Life!
Life has a way of confusing us/blessing and bruising us
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Next Monday, paid subscribers will get this month’s ET Read Home. I’m going to write about Primo Levi’s The Truce even though I’ve been trying to break up the Levi books for this series because I don’t have time to read something new BUT for August I’m going to try to read and write about Klara and the Sun. In the meantime, read The Truce!
With that! Onto news, Jews, and views.
NEWS
Some more great Norway in the World Cup content for you (weirdly arguably the best genre to come out of this tournament), this time from New York Magazine: “Karl Ove Knausgaard ‘Can’t Enjoy When Norway Is Playing’”
More of the sports content you come here for, from TSN Canada: “Lowry retires a Raptor in fitting end to storybook career” (you should read this even if you don’t care about Kyle Lowry or the Toronto Raptors because it is also just a lovely piece about growing up)
I thought this Defector piece on the second Trump presidency and the Great American State Fair was very good. You can pair it with this New York Times piece on how the president’s fireworks show brought our city’s air pollution to levels deemed “unhealthy.”
MY VIEWS ON…
…Life!!!
I was going to write about last week’s horrific display of subjugation of national ideals to one man’s ego or something about what people rushing to declare other Jews “kapos” says about what and how we remember BUT on Thursday, mere hours after I sent out my tale of woe and wonder, my husband had his transplant surgery. We did not know this would happen until it did and I am still in a kind of disbelief. We know there is so much ahead of us, but it is an incredible thing to have this behind us. I can’t imagine a better birthday present for our son, who is one tomorrow, but I got him some Sesame Street figurines and a lion bath towel anyway.
The combination of the two—the surgery and the birthday—have had me repeating to myself over and over again this past week what an incredible thing it is to be alive. And I will be back next week with the kind of content you presumably actually subscribed for but all I really have to say at this point—this precious, fragile point—is that earlier this year I was at a funeral and someone was telling me what was new with them and I said that everyone I knew was going through something, and that life is amazing, but also very hard. And today I will write that life can be very hard, but also, it’s amazing.
…AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
From the Forward: “Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of New York City’s Park Avenue Synagogue recently published an opinion column in the New York Daily News in the form of a letter he imagined writing to Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander in 2028, anticipating Lander will lose reelection as a Jew who made ‘a deal with the devil’ to defeat Rep. Dan Goldman with help of political allies ‘increasingly colored by antisemitism.’ This is Lander’s response.” If you’re going to read one, you should read the other.
Also from the Forward: “Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College will welcome their largest incoming classes since the Obama administration”
From Haaretz: “In Israel’s largest mixed Jewish-Arab city, coexistence has been put under severe strain in recent years. How could this affect the inclination of Arab citizens to vote in the upcoming election? And could a new wave of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants affect the final outcome?”
Also from Haaretz, this editorial: “1,000 Days Since October 7, Those Responsible Are Still in Power”
-ET
Congratulations Neil!!