Новости за 30.01.2018

2017 was a big year for Tiffany Haddish. The 38 year-old comedian released a memoir that made The New York Times best-seller list, became the first black female stand-up to ever host Saturday Night Live, and starred in Girls Trip, which would’ve netted her an Oscar nomination in a just universe.

At the recent second Women’s March, New York participants saw a banner held aloft with a hand-lettered Yiddish message, helpfully transliterated and translated into English. The transliteration read “Mir Velen Zei Iberleben”; and the translation, “We Will Outlive Them.”

Just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the lower house of the Polish parliament voted in favor of a bill that condemns anyone who acknowledges Polish complicity in the Holocaust to up to three years in prison. According to the Polish state narrative, the Holocaust was an entirely German affair, and both the Polish government and the Polish people are entirely innocent of it. Although I was dismayed to learn this news, I was hardly surprised. After spending some time in Poland this month, I would expect no better. Читать дальше...

Last month some Upper West Side parents lost their shit over the appearance of a children’s alphabet book called P is for Palestine, in their local book store. Evidence that it’s never too early to indoctrinate children into nationalistic political ideologies, the book was created by a group of Iranian expats who apparently couldn’t be bothered with producing an I is for Iran book. When it appeared on the shelves of Book Culture on heavily Jewish Upper West Side, a small number of Jewish parents... Читать дальше...

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.

If ever there was a holiday ripe for revitalization and collective embrace, it’s Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish New Year of the Trees. Falling smack in the middle of February, when the weather is usually not at its best, the age-old festival, which some scholars date to the early Middle Ages, heralds the prospect of regeneration, of sunnier days ahead. That alone should commend it to North American Jews, lifting their spirits when they sag under the weight of gloves and hats and scarves, their movement impeded by the heavy tread of boots. Читать дальше...

This week’s episode was recorded at the Manhattan JCC. Our Jewish guest is comedian and actor Judy Gold, host of the podcast Kill Me Now. Our gentile of the week is Father James Martin, Jesuit priest and editor at large of America magazine.

The Grammys last night seemed to be about two things, Broadway and social justice, so basically they were also about Judaism, at least Judaism in the way I’ve always understood it.