Biden/Cheney in 2024?? Child prodigies. Sexist jokes. Sports miracles. JewFem 2.0. Arabic-speaking Israeli comic. Eating while masked and other diversions.
Newsletter #112 January 15 2022
POLITICS
*The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off. — Gloria Steinem
* Eloquence personified. Barack Obama’s beautiful eulogy for Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader, immortalizes Reid’s character and career, evoking a time when Congress was a functional institution.
* Last week, Tom Friedman posited a Biden/Cheney ticket in 2024. Sounds meshuga, right? Not if you buy his analog between the American odd couple (above) and Israel’s current government whose members span the ideological spectrum from Naftali Bennett, the right-wing prime minister, to MK Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist political party. I’m not persuaded. Cheney bucked her party on Trump but opposes everything Democrats stand for — choice, gun laws, Obamacare, clean energy, decreased defense spending. See Ed Kilgore’s rebuttal of Friedman.
CULTURE
*The livestream broadcast, MLK-Activism & the Arts produced by the Apollo Theater and WNYC radio, will air this Monday, at 11 AM and again at 7 PM. The program boasts an impressive (though weirdly male-dominated) list of participants, among them, Najee Dorsey, founder of Black Art in America; Jonathan McCrory, director of the National Black Theatre of Harlem; and Garrett McQueen, advocate for diversity in classical music. Trezana Beverly (above, in red dress)., the first African-American woman to receive a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play — the 1977 production of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” is the only female on the roster. Thousands of black women are arts activists. Why couldn’t the event’s organizers find more than one?
COVID CHRONICLES
* This child can teach conservatives a thing or two about freedom. Waiting for your generation to take over, kiddo. (“And the little children shall lead them.” Isaiah 11:6.)
* No wonder this video went viral.
*To learn how to eat while masked, watch this.
*The virus isn’t a laughing matter, though I did crack a smile at South Park’s top 10 Covid moments. Their #5 is my number one.
*The WashPost salutes the swab, a humble, 99-year-old invention that “has never been more crucial.” Here’s how swabs work to detect the virus.
JUST FOR FUN
*A Dutch nonprofit, Radio Garden, lets you tune in live to any radio station on the globe and listen to the music or programs each is playing right now.
*I’ve always been fascinated by child geniuses like Greg Smith (above, age 10). At 14-months-old, he corrected people’s grammar. By 18 months he could add and subtract. He learned to read at 2, entered high school at 9, graduated from college with a BA and MA at 16. It’s jaw-dropping to hear his responses to Oprah in 1999. But what becomes of baby brainiacs when they grow up? Buzzworthy has an update.
JEWS
*What is Rabbi? Angela Buchdahl, the charismatic Senior Rabbi at New York’s Central Synagogue, was a clue on Jeopardy on Dec. 29th. Other recent Jewish clues have been Yiddish theater and cholent. Happily, co-host, Mayim Bialik, an observant Jew, was on hand to explain the latter to the stumped contestants.
*Tomorrow, Sunday, Jan 16, from 10:30-12 noon E.T., I’ll be one of three presenters in the first of a 12-session Zoominar called JewFem 2.0 — Jewish Feminism Reimagined. (That’s me in the top right corner above). I’ll reflect on what to cherish about our tradition and heritage but also what to change as we move forward. If you’re interested in Judaism, feminism, and a radical re-visioning of the Jewish world, register here for JewFem 2.0 And join the JewFem Facebook group.
SPORTS (and miracles)
*While most people were following the big ten, many Jews were cheering the 50-game winning streak of the Maccabees, the Yeshiva University’s basketball team. The bubble burst — rather, the oil ran out — on Dec. 30th when the Maccabees suffered a 73-59 loss to Illinois Wesleyan,. But the love lingers.
* Sharp-eyed hockey fan saves player’s life. During an October game, Nadia Popovici, left, who was a biology major in college, alerted Brian Hamilton, of the Vancouver Canucks that she’d seen a cancerous mole on his neck. Both teams presented her with a $10,000 scholarship to use for medical school.
ANTISEMITISM
*Jon Stewart says the goblins in Harry Potter movies replicate classical antiSemitic stereotypes. J.K Rowling denies. See video.
* Breaking news: hostage situation at synagogue in Dallas area. Live updates here.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
*The New Yorker documentary “Reckoning with Laughter,” follows comedian Noam Shuster (above) an Arabic speaking Israel Jew as her U.S. appearances are canceled by Covid. Upon her return to Israel, she quarantines together with Jews and Palestinians, nothing new for Noam, who was raised in Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (Oasis of Peace in English), a Jewish/Arab village founded as a model of co-existence.
Yossi Beilin (above), a former Israeli MK, Justice Minister, Deputy Foreign Minister, and a key architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2003 Geneva Initiative, proffers advice to President Biden on how to jump start the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” based on a two-state framework called Confederation.
*Also favoring confederation is Rabbi Hanan Schlessinger (above), founder of Roots. An Orthodox Jew and a settler who still lives on the occupied West Bank, he says he would remain there were the area to become a Palestinian state under confederation. In this interview, he explains how he came to see that Palestinians feel the same profound connection to the land as he does.
*In his sinus-clearing article, Alon Pincus warns where Israel is headed if it continues to expand the current one-state reality (above) in which it already controls most aspects of Palestinian lives.
MUSIC
*Though the new year is already two weeks old, it’s never too late to listen to cellist Yo-Yo Ma play Auld Lang Syne.