Shabbat shalom JNR community! What a week!
We are heading to the slopes of Vermont tomorrow for a much needed respite from the hectic day-to-day drudgery of retired life. I am hopeful that it will also be a week away from consuming the news cycle, and instead, shifting my diet to reading material my sister has been dutifully sending me along with some Ben and Jerry’s and game playing with my nieces and nephews. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this week’s reflection and curation of the news for Jews.
Apologies to Jane Austen on this week’s subtitle. It’s a reference to the revelations from the explosive interviews conducted by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid with the orange turd that is creating so many headlines in Israel and around the world. Just how much credit should we be giving to the disgraced former President for the warming of relationships between Israel and its Arab neighbors? Can we see past our hateful scorn of this sub-human, non-sensible, person and recognize what many are calling historic progress for peace in the region? Can we see past other revelations in the same interview where he claims “Jews don’t care about Israel” and Jewish people use to have “absolute power over congress” and his head-line grabbing F-U to his “friend” Nutten-yahoo ? Nah, I certainly can’t and won’t. But, I am not going to pretend to be an expert in this area, so what does look like more than just symbolic progress is worth examining. Hence, there are a few articles I have added that will hopefully help make some sense on the topic. I also suggest you listen to a half hour podcast where Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian and Yonit Levi of Channel 12 Israel interview Barak Ravid. Click here for the podcast.
In other more secular news, the January 6 Committee continues to uncover and release more substantive evidence that the orange turd and his boot lickers in congress and in the right wing media were directly responsible for the atrocious insurrection against our great country. That hard evidence of this treason and hypocrisy is surfacing on the lame stream media should not be a surprise to anyone with a normal brain, but I am sensing a subtle shift in the thinking of a portion of these sycophants that gives me some hope that the tide may finally be turning and it could help wash this national scum out to sea. Let’s hope the committee keeps up the good work, the DOJ gets a backbone and throws more of these a-holes in jail, and that the cleansing of this national scum doesn’t leave too messy a ring around the country’s bathtub.
Before I get to the news for Jews, a final note on the continuing danger to our dear but dying democracy. If you haven’t read it yet, Barton Gelman’s piece in the Atlantic lays out in very clear and convincing terms that a coup is already under way. The piece, “Trump’s Next Coup has Already Begun” makes the case that we should not be focusing so much on voter rights, but on how the votes, once they are cast, are counted. Pretty goddamn scary stuff, which is why we need federal laws in place to protect the country from this Republican attack on our constitution. Read the story here.
Now, on with the Jew news show we go. Here are a few news items I thought you might find interesting, with links for more details.
- ‘The president doesn’t like you guys now’: The inside story of Trump’s rage against Netanyahu – If you want to go deep on the orange turd’s relationship with Nutten-yahoo, read this new book by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, which should be out in English shortly. It gives a behind-the-scenes look at what is now being revealed as a rocky U.S.-Israel relationship during the Trump administration, even as Washington helped negotiate deals between Israel and several Gulf Arab states. Read the story ➤
- Lamb schwarma tacos? A kosher Mexicali restaurant that seems like a mix of Chipotle and Taco Bell recently opened in Los Angeles. It’s part of a trend of kosher eateries based on ethnic cuisines including Chinese, Japanese, French and Italia that are also attracting young non-Jews. Kosher goes mainstream? Read more here (CNN).
- From the Culture Desk: Six decades of Bob Dylan’s art on exhibit in Miami – Although I am a huge Dylan fan, I never quite understood why he lent his name to a whiskey brand or did a Victoria Secrets commercial. I guess a true artist has many formats to express his/her art. In addition to these tacky commercial ventures, Dylan has also made paintings, collages and sculptures. More than 180 of these pieces are now on display, along with handwritten song lyrics and archival pieces at Miami’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. See the art and read the story ➤
- What the left and the right got wrong about the Abraham Accords – This is another view on the orange turd’s impact on the middle east. This piece tries valiantly to balance actual achievement vs the horrid human that might have helped in their progress. Read the story here.
- On this week in history: Adolf Eichmann, one of of the architects of the Nazi’s “Final Solution,” was sentenced to death on Dec. 15, 1961 for crimes against humanity. Eichmann wrote a letter to Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi asking for clemency. Hours after that petition was denied, he was hanged, one of only two capital punishments carried out in Israel’s history. As mentioned in a previous JNR issue, Eichmann’s court case became the basis of a Superman comic book. Read the story here.
That’s all folks!
And I am sure you don’t need a reminder about this omicron nonsense surging all over the place, but hey everyone, let’s be careful out there!
Brad out.
Jew News Review 