Abigail Pogrebin


Abigail Pogrebin is an American writer, journalist, podcast host for Tablet magazine, and former Director of Jewish Outreach for the Michael Bloomberg 2020 presidential campaign.

Family and early life

Pogrebin was born to a Jewish family, the daughter of 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. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University.
Pogrebin is married to David Shapiro and they have two children.

Career

She is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew, published in 2017, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award, and the 2005 book , 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, was published in October 2009. Her 2011 Kindle Single Showstopper documents her time in the cast of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” which was the subject of the 2016 Netflix documentary film Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.
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 Director of Jewish Outreach.

Awards

Pogrebin received the “Impact Award” from the JCC in Manhattan, and the “Community Leader Award” from The Jewish Week in 2017. Her 2017 book My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew was a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award.