Новости за 17.08.2016

It could soon be a criminal offense in Poland to use the term “Polish death camps,” if a bill approved on Tuesday by the Polish government is passed by its Parliament. Under the proposal, it would be punishable by up to three years in prison to refer to such camps as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibór, and Treblinka as “Polish” rather than “Nazi” camps. “It wasn’t our mothers, nor our fathers, who are responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust, which were committed by German and Nazi criminals on occupied Polish territory,” said Zbigniew Ziobro... Читать дальше...

A Mossad agent meets clandestinely with contacts from Saudi Arabia, as the former archfoes quietly strengthen ties due to shared concerns over the rise of Middle East extremism. Outside actors infiltrate Gaza and seek to attack the Jewish state, challenging the ruling Hamas terrorist organization for supremacy.

I’ve said this before on no less a breaking news site than my own Facebook page, but I am genuinely convinced, to the bottom of my soul, that Wendi Deng is the most terrifying woman on the planet.

According to a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the D.C. rabbi who pleaded guilty last year to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism— relating to the surreptitious filming of more than 150 women inside a mikveh (ritual bath) adjacent to Georgetown’s Kesher Israel synagogue—is being sued by nine of his victims. Rabbi Barry Freundel and the Rabbinical Council of American are cited in the lawsuit, along with the Beit Din of America, reported The Washington Post.

Tu B’Av, or Jewish Valentine’s Day, is a festival of love that “dates back to ancient Israel when the daughters of Jerusalem danced in the vineyards looking for a mate,” according to the Mishnah (Taanit 4:8). In Israel, Tu B’Av is a busy day, filled with summer weddings, musical performances, and romantic escapes. If you’re in America, however, the day may go unnoticed unless you’re checking the calendar for Jewish singles events.

Thanks largely to Donald Trump, 2016 is turning out to be a year of atavisms. Right now, two of the major issues in the presidential election are suspicion of Russians, a throwback to the Cold War; and fear of immigrants, a throwback to the restrictionist 1920s. Ugly as these obsessions are, however, they make Still Here, the new novel by Lara Vapnyar, a peculiarly timely book. It is not that Vapnyar has anything overt to say about politics. On the contrary, this is a determinedly private story... Читать дальше...

Every morning this summer, when I drop my 6-year-old son off at Jewish day camp, he immediately makes a beeline for the orange-walled pit where the kids play a variant of dodgeball called ga-ga. A counselor drops the ball, it bounces three times (“ga! ga! ga!”), and then the game begins. Players hit the ball at each other using their hands, and if you’re hit below the waist with the ball, you’re out. The game continues until there’s a winner, and then starts over again.

A search, expected to last a few days, is underway in southwest Poland for a Nazi “gold train” of legend. The train—which has never been proven to exist—could potentially hold up to 300 tons of gold, reported a Polish news source. But all of this remains speculation, as it has for decades. The local legend, according to USA Today: