We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Last week, paid subscribers got this month’s ET Ask Home. This month’s guest was my podcast co-host, Rohan Venkat.
Next week, paid subscribers will get ET Watch Home, which, this year, is a monthly essay on a different Czech New Wave movie. This month’s movie is All My Good Countrymen by Vojtech Jasny. It’s available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies dot Com if you’re interested in watching ahead of time.
Paid subscribers also get the premium version of The Election Tricycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on this year’s elections in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Slate, I wrote about why the Israeli strikes on WCK workers garnered such a strong international reaction. I also went on the program Amanpour & Co. to discuss the piece.
For CBC’s Commotion, I spoke about Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars’ speech but really about why it had the impact on Jewish communities that it did.
This week on Election Tricycle, we spoke about incumbents trying to run as “change candidates” and how different issues and candidates flip back and forth between continuity and change.
I thought this profile of S. Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, was well done.
The Financial Times has a report on how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP is hoping to finally crack the country’s south in this year’s elections.
This was an interesting look at how Rep. Summer Lee, who faced a significant challenge from AIPAC’s super PAC to win her seat in 2022, “scared pro-Israel groups out of her race.” (On the other hand, Lee was the subject of attack ads by Republican mega donor Jeff Yass.)
Friend of the newsletter Akbar Shahid Ahmed obtained rare interviews with Hamas leaders Mousa Abu Marzouk and Basem Naim and the resulting piece is both informative but also very sensitively written and framed.
MY VIEWS ON…
…active voice!
I was in Barcelona with my family last week, which was wonderful, but which I’m mentioning here because in Barcelona I went to two things I’d never been to before: the Barcelona History Museum and the Major Synagogue of Barcelona.
I really recommend both of these, should you ever be in the city, even if neither is my favorite thing to do in the city (the Miró museum is still that girl). But in the Barcelona History Museum, there’s a description of the Jewish community that lived in the city, which was thriving, the little plaque tells you, until “the attack” of 1391. The attack. As though it sprung from the Earth.
The attack was, of course, carried out by their neighbors. Jews across Castille and Aragon were massacred that year. Or, to use the active voice: In 1391, mobs massacred the Jews of, among other places, Barcelona, spurred on by religious figures and unchecked by the state. In the synagogue, one can read the full story. But in the museum, there is only the attack.
I think what I noticed was not only the difference, but also how obvious it was. People often accuse journalists of using the passive voice to obfuscate or hide responsibility (ie seven people killed by Israeli strikes versus Israeli strikes killed seven people). And having been on the other side, sometimes it’s less thinking and intentional than that. But sometimes it is not. And what I realized, standing in the museum, is that, when we do that, we don’t only leave out information. We also render noticeable that there is information—and responsibility—that should be there and isn’t.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
I found this tribute to the writer and activist Sami Michael very moving.
Jewish faculty at Columbia University wrote an open letter to President Minouche Shafik ahead of her appearance before Congress against the weaponization of antisemitism. “The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater,” they wrote.
Per a Pew Research poll: “About seven-in-ten Jewish voters (69%) associate with the Democratic Party, while 29% affiliate with the Republican Party. The share of Jewish voters who align with the Democrats has increased 8 percentage points since 2020.”
Relatedly, here is former US President Donald Trump this week, again, on 69 percent of American Jewish voters: “Any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined.”
-ET
Tiny gem of a synagogue !!!