Новости за 30.11.2017

“When I was growing up, the definition of a Jewish neighborhood was a neighborhood that had a kosher bakery, a kosher butcher,” said Rabbi Moshe Elefant, Chief Operating Officer at Orthodox Union Kosher. “Now, the definition of a Jewish neighborhood is that they have a kosher pizza shop.”

The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s 1967 novel about a friendship between two Jewish boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during World War II, is the Jewish To Kill a Mockingbird: a compulsively readable morality tale, in which the youthful characters have more depth and subtlety than the adults, a pleasure for a bright tween and still a pleasure for his mother or father. Unlike Harper Lee, Potok went on to write better books, especially The Promise, his sequel to The Chosen, and My Name Is Asher Lev. But he... Читать дальше...

In 1963, on the corner of 44th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, a man opened a space where people could come and stand up in front of other people and tell jokes, and, in so doing, he changed the world.

When the Giro d’Italia, one of the world’s most prestigious bike races, announced its intentions to launch off next year’s competition in Jerusalem, Israeli cycling enthusiasts were thrilled and the government promised its support. Earlier this week, however, things went downhill when the Giro d’Italia noted on its website that the race was slated to take place in “West Jerusalem,” a designation that ignores the reunification of the Jewish state’s capital in 1967.

When I asked Facebook where we should eat on our Amsterdam vacation, a friend text-bellowed “SIR HUMMUS!!!” Pretty sure it was all caps, but if not, they were implied.

Imagine a painter who shoots himself in the foot and then puts his foot in his mouth. That’s how I’d sum up Peter Saul. His paintings are always the opposite of whatever is considered to be right. And they continue to earn him a reputation as one of the most brutally honest storytellers in postwar, comic-influenced American painting.

This week on Unorthodox: beauty pageant diplomacy, Gal Gadot’s Mossad mixup, and much, much more.

Why do the Kurds and their struggles arouse so little interest or sympathy or solidarity around the world? It is because of the doctrine of political “realism,” of which the greatest theoretician is Henry Kissinger—and, to be sure, Kissinger, as practitioner of his own theory, was the founder of America’s tradition of betraying the Kurds. The Kurds in Iraq in the early 1970s staged a rebellion against the Baathist dictatorship in Baghdad, and they enjoyed some American support. But, in 1975, Kissinger... Читать дальше...

Donald Trump may have divided America, destroyed the mainstream of the Democratic Party and split the GOP, but he’s unifying the Middle East. Or at least Iran. According to The New York Times’ man in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink, Trump has whipped Iranians of every class, ethnicity, and political tendency into a nationalist fervor.

You may have heard about Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the 20-minute film playing before Pixar’s Coco. Despite attempting to cash in on the ongoing zeitgeist of the 2013’s Frozen, this short has been met with controversy— as in, people hate it. You can read tips online as to how avoid seeing it in the theater. At least one Mexican cinema refused to show it altogether. (After all— imagine going to the movies to see a story about a latino child in order to sit through nearly a half hour of snowman shenanigans... Читать дальше...