Jake Romm
By Jake Romm
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Culture Trump’s Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Statement Continues Tradition Of Denial
Today is not only Yom HaShoah, but also Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. As I have previously discussed, the Armenian Genocide, a crime for which the term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, has gone unacknowledged by Turkey, which perpetrated the genocide, and also by countries such as Israel, the U.K., and the United States. In…
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Culture Dmitry Kuzmin: The Russian Poet You Need To Read Right Now
At the end of one of Dmitry Kuzmin’s poems, there is a curious stanza, which, to an American reader comes across as an odd bit of legalese. But to a Russian like Kuzmin, the stanza is both a social critique and a method of self preservation (we will return to the rest of the poem…
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Film & TV You Must Watch This New Film On The Armenian Genocide, Whether It’s Any Good Or Not
Today, “The Promise, a film about the Armenian Genocide, was released in theaters. At first glance, either at the trailer or the film, we are given a sweeping historical drama filmed and written in a slightly dated fashion – a fine, if forgettable, affair. But against the backdrop of both history and the world’s current…
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Culture What Is ‘Annie Hall’s’ Most Jewish Scene
Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” turned forty this week. It is, arguably, Allen’s most influential film, his funniest as well – a masterclass not only in cinematography and screenwriting, but directing and acting as well. Jordan Hoffman over at The Guardian has compiled a list of the films forty funniest moments (how he distilled it down to…
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Culture Nazi Punching: A (Short) Reading List
On April 15th, in Berkeley, we saw an increasingly familiar scene – violence at a political demonstration. At a “Patriots Day” rally, pro-Trump demonstrators, many of them self avowed fascists and Nazis, violently clashed with anti-fascist protestors (commonly referred to as “antifa”). Nazis were punched, Antifa members were punched, and less fringe commentators from each side…
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Culture Yet Another Polish Culture Director Removed From His Post By The PiS Government
“The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn’t called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.” So writes Umberto Eco in his essay “Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare.” I very much doubt that Piotr Glinski,…
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Culture Jian Ghomeshi’s Comeback Is The Worst Possible Passover Podcast
With Passover looming, it is a fine time to meditate on the idea of exile. As we know from the Haggadah, we were exiled in the land of Egypt, enslaved by the Pharaoh, and eventually liberated and returned to our native land in Israel. We remind ourselves of the story year after year, of the…
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Culture In These Dark Times, Turn To Paul Celan
In a time in which the world is increasingly dangerous, cruel, alienating, and above all, incomprehensible, we might find comfort, or at least kinship, in works of poetry. One such poet, whose inventive use of language is marked by despair and resurrection (as we shall see), seems, to me, particularly worth revisiting. To read Paul…
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