Новости за 21.02.2020

Hungary’s recent update of its National Basic Curriculum, a set of guidelines and standards about what should be taught in public schools, sparked a heated public discussion here at home. But the debate remained within professional, pedagogical boundaries. With her article, which appeared on Tablet behind the sensational headline “Jewish Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész is Dumped from the Hungarian Curriculum,” Susan Rubin Suleiman claims anti-Semitism lies at the root of the changes and adds an unnecessary... Читать дальше...

I was excited to learn last week that this year’s Israel Prize, the State’s highest award for scholarship, will go to Professor Vered Noam, an eminent Talmudist at Tel-Aviv University and the first woman to receive the award for in this field. This not only puts her in the company of the great pillars of the field like her doctoral advisor Yaakov Sussman, but also gives recognition to the prominent contributions of women in a field that was not always as welcoming to gender diversity.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Berakhot 49 and 50, bring up a familiar concept: Does practice really make perfect? And if so, does it apply to all areas of religious life, or only those we choose to take upon ourselves? The show’s producer, Josh Kross, returns to talk about the comforts and challenges that come with religious observance. Does it really take 10,000 hours of practice to be a good Jew? Listen and find out.

Guess what? If you ask for spaghetti Bolognese in Bologna, people roll their eyes at you in Italian. (It’s like judging you in Spanish.)

If the past few years have proved anything, it’s that people are wrong to think they’ll know tyranny when they see it. Those who fancy themselves especially well attuned to recognizing and resisting tyranny tend to get so excited at the idea of playing dress up in heroic costumes that they lose the plot. Think of the New York Times billboard ad reading “Truth. It’s more important now than ever.” It is? More than ever? More than during the McCarthy hearings in 1954? More than during the Vietnam War? Читать дальше...

Is it anti-Semitic to argue that Michael Bloomberg is using his enormous personal wealth and ownership of a large media outlet to skew the Democratic primary process?

As this decade dawns, we are confronted with the reality of climate crisis—both in the image of uncontainable fires raging across the Australian bush, and in the voices of young people speaking truth to power and calling out for their future and the living Earth. This man-made crisis, caused by carbon emissions and our treating the Earth as an endless resource to be exploited, is no longer an image of a potentially dangerous future, but is our present reality.