Новости за 07.08.2015

Last week an Orthodox Jewish man stabbed six revelers at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, resulting in the death of teenager Shira Banki. A day after the stabbing, two Israeli extremists firebombed a Palestinian home, resulting in the death of a baby boy. On Thursday evening, in response to these horrifying events, hundreds of mourners came together show their support at a ceremony at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan’s West Village.

Chuck Schumer is a politician—a skilled and successful one. Which means that today’s announcement, following months of wildly uncharacteristic silence, that the senior senator from New York is opposing the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran is first and foremost a reflection of his calculations as to where his own self-interest lies. It does not take an electoral genius to imagine why a senator from New York State might oppose a deal that keeps many Jewish voters—and an even higher percentage of non-Jewish voters—up at night. Читать дальше...

I am not, as one may say, a camp person. I mean, obviously I went to summer camp—I was raised as a middle-class Jew in late 20th century America (and in that vein, you might as well question whether or not I breathe air or eat food, too). But I never exactly lived it as it seemed like so many of my bunkmates did.

Svetlana Boym—an inspiring professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University​, an engaging and original thinker, a writer and artist, a fellow immigrant, a member of my dissertation committee, a kind person, one of the liveliest human beings I’ve met—died earlier this week, on August 5, in Boston. I write these words thinking of her and also about friends in the small circle of people around her in her final months—people who took care of her, engaged her in conversation, read her latest work, knew that she was dying. Читать дальше...

Last night, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the expected next Democratic Senate leader, announced his opposition to the recently-struck Iran deal. The move came as a major blow to persistent efforts by President Obama to cast the upcoming congressional vote on the deal as a partisan issue.

Recently, the popular Disney actress and singer Zendaya sat down with Nylon magazine and brought up the subject of cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation. She cautioned: “You have to be very careful. Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them. In order to appreciate something, you have to know about it and understand it.”

Oran Bendelstein, 33, has always loved to surf. As a kid growing up in Atlantic Beach, New York, he preferred getting up on his board to studying, or even playing video games. It’s a passion he carried into adulthood, with the creation of ReSurf, a nonprofit that refurbishes used, donated surfboards and ships them to underprivileged youth in Israel, Mexico, Long Island, and San Diego. So far, he—or, rather, his boards—have reached more than 500 teenagers. That number will rise yet again this month... Читать дальше...

When Tel Aviv’s famed Café Tamar announced in April that it was going to close, via the novelist Dudu Busi’s Facebook page, the seats were full the next day, as they almost always are on Friday afternoons; only now, the customers, most of them regulars, were filmed by TV crews: Participants were directed to talk as they normally would, as if such a thing were possible under the circumstances, then stopped and filmed from a different position, perhaps a more naturalistic angle.