Новости за 28.04.2016

Yesterday, the British Labour party suspended one of its members of parliament, Naz Shah, for advocating that Israel be forcibly relocated, comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, and likening Zionism to al-Qaeda. Today, the party suspended one of its top officials, former London mayor Ken Livingstone, for claiming in live interviews that Hitler was a Zionist, while insisting that “during the 47 years I’ve been in the Labour Party, I’ve never heard anyone say anything anti-Semitic.”

There are times when a journalist has to use his “editor at large” status at the universe’s leading Jewish publication to reel in some free rock-concert tickets. If an editor at large doesn’t score himself some free tix now and again, he begins to wonder just how large he is. And nobody respects an editor at small—not the editor’s wife, not his daughters, not his dogs, least of all himself.

A group of university students in Israel got together to create an apolitical branding campaign and came up with the Hot Dudes and Hummus Instagram account. The goal? To engage non-Jewish and non-Israeli audiences with humorous and attractive content to create a positive association with Israel.

Over the past year, seven states have passed laws withdrawing funds—sometimes contracts, sometimes pension funds, sometimes both—from companies that support boycotts and economic warfare against Israel. Similar laws are winding their way through another seven states. Meanwhile, Illinois, which was one of the first states to pass such a law, has begun implementing it, cataloguing companies that may be affected for bowing to the BDS bigotry.

It’s that time of year again, the 49-day period between the second day of Passover and the day before Shavuot known as Sefirat HaOmer, or counting the Omer, during which we well, count, as commanded. The traditional reason cited in the Talmud is that this is in memory of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died in a plague for not honoring one another properly as befits Torah scholars.

I grew up hearing a little Yiddish, mostly from my father, who used it exclusively to scream at bad drivers. “Schmuck!” he’d cry at a tailgater; “Putz!” he’d scream at a speeder. But other than that, I was not exposed to the secular language of European Jewry growing up in my secular European Jewish household in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Ber Borochov loved Passover. Ordinarily, the Marxist, Zionist, and Yiddishist had no patience for the superstitions of his forefathers, but in the haggadah he found a hero for his time: the Wicked Son. The Passover story’s obdurate loner, Borochov wrote enthusiastically, rejects collective destiny for individual liberation, and is therefore no less than “the foundation for the construction of new Jewish life.”

There are certain youthful memories that transcend the past in a way that makes it appear to have been impossibly perfect. This perfection of the past, especially if it occurs in a foreign language, corrects for immigrant anxieties and also compensates for exilic losses.

This week on Unorthodox: Broad City skewers Birthright into a delicious shawarma.