Новости за 21.09.2016

A-WA first stole our beating, dance-floor hearts this summer when we learned about their undeniable throwback hit, “Habib Galbi.” A-WA is a trio of sisters (Tair, 31; Liron, 29, and Tagel Haim, 25) who hail from southern Israel, although they are currently based out of Tel Aviv. Recently, Vogue published a short video of the trio hanging out in Old Jaffa in Tel Aviv, where they visited a jewelry shop, the Levinsky Market, a traditional Yemeni restaurant, and a record store where they have spent... Читать дальше...

Every four years, if you want to see the Israeli flag waving at the Summer Olympics, your best bet is a brief cameo at the opening and closing ceremonies. The sports where Israelis have taken home medals—judo, sailing and canoeing—don’t get any prime time respect. But there’s another quadrennial international sporting event where you’ll see a dizzying amount of Stars of David: the World Baseball Classic. The qualifying tournament for the last spot in the event begins this week in Coney Island... Читать дальше...

Decoding the relationship between Israel and the Arab Gulf states has become a kind of Middle Eastern Kremlinology. Because none of the Gulf states officially recognize Israel as a state, and because some of them, like Saudi Arabia, actively fund and promote some noxious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda, relations can’t really unfold in the public eye. Or can they?

I used to hope in vain to be Bob Dylan, or the next Bob Dylan, or just Dylanesque. Then I realized it was pointless. Bob Dylan achieved his immortality in his early 20s and everything he did thereafter, while often spectacular, just built on the myth of his halcyon youth. And so, at the age of 40, I’ve curbed my dreams of becoming the next Bob Dylan. I still, though, find it entirely reasonable to hope to be the next Leonard Cohen who turns 82 today.

When Stanley Ginsberg first envisioned writing a cookbook about rye bread, his thoughts turned to the things he grew up eating as a Jewish kid in post-WWII Brooklyn: pumpernickel, kornbroyt (New York corn rye), and caraway-flecked delicatessen rye. Writers, after all, are routinely advised to “write what you know.” And as a born and bred New Yorker whose previous cookbook was essentially a love song to the breads, cookies, and cakes found in the Jewish bakeries of his youth, Ginsberg knew from rye bread—or so he thought. Читать дальше...

Earlier this month, retired federal judge Barbara Jones and former prosecutor Paul Shechtman issued a 24-page report summarizing their investigation into allegations of anti-Semitic behavior among CUNY students. The report was comprehensive and its defense of student organizations’ free speech sound, but its details also raised troubling questions about the state of affairs on CUNY campuses—and, by extension, at most colleges and universities.

This past May 20 marked the semicentennial of the start of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, and this past Aug. 29 marked the semicentennial of the hanging, in Egypt, of Sayyid Qutb, the master thinker of the Islamists—doleful events of long ago that may seem to have nothing in common. But I think that, in glancing back at 1966, we ought to notice a common trait in those two events, which no one at the time could possibly have detected. And the common trait ought perhaps to inspire in... Читать дальше...

I recently saw a McDonald’s commercial during a broadcast of an NFL game that advertised its Filet-O-Fish sandwiches: Throw down five bucks at a participating Mickey D’s and you’ll get two hot, creamy, flaky wild-caught Alaskan Pollack sandwiches that will sate the hell out of you. To me, the Filet-O-Fish, while not at all kosher, has always been the most kosher non-kosher food at McDonald’s—a happy medium for Jews who adhere not to the laws of kashrut—and my way of participating in that ubiquitous... Читать дальше...