We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This week, paid subscribers got ET Watch Home, a series for this year only on Czech New Wave movies. This month’s movie was Birds, Orphans, and Fools. (Last week’s issue said they got it last week, but that is only because I was supposed to send it out last week but didn’t. I’m sorry!)
Paid subscribers to this newsletter also get the premium version of The Political Cycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on politics in the US, UK, India—and the wider world.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
This week on the podcast, we had a special guest to discuss Sri Lanka. We also got into the latest in Delhi and North Carolina.
From the Washington Post: “Just five years ago, 21 percent of Republicans in a CNN poll said increasing racial and ethnic diversity threatened American culture. Today, 55 percent say that.”
From friend of the newsletter Law Dork: “Federal judge blocks employee abortion, IVF protections at thousands of Catholic employers nationwide.”
Another friend of the newsletter, Tanvi Misra, wrote about caste and American politics for Harper’s BAZAAR.
VSquare has a new report on surveillance in Slovakia.
Good for Jhumpa Lahiri.
MY VIEWS ON…
…New York City’s mayors!
I want to preface this by saying I love New York. I was born there. I grew up mostly on Long Island, the best part of which was going into the city every weekend. I went to college in the city. My family lives there now and I love visiting them. I am not opposed to New York. I love it very much.
However, it is time for us, as a nation, to acknowledge that the city, at least in recent memory, seems to only elect charlatans, fools, egomaniacs, and buffoons.
This week, Eric Adams was indicted on five federal public corruption charges. These included bribery and wire fraud. He allegedly used straw donors and pushed through a building that wasn’t fire safe on behalf of his benefactors, who were various people from Turkey (though straw donors were also allegedly used by another, fourth businessman, who was of a different “ethnic” group, per the indictment). He also allegedly flew business class on Turkish Airlines a lot. This went on for almost a decade. I recommend reading the full indictment, actually: whoever wrote it seems to have enjoyed themselves. Even for New York City, that’s not good. There’s killing a groundhog and then there’s allegedly doing a decade of crimes.
Being mayor of New York City does seem like a hard and basically thankless job. I don’t know why people insist on believing that the mayor of New York could be the next president. They are more likely, by a lot, to be the next punchline on a late night show.
But it’s the most important city in the country. Millions of people live there. And so I hope the next mayor at least starts to approach “good.” Or, at the very least, doesn’t allegedly not mention the Armenian genocide because his Turkish donors allegedly asked him to. Allegedly.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
On Oct. 29, I’ll be participating in a series at the Leo Baeck Institute by taking part in an event on antisemitism and Jewish identities in early 20th century Germany and in the United States then and now. More information is here. Please come if you can.
From JTA: “Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.”
A new poll shows differences in Haredi and Modern Orthodox voting preferences.
I loved — loved! — this piece on the depiction of Jewish women on the new show, Nobody Wants This.
-ET