Новости за 28.09.2016

Last month, Donald Trump tapped Stephen Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, to be his campaign’s new CEO. Today, Breitbart published an anti-Semitic screed against Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. Titled “WaPo’s Anne Applebaum Embarks On Kremlin-Style Disinformation Offensive vs. the Anti-Globalist Right,” the piece is a meandering, conspiratorial critique of Applebaum’s political stances. And as meandering conspiratorial pieces tend to do, it ultimately introduces its target’s Jewishness... Читать дальше...

It’s Banned Books Week! Every year at this time, the American Library Association publishes its list of the previous year’s most frequently banned and challenged books. Last year, I noted with dismay that only one of the ten most objectionable books was written by a Jew. This was disappointing because, in the past, our people ruled this list. Judy Blume, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Alvin Schwartz, Lesléa Newman, and Nadine Gordimer used to regularly cause pearl-clutching patrons and parents to have conniptions... Читать дальше...

On September 29, 1941, the Nazis carried out a massacre by bullets against almost 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children at the Babi Yar ravine outside of Kiev. Under the shadow of Ukraine’s continued conflict with Russia, the government of President Petro Poroshenko has embarked on the most comprehensive and committed memorializing of the events in the history of the Ukrainian state. This year’s 75th anniversary commemorations of the Babi Yar massacre have felt like one of the most important... Читать дальше...

The Zohar built its theology on the idea that God was feminine as well as masculine. Yet its own readership—like that of most classic Jewish texts—remained strictly limited to men. Indeed, only married men past the age of forty were supposed to be initiated into the Zohar’s mysteries, since they would presumably be pious and settled enough not to be shocked into heresy by its secrets. In any case, to read the Zohar or to study the Talmud—the text at the heart of traditional Jewish education—required a knowledge of Aramaic... Читать дальше...

Forty percent of the honey consumed in Israel every year is consumed during the High Holidays, when it is customary to eat honey and give it as a gift. So, just in time for Rosh Hashanah, the Israeli Honey Board is kicking off its annual honey festival at apiaries across the country. The festival, spread across more than 10 locations, started Sept. 22 and will continue until Oct. 29, after Sukkot ends.

Through the years, carrots have been one of the most symbolic foods served at Rosh Hashanah, just behind apples and honey. In Eastern Europe, carrots are always part of tsimmes, a stew made with carrots and sweet potatoes—either alone or with meat. (The Yiddish word for carrot—mern—also means “to increase” or “to multiply.”) In Morocco, every Jewish home welcomes the New Year with a salad made from carrots cut into rounds; they resemble coins, a sign of plenty.

Recent events, like Monday’s U.S. presidential debate, and the General Assembly at the UN, where both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas spoke last week, cast a light onto the future of international geopolitics while signaling the twilight of President Obama’s tenure. “A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” said Obama during his last UNGA address. “We must make sure the benefits of integration is globally shared.”