Новости за 21.03.2018

The video is only about two and a half minutes long. Mark Meechan, a Scotsman known more commonly by his online name, Count Dankula, speaks to the camera. His girlfriend, he says, goes on and on about her pug, Buddha, and how cute he is. “So I thought I would turn it in to the least cute thing I could think of,” he says, smirking at the camera. “Which is, a Nazi.”

When she moved from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv in 2010, Cecilia Sibony introduced tahini into her kitchen. She was just looking for a healthier alternative to mayonnaise and sour cream, but little did she know that the sesame paste would one day be at the center of her business venture—and a possible synonym of peacemaking in the Middle East.

If you thought Fauda was suspenseful, get ready for Autonomies, a new show slated for broadcast later this year on Israeli TV. The premise is as simple as it is startling: Unable to resolve their differences, secular and haredi Jews decided to split up into two autonomous states, the secular one announcing Tel Aviv as its capital and the religious one keeping Jerusalem and building a new wall around the holy city.

“Dahling, you’re overthinking it.” Moi? Overthinking myself into deadline oblivion? I feigned an expression of outrage, but poorly. This was a few weeks ago, when I found myself sharing gyoza in Chelsea with Pakn Treger magazine co-editor and posh BBC voice haver David Mazower. (David served the Beeb for decades as a journalist before making the leap to the National Yiddish Book Center last fall.) Months ago I promised him a short—very short—piece for the Pakn Treger. Naturally, I immediately set out hunting down microfilm... Читать дальше...

Some sermons are better left undelivered. Consider for example the wise words of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, who at his weekly lesson at Jerusalem’s Hayazdim synagogue last Saturday night chose to riff on the Meshaneh HaBriyot blessing. “When one sees strange creatures, one recites Meshaneh HaBriyot,” said the rabbi. “When one sees a kushi, one recites Meshaneh HaBriyot.” The word kushi meant a black person when it was first used in the bible, and still means the same today... Читать дальше...

In the David Mamet movie Homicide, a Jewish cop grumbles about being made to investigate the murder of a Jewish pensioner. “They’re not my people, baby,” he quips to his partner. “So much anti-Semitism in the last 4,000 years, we must be doing something to bring it about!” Yet as he starts to uncover the most extreme form of organized anti-Semitism, he realizes that his secular choices count for nothing. He rushes to embrace his Jewish identity—only to find that it has been drawn to the surface by a skillfully constructed echo chamber. Читать дальше...

Much has been made recently about actors being honored for performances in which they simulate disabilities that they do not actually have. Hong Chau pretended to have a limp in last year’s Downsizing, earning accolades and best-in show reviews in part for her mimicry of something she researched. Joaquin Phoenix portrays a quadriplegic cartoonist in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. At a Q & A for the film, director Gus Van Sant was... Читать дальше...