Hoffman | 7:00 AM Jan 22, 2010

Life isn’t easy for Jeanne Fabre, the character at the center of the new French film The Girl on the Train. She’s a flighty airhead stuck in the Parisian suburbs with no job, a boyfriend who’s caught up in some shady business, and an overbearing mother pretty enough to be played by Catherine Deneuve. One ...

U.S.

Among Friends

Leib Tropper spent his way into the rabbinic elite—and, even after his fall, those other rabbis are unwilling to condemn him
By Allison Hoffman | 7:00 AM Jan 19, 2010

In May 2007, Leib Tropper arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, to preside over a grand conclave of prospective converts to Judaism sponsored by his Eternal Jewish Family organization, which offered “Cadillac conversions” to non-Jews as part of an effort to seize control of the conversion process outside of Israel. Buoyed by a $4.8 million infusion of ...

U.S.

Prodigal Son

A look at Guma Aguiar, who with his uncle bankrolled a New York rabbi trying to control the standards for conversion to Judaism
By Allison Hoffman | 7:00 AM Jan 15, 2010

Guma Aguiar, the 32-year-old multimillionaire who helped precipitate the downfall of the ultra-Orthodox rabbi Leib Tropper, was committed by court order to a mental hospital near Tel Aviv yesterday, according to Israeli news reports. Aguiar and his billionaire uncle, Thomas Kaplan, have bankrolled Tropper’s efforts to gain control of the stringently regulated process of conversion ...