Новости за 27.10.2017

You may have stopped watching Arthur (about the shenanigans of an anthropomorphized aardvark and his friends,) on PBS ten or fifteen years ago, but the show is still chugging along, with new episodes. Earlier this week, this year’s Halloween special, “Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse” debuted.

The Limmud FSU conference gathers Russian speaking Jewry from across the former Soviet Union and is typically a convivial setting for hummus-making workshops and lectures about the Yiddish theater. This year’s gathering took place in Odessa—I took part in a pair of panels and presentations of a special Jewish-Ukrainian relations themed issue of my magazine, The Odessa Review—and gathered almost a thousand Russian speaking Jews of the Russian speak Jewish world, from Haifa to Minsk and Moscow. What the conference typically is not... Читать дальше...

The commander of Lebanon’s Armed Forces (LAF), General Joseph Aoun, was in Washington on an official visit this week. The visit came shortly after Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman described the LAF as “inextricably linked to Hezbollah,” and as having “become an integral part of Hezbollah’s campaign under its command.” Lieberman’s description of the power equation in Lebanon is not only accurate, but also is directly at odds with American policy, which is centered on supporting the Lebanese army. Читать дальше...

Each week, the Scroll highlights upcoming exhibits, performances, and cultural events around the country.

According to her, attorney slash beauty writer slash beauty guru Bee Chang may have seemed like she was destined to follow the traditional path for a Chinese immigrant kid with Chinese immigrant parents—but she didn’t. The road was interrupted first by an Israeli husband (and mother-in-law), then by two daughters who speak Hebrew. Now Bee Shapiro, she has a fragrance and bodycare line (to die for) called Ellis Brooklyn, a column in The New York Times, and a new book out, Skin Deep, in which she interviews celebrities on their beauty rituals.

Along with the Soviet Union’s accusation that Zionism is racism, the left has inherited the Communist Party’s “politics of position,” as David Hirsh calls it in his new book Contemporary Left Antisemitism. What you are determines whether or not what you say will count. (How many campus arguments have been clinched with the accusation of “white privilege”?) If you are a Zionist, your words are worthless; you can’t possibly have an argument worth listening to.

A few weeks ago, reading the story of Cain and Abel, I was struck by a discomfiting thought: God, creator of heaven and earth, source of all light, could be a bit of a jerk.

When George Orwell died in 1950 at the age of 46, the literary critic Edmund Wilson found it symbolically appropriate. For in the new postwar age of play-acting Stalinists, Wilson saw Orwell as the last prophet of commonsense independent-minded thought on the left.

The centennial we are observing this month—the solemn anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution—is the anniversary of a logical absurdity and its consequences. The Bolshevik takeover of Russia came about as a matter of chance; and was interpreted as a matter of destiny. The event was predicted by no one at all; and rested its prestige on a reputation for having fulfilled the well-known predictions of Karl Marx. The absurdity of those contradictions constituted the Bolshevik mystique. And, in the greatest absurdity of all... Читать дальше...

Like a vaguely exotic Golden Age film star, rumors have been circulating for years if William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz is secretly Jewish. Of course, Blazkowicz isn’t an actor, or even a real person; he’s the Nazi-fighting star of the hit video game franchise Wolfenstein, first appearing on screen twenty five years ago. And now, we finally have our answer.