Новости за 16.03.2018

Earlier this year, an Israeli site wanted to advertise its offerings to readers in Jerusalem. This being 2018, and all of advertising now held exclusively in Facebook’s claws, the site contacted the social media behemoth and paid for a campaign. When the time came to drill down on the ads’ geo-targeting, however, something strange happened: Facebook wouldn’t let them select any Jerusalem neighborhood east of the Green Line.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah emerged visibly shaken but unscathed after an assassination attempt on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip. The soft-spoken former academic arrived in Gaza to open a sewage plant and attend some political meeting. He had barely crossed into Northern Gaza when his convoy, which included Palestinian Intelligence Chief Majid Farraj, was rocked by two 33-pound bombs. Seven security guards were wounded and three cars were damaged in the attack.

A Facebook wag recently posted that “Now that Purim has passed, schools here in [community deleted] have begun teaching the kids about Pesach hotels.”

When World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced Bill Goldberg would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame prior to April’s WrestleMania 34, I was far from kvelling, because the only way a Jewish wrestler can find success in WWE is if he doesn’t have any stereotypical Jewish characteristics. Goldberg was the -ish in Jewish, and he didn’t resemble me at all.

Art is supposed to inspire dread and wonder and a sense of the sublime or the beautiful or both. Conceptual art, a catch-all for works in non-traditional media built around arcane theoretical gimmicks that are usually baffling to all but the most patient of museum-goers, almost never accomplishes this. But only almost never: A temporary exhibition of Israeli artist Tamir Zadok’s work, currently on display at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, succeeds where so much other high-concept work fails, motioning... Читать дальше...

Even though I was born in Israel, grew up with a religious mother, and went to a high school where the majority of students were Jewish, somehow, by the time I started college at the Culinary Institute of America, I didn’t really know much about Jewish food. That became especially obvious when some friends and I decided to start a Jewish Culture Club at school, the first in the CIA’s history.

Sternly, one character tells another that the fight must go on, for the sake of the hostages. Just as sternly, the other character replies that if the fight must go on, then we are all hostages. The latter is being metaphorical, maybe even metaphysical, musing about a future marred by perpetual hostilities. The former is being a bit more literal: There are 246 men, women, and children held at gunpoint in Uganda who need saving.

Pride and Prejudice occupies a particular space in my mind reserved for novels where I can’t recall the intricacies of the plot, but I remember the feeling and atmosphere the book created. I picture the unflappable Elizabeth Bennet striding across the English moors, lost in thought and wondering whether or not Mr. Darcy loves her. I remember how I felt when I read the novel, wondering if I too would one day be trapped between love and friendship, longing and disgust, pondering the exquisitely painful experience of falling in love. Читать дальше...