Новости за 23.03.2017

Idea for a movie: has-been Hollywood star—played by, say, Richard Gere—visits Israel to promote his new film. Because he is a beautiful person with beautiful opinions, he insists on a tour of the West Bank so he can see firsthand how terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad the occupation really is. Visiting Hebron, he is appalled, and compares the conditions of the Palestinians there to those of black Americans in the south before the Civil Rights Act. And then, because history really hates simplistic... Читать дальше...

This morning, Israeli media reported that a 19-year-old Israeli man from Ashkelon, who also holds American citizenship, had been arrested in connection with the recent spate of bomb threat hoaxes against North American Jewish Community Centers. His arrest is not believed to be linked to that of ex-journalist Juan Thompson of St. Louis, Missouri, who was charged earlier this month for at least eight of the bomb threats against JCCs and the Anti-Defamation League.

In Israel, approximately 18 billion shekels ($5 billion) of food is wasted each year, which is the equivalent of 1.6 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. The estimate—calculated during a study conducted last year by the non-profit food rescue organization Leket Israel in conjunction with the BDO consulting group—includes food lost at all stages of production and distribution, from the farm to food retailers’ shelves to consumers’ homes. For comparison, about 33% of domestically produced food is wasted around the world. Читать дальше...

Yesterday was William Shatner’s birthday—happy 84th, Bill!—and what better time to welcome a new Starship captain who happens to be a fellow member of the tribe?

This week on Unorthodox, Mel Gibson gives tzedakah.

Our Jewish guest is Ukrainian-born writer Sana Krasikov, whose latest novel, The Patriots, explores the effects of the Cold War on three generations of a Jewish-American family, from the 1930s to the present. She tells us what inspired her Russian family drama, why so many Russian Jews voted for Trump, and the unexpected things she encounters as she raises an American child.

Continue reading "Unorthodox Ep. 83: Novelist Sana... Читать дальше...

In the span of a decade, Yakov Smirnoff went from entertaining tourists on an Odessa cruise ship to dining with President Ronald Reagan. He became, as former Reagan speechwriter and now Congressman Dana Rohrabacher told me on the phone, “one of the inner circle” of advisers who offered insight, context, and punch lines for the president’s speechwriting team, putting words in the mouth of “The Great Communicator.” “He was giving us information and material that was very well-done, valuable, and... Читать дальше...

Just after Trump signed the first “Muslim ban,” a document began circulating online. I paused at its title: “Soviet Jewish Refugee Solidarity Sign-on Letter.” I grew up in New York City, where I went to public school; since I was a teenager many of my closest friends have been Jewish émigrés from the Soviet Union. For 20 years, I’ve heard stories about selling off libraries accumulated over generations, saying goodbye to friends and relatives for what might well be the final time, spending months or years of purgatory waiting... Читать дальше...

Last week, a friend alerted me to the publication of an editorial in Yated Ne’eman—the ultra-Orthodox newspaper based in Monsey. Titled “Politics Isn’t Everything,” the piece, ostensibly about the corrosion of values in public life, used as its primary example an article that ran in Tablet ahead of the Super Bowl, by senior editor Matthew Fishbane. In that article, Matthew—a Patriots fan and the son of a New Englander—engages in an unflinchingly critical, if heartfelt, inquiry of NFL owner and... Читать дальше...