Новости за 10.06.2016

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to feel exasperated by our politicians: Sherrod Brown, a senator from Ohio and one of the top Democrats rumored to be in consideration for the role of Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, is blocking a bipartisan effort in Congress to combat anti-Israeli boycotts on the state level.

Through July 31, City Lore Gallery on East First Street is a veritable Easter Parade.

“You can wear religious clothing in your home; why must you force your values on others by dressing that way in public?” So inquired a Frenchman, in response to my question of how a Muslim woman could possibly be asked to remove her scarf to enter a courthouse or a high school.

You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.

Here’s an experiment. Tell a large group of people who depend on you for authoritative information and societal analysis that someone is fascism incarnate for months on end. Cast this person as a singular threat to democracy who, if he hasn’t already, will do everything in his power to subvert the very freedoms that their lives are based upon. After whipping the group into a frenzy, such that they react to the physical presence of this person as an occasion to riot, condemn them for acting on what you’ve told them. Читать дальше...

Victor Hugo tells this story, too.
In his account, the man may have his years,
But grandeur is a man’s attractive strength.
For women gaze at beautiful young boys,

“If I were Rothschild, I’d be even richer than Rothschild,” said the melamed of Chelm, in a well-known Jewish joke.

My first encounter with the work of S.Y. Agnon, the only Hebrew-language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was at age 16, in Hebrew. I was an American public-school kid studying Hebrew in a JCC adult ed. class, in which I was the only student who wasn’t retired. Hebrew intimidated me then; no matter how many verbs I mastered, there was an invisible wall of Israeliness between me and the articles about political parties and terrorist attacks that we haltingly translated from the newspaper Ma’ariv. Читать дальше...

I have heard that Rothschild once went on a journey. Along the way the wheels of his carriage broke; repairmen were called, but before the work was done the Sabbath arrived.