Talia Bloch sings the praises of poet and Bollingen Prize-winner Allen Grossman. Philologos wonders when ‘Palestine’ became such a controversial word. Jenna Weissman Joselit pores over Chief Rabbi of Cincinnati Eliezer Silver’s ledger book. Benjamin Ivry appreciates the Jewish artists at the Villa la Fleur museum outside of Warsaw. Joshua Furst questions the theatrical pieties…
Planning a trip to China? Make it quick. The world’s most populous nation is about to disappear. That’s just one of the “wild” New Year’s predictions that Israeli news website Ynetnews.com reported from Israeli mystics on September 17. “God will cleanse the world and erase China from the world this year, and there will be…
No field of Judaic knowledge is more widely scorned than the humble but ever-popular Jewish Geography — otherwise known as “Guess Who’s Jewish?” After all, we’re told by our betters, it doesn’t really make a difference, does it? Well, no, it doesn’t. Until it does. Case in point: Google’s recently announced departure from China. The…
Marshall “Masher” Grainge, my fearsome (but fearsomely fair) high school vice principal, always used to say that “they do things big in America.” But then China came along and did things multiple factors bigger. Leeds-New York-Beijing. Big-bigger-biggest. Huge-huger-huguosi. By 2050, when Jews only speak either Mandarin or Hebrew, we’ll look back on this transitional Yid-Chinglish…
Books that purport to chronicle world Jewry’s plot to rule the world are flying off shelves in China and Japan. Such conspiracy theories are also prevalent in Malaysia, the Philippines and, to some extent, throughout Asia, according to a recently published essay by the Anglo-Dutch writer Ian Buruma. But unlike standard-issue Western antisemitism — accusations…
Woody Allen once said, “My view of reality is that it has always been a grim place to be … but it’s the only place you can get Chinese food.” In this week’s New Yorker, writer Patricia Marx tags along with rabbis/kashrut supervisors working in China — the fastest-growing exporter of kosher goods on earth….
Human rights activists critical of the upcoming Beijing Olympics have gained a surprising new ally: the “re-established Sanhedrin.” Yes, that’s right, the re-established Sanhedrin — a body launched in 2004 by a group of Israeli Orthodox rabbis in a somewhat audacious attempt to reconstitute the ancient supreme rabbinic court of the same name — has…
Pastor John Hagee landed himself in hot water for suggesting that Hurricane Katrina may have reflected God’s wrath over a planned gay pride event, that antisemitism may have its origins in Divine anger over Jewish transgressions and that God may have used the Nazis as Divine instruments to return the Jews to Zion. But Hagee…
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