Новости за 20.09.2018

Lviv is Ukraine’s Westernmost region and it is widely thought to be the center of traditional Ukrainian intellectual, artistic and literary life. It is also widely seen as the most nationalistic region of the country. Yesterday evening, the Lviv Book Fair opened up with a technically and artistically adroit “ethno evolution” show at the national Opera house. The show was all pageantry and pagan overtones, with singers and lithe dancers in ethnic costumes reenacting the history of the nation. I... Читать дальше...

The bagel may be the greatest gift bestowed by Jews on American culture. Of course there are other contenders. A solid case could be made for the Broadway musical, for the noun schmuck and the verb schlep, for Blazing Saddles, for Bella Abzug’s hats. But the bagel is way up there, ranking high in the pantheon of definitively Jewish things that became distinctly American things—in the bagel’s case, a possibly more American thing than the proverbial slice of all-American apple pie, at least as far as 2018 market share goes. Читать дальше...

A team of high level Israeli military officers is in Moscow today for talks with Russian counterparts after the accidental shootdown of a Russian jet earlier this week was initially blamed on Israel. Thursday’s meeting gives Israeli officials the chance to present evidence showing they weren’t responsible for the incident and, perhaps more importantly, to shore up a complicated, but thus far durable, relationship in which Russia and Israel have coordinated military actions in Syria despite backing opposing sides in the conflict. Читать дальше...

In later years, Thorkild Rieber, former chairman of the board of Texaco, chief supplier of oil to General Francisco Franco and Hitler, stated that these actions were not ideologically-motivated; but simply good business.

I had my bat mitzvah on Oct. 9, 1987, the second day of Sukkot—on a Friday morning. Unlike my younger brother, who protested that he was a secular humanist every time my parents told him to study Torah, I was not opposed on principle to having a bat mitzvah; I just didn’t want any of my peers to see it. Once we turned 12, we were required to attend Shabbat services every week, so if I’d had it on a Saturday morning, there was a high chance of a classmate sitting in the sanctuary. Friday morning... Читать дальше...

Tsimmes has something of a PR problem. The hearty stew of root vegetables and dried fruit is a classic part of High Holiday dining for Ashkenazi Jews, from the first night of Rosh Hashanah right on through the last days of Sukkot. But aside from a few die-hard fans, it rarely tops anyone’s list as a favorite Jewish recipe. It seems to be included on tables by default—a dish that makes the holiday feel complete, but that nobody would exactly miss if it were absent.

From the start, nothing has baffled readers of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume memoir so much as its title: My Struggle, or Min Kamp in his native Norwegian, or Mein Kampf if translated literally into German. Who names their 3,600-page memoir after the most infamous text in history? After all, there seems little connection between the original author of Mein Kampf, a genocidal maniac, and Knausgaard, a middle-aged father whose books about his childhood, his family and his daily life turned him into an unexpected literary sensation. Читать дальше...