Grab bag week
On a little of this and a little of that
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Not this Monday but the following Monday, paid subscribers will get this month’s ET Leave home, a monthly travel recommendation.
All subscribers to this newsletter also now get The Political Cycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on politics in the US, UK, India, and the wider world, ad-free and directly to their inboxes from me. My co-hosts and I are trying to broaden its reach and sending it out to all of you is one way to do that. I hope you’ll give it a listen.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Bright Wall/Dark Room, I wrote about Hester Street (50 this year!), Jewish identity, and assimilation (or, if you prefer, acculturation) in America.
In the New York Times, Marc Tracy wrote about how No Other Land became a box office success without a traditional distribution deal.
Relatedly, from the Associated Press: “Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film No Other Land on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses.”
In case you wanted to read more about the rise of the far-right (not to be mistaken with the increasingly anti-democratic regular right) in Poland, I am including this Notes from Poland report.
From the Independent: “A Harvard scientist who fled Russia because she opposed the war in Ukraine is facing deportation back to the land of Vladimir Putin, her friends claim.”
MY VIEWS ON…
…a collection of realizations from the week!
A grab bag of thoughts for you:
I’m trying to get through the complete works of Primo Levi this year. I don’t really have anything to say about it at this point besides recommending that you, too, read some Primo Levi.
Sometimes other people will try to put their feelings onto you. But other people can’t dictate your feelings, or your actions. You get to choose that. You can’t choose that they’re doing that to you, but you do get to choose how you respond to it.
It’s so funny how little things will still bother you even as the global things fall apart.
On the other hand, it’s nice how little things will still pick you up.
I probably care too much about what people think of me and I hope that, as I get deeper into my thirties, I get better at letting that go.
I don’t think I really have a judgment on people choosing to stay in or leave a country they feel is under threat but I do think that in cases where those for whom it is a choice choose to leave, we can at least talk about it as such, and acknowledge that that is not necessarily who is at greatest risk or under greatest threat at this particular moment in time.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
I thought this Guardian piece by Lihi Yona and Itamar Mann on IHRA, nationalism (Christian and otherwise), and what it means to be a Jew was just fantastic.
From the Herald-Times: “In an open letter, 38 Jewish professors at Indiana University urged university leadership to stand for free speech and ‘academic autonomy’ as the Trump administration investigates and threatens federal funding over the university’s antisemitism response.”
JTA has a good report on how people across the political spectrum are assessing the decision to participate, or not, in the World Zionist Congress.
From Jewish Currents: “Former employees say the [ADL] is shifting away from educational content on racism and the LGBTQ experience and focusing more exclusively on antisemitism.”
-ET