Новости за 11.11.2016

The Chosen Ones is a weekly column by author and comedian Periel Aschenbrand, who interviews Jews doing fabulous things.

What chess can offer everybody right now as we prepare—and, quite frankly, rub our eyes in continuous disbelief—for a Donald Trump presidency, is two-fold: a canvas upon which to project your emotions, and an opportunity to engage, with anybody, in dialogue.

On Monday morning, a historic mural created by Lower East Side Jewish teenagers 43 years ago was summarily whitewashed by a real estate developer. Art lovers and preservationists in the neighborhood are horrified.

I used to be a lefty.

Growing up in Israel, I attended demonstrations against the occupation, organized dialogue groups with Palestinian colleagues, and campaigned vigorously for candidates I believed would bring about peace and reconciliation. Slowly, my worldview changed, a shift that deserves its own lengthy consideration. But here’s one key reason for why I moved from left to right: I refused to see the Palestinians as any less worthy of dignity or capable of agency than myself.

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In the years I’ve spent closely listening to him, Leonard Cohen has taught me many things: how to think about history, how to read a poem, how to chase God. But the greatest gift he gave me, maybe, is showing me how to be kind.

There’s a saying that to lose a language is to lose a whole world. My uncle, Robert Tolchin (Americanized from Tolchinsky)—who died in September—was one of the last great speakers of Jewish Bronx, a particular nasal intonation of English so acid and sharp that, like radiation from Chernobyl, it could kill trees. Perhaps, indeed, it is why there are so few trees in the Bronx.

According to his official Facebook page, Leonard Cohen died today at the age of 82. Baruch Dayan Emet.

Last week, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, through his father-in-law’s organization in Britain, invited a number of correspondents for American media outlets—including The New York Times, the L.A. Times, The New Yorker and NPR—to attend a conference in Damascus, where they could meet with the great man and his aides. The regime was looking, in the words of The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins, “to argue their case.”

As the dust settles on one of the most surprising electoral outcomes in American history, many are asking what exactly a Trump Administration will do in office. But given that Trump offered few specifics for his many sweeping campaign promises, and often reversed himself throughout the election even on his core issues, such predictions seem like a fool’s errand.