Smoked salmon. Latkes. Corned beef. Dill Pickle. Matzah ball soup. Gefilte fish. Kugel. Tzimmes. Challah bread. Hamantaschen. The wonders and flavors of traditional Jewish food seem infinite. Yivo, the Institute for Jewish Research, would agree with that statement. It’s currently presenting a seven-week online educational course in Ashkenazic cuisine, and, due to the coronavirus pandemic, […]
Irving Berlin, the legendary American composer and lyricist, wrote some 1,500 songs, including God Bless America and White Christmas, and two Broadway musical hits, Call Me Madame and Annie Get Your Gun, and was widely considered the greatest songwriter of the 20th century. “Berlin has no place in American music,” his fellow composer, Jerome Kern, wrote […]
We’ve repeatedly heard this vile expression from prejudiced Muslims. Quoting from two verses in the Koran, Muslims of this odiferous ilk portray Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. The offensive verses, 59 and 60, are found in chapter five of the Islamic holy book and turn on the refusal of the disobedient “People of the […]
A contagion as insidious and widespread as the coronavirus has infected three African-American celebrities — the entertainer Nick Cannon, the athlete DeSean Jackson and the rapper Ice Cube. On social media, they have disseminated toxic tropes that could easily be construed as antisemitic. One can safely assume that some of their followers have bought into their […]
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, delivered an important speech on July 20, the 76th anniversary of the abortive plot to kill the arch demon Adolf Hitler. Speaking at a ceremony in Berlin during which new army recruits were sworn in, she paid tribute to Claus von Stauffenburg, the colonel who was summarily executed for his […]
Very unusually, Massoud Hayoun describes himself as “an Arab American man of the Jewish faith” and an “Arab first and last.” “Judaism is an adjective that modifies my Arabness,” he writes in his nostalgic-drenched book, When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History (The New Press). Hayoun, a Los Angeles-based journalist who has reported for […]
The degree to which the Ukrainian community in Canada venerates its deeply flawed national heroes is shocking and disappointing. Case in point: Last month, a monument in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, honoring the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division was spray-painted with the words, “Nazi war monument.” At first, the Halton Regional […]
During the first week of July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Hagia Sophia, a popular museum in Istanbul that was originally a cathedral and then a mosque, would be repurposed as a mosque again. In a rhetorical flourish, he added that Hagia Sophia’s reconversion was a precursor to “the liberation” of the Al-Aqsa […]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s much-vaunted election campaign pledge to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank has so far turned out to be little more than a rhetorical flourish. Netanyahu assured supporters he would begin implementing his promise on July 1. Seventeen days on, nothing seems to have happened, and he has been reduced […]
The disquieting rise of ideological conformity in major cultural institutions in the United States, a trend that is ominously catching fire, has claimed yet another victim. Bari Weiss, an editor and writer in The New York Times’ opinion department, resigned on July 14 after three years on staff. She explained her motives in a frank […]