Новости за 28.02.2018

There are many terrible things about the rising feeling that we’re living in the second act of a disturbing sci-fi movie. The North Pole reached the melting point this week. Major world cities are running out of water. Foreign powers are waging war on America without firing a single shot, yet we seem unable to quell random acts of spectacular violence within our own borders.

Tablet is hiring a paid, full-time summer editorial fellow. If you can take complex ideas and substantive arguments that you want to make, and turn them into things other people want to read, we’re looking for you. If you love to follow the news and enjoy asking impertinent questions to people of interest, and if you can’t wait to hit the ground running and produce real work from day one, this is the place for you. You’ll be publishing daily and will be a valued member of our team. You’ll leave... Читать дальше...

About two weeks ago, as I trawled through the interwebs, I came across a flyer posted in a Jewish Facebook group advertising a Purim party. At the bottom of the flyer were the posters from the “Cultures Not Costumes” campaign from Halloween 2011, urging mindfulness in veering away from choosing costumes that marginalize or stereotype ethnicities. Now, granted, I’d’ve been more ecstatic if it was instead a proliferation of my own McDowell’s/ELITalks-esque “Purim Not Prejudice” campaign, but I was far more glad to see it being addressed... Читать дальше...

At 10 a.m. yesterday, the conductor of the Israeli police force’s official marching band raised his baton, and his men began parading and playing a festive tune. They were followed by a smiling man dressed as a doctor and holding a sign “We’re experts at repairing the world.”

There will be more ceasefires in Eastern Ghouta and more violations thereof.

One night, not too long ago, I found myself after hours and slightly bewildered, on the fifth floor of the infamous Tachana Merkazit, South Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. It’s the sprawling, half empty New Brutalist folly that spawned a thousand metaphors. For a Yiddishist with a complicated relationship to the State of Israel it seemed like a more than appropriate place to land.

Before my mother-in-law stopped baking hamantaschen, she passed her recipe on to me, on three index cards covered with her loopy, barely legible handwriting. The recipe instructed me to brush the tops of the cookies with milk before baking, and then sprinkle them with sugar. But on the back of the last card, at the point where the cookies are out of the oven and already cooling on the rack, she’d added one last note: “I don’t bother sprinkling with milk and sugar—it doesn’t add anything.” This last sentence... Читать дальше...

There’s a joke among French-Ashkenazi-Jews (or what’s left of them) that says that Sephardim are the Jews’ best friends. If that saying is true, Meyer Habib, who was born in Paris to Tunisian parents 56 years ago, is unquestionably one of the best friends that French Jews have.

One day after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Saturday demanding a truce in the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta to allow for aid access and medical evacuations, Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime had already resumed its saturation bombing of the last major opposition enclave in the Syrian capital. In the week prior to the UNSC vote, the pro-regime camp’s assault had killed hundreds of civilians, using both regular munitions and poison gas. As they have done for years... Читать дальше...

Imagine if the night of Purim you could walk into the home of Queen Esther. A drink in your hand—let’s say, a Huntsman… or even better, a HuntsHaman—you’d let her transport you into her sensual, mysterious world.