On basketball
I know. I'm surprised, too.
And we’re back!
I hope you’re all doing well.
Housekeeping notes:
As always, if there is something you would like to see more or less of in this newsletter, please let me know! Only paid subscribers can comment on posts (talk around here is cheap, but not free), but all of you are welcome to email me with your thoughts. I just ask that you keep it polite and constructive.
And now onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
Sarah Wildman wrote this beautiful essay on life after her daughter’s passing.
The Department of Homeland Security has warned that threats to LGBTQ people are on the rise.
Italy experienced the worst floods in a century.
India has announced it is withdrawing 2000-rupee notes from circulation.
I thought this conversation with JNU Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan on the limits and dangers of India’s pursuit of a multipolar world was interesting.
The Economist has a piece on a “low-budget and allegedly Islamophobic film” that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been “enthusiastically championing.”
From the New York Times: “The governor of the Russian region of Belgorod said that a security operation was continuing on Tuesday, a day after anti-Kremlin Russian fighters allied with Ukraine appeared to have mounted a rare ground assault inside Russia.”
MY VIEWS ON…
…basketball!
It happened like this.
In 2018, my now-husband and I moved in together. Sports were on television a lot. And there is a sports commentary show (the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz)(he gets the show, as its fans say) that we listened to together a lot, too, because I wanted to show interest in things he liked and also because we were living in a one bedroom apartment.
I decided that there should be one (1) sport that I could follow with interest. I already followed soccer, kind of, but that feels like it’s not quite present in American consciousness in the same way. I like going to baseball games in person, but find the game itself pretty slow (sorry!). I grew up watching American football and managed to maintain no real understanding of how the game works.
This left basketball, which is fast moving and full of dramatic characters and which, most importantly, had the Toronto Raptors.
If memory serves, I went to a Raptors game at some point as a kid living in Toronto. Also, at one point in first grade, I sat next to the kid whose dad was the first owner of the team. So I felt a certain kinship with the team. And, as it happened, the year that I moved in with Neil was the year of Kawhi Leonard, which is to say, the year that coincided with the team doing so well that they won the NBA championships.
There is a critique of me here, which is that I am a bandwagon fan. And this is true. But it is also true that it was a thrilling start to rooting in earnest for the team, even if Neil would at times turn to me and say, “you’re just yelling ‘FRED!’ at the screen.” I was hooked.
And the thing that happens is if you’re hooked on a team, you get hooked on the wider sport. So I now have a favorite sports podcast of my home (I love you, The Raptors Show), and my little Raptors paraphernalia, but I have also been opened up to the wider world of the NBA, with all the highs and lows that implies. There’s getting to enjoy the Heat’s improbable but not really journey this playoffs. There’s James Harden breaking COVID protocol and defending himself by saying that he was going to support his homegirl because she was becoming a boss. There’s the frustrating parts, too, like how l'affaire Kyrie was handled or how I’m part of the problem by writing this about the NBA, not the WNBA.
And there are also people who swear basketball is over and done, and the way it’s played today isn’t really basketball. Which is fine. There’s still the game I enjoy watching, whatever it is, and however late I came to it. And there’s now this thing I can talk about not just with Neil, but with my dad, and my friend’s brother, and lots of other people.
I guess this is less about basketball and more about meeting people where they are and doing things because they make other people happy and in turn finding enjoyment there yourself, and about connecting over things that you didn’t feel like you ever would. But it’s about basketball, too.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
If you read nothing else from this newsletter, I encourage you to read this op-Ed by Lila Corwin Berman on the trap of arguing with the “mainstream” American Jewish position (hint: what mainstream American Jewish position?).
Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs who is also tasked with combating antisemitism defended Musk’s tweets on George Soros, which is not unexpected but still very “the subtext is now text.”
Alan Dershowitz wrote a piece explaining that what Elon Musk tweeted about George Soros—ie comparing him to Magneto and alleging that he wanted to destroy civilization—was not antisemitic and pointed to Soros’s philanthropic giving to, for example, human rights watch. This was published in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it for yourself to see if I’m being unfair when I characterize it as intellectually unserious and staid.
Doug Mastriano, whom you may remember as the Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate with a penchant for saying antisemitic things, tried to join his state legislature’s new Jewish caucus but was rejected.
From JTA: “Austrian authorities are searching for two men suspected of blaring a recording of Hitler’s voice and a series of ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Sieg Heil’ chants on a public train for about 20 minutes on Sunday night.”
Also from JTA: “The Biden administration said a visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, was ‘provocative’ and cautioned against changes at the contested holy site.”
This is a lovely piece about how a community of Jews from Odessa, pushed out of their city by war, is starting life over again in Romania.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back here soon.
-ET