Новости за 17.02.2017

“Good evening! Kambawa!” exclaimed Rabbi Marvin Tokayer to a crowd of nearly 100 guests after Japan’s Ambassador in New York, Reiichiro Takahashi, presented him with the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays. During the award ceremony, which took place at Takahashi’s Manhattan residence on February 6, Tokayer was lauded by the ambassador for having “enlightened and deepened the understanding between the Jewish and Japanese people,” the ambassador concluded with a hearty “mazal... Читать дальше...

With restaurants like Machneyuda in Jerusalem and The Palomar in London, Yossi Elad has emerged as a key figure in Israel’s recent gastronomic revolution. Relying heavily on seasonal ingredients, Elad and his two partners, Assaf Granit and Uri Navon—their flagship Jerusalem restaurant is named after the city’s iconic open-air market, Machane Yehuda—have pioneered a school of modern Jerusalem cooking that has inspired many copycats but has few real rivals.

If Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Andy Warhol had, made wild passionate love, say, and had a baby, the result may well have been Nir Hod. The Israeli artist is as much master of his craft as he is pop, and his work—from sculpture to video to high realism painting—is tantalizing. He shows us the beauty of destruction, the allure of the forbidden, and how conflict can exist in perfect harmony. Like the snake in the Garden of Eden, Hod’s work consistently temps us with the sweet and vicious allure of the forbidden. Читать дальше...

On Monday night, I attended a one-off fundraising performance at Carnegie Hall of Mahler’s Second Symphony. It was played by Music for Life International (MFLI), an orchestra made up of musicians from great orchestras all over the world. Music for Life takes its name from the concerts of the same name that Leonard Bernstein organized and conducted at Carnegie Hall in the late ‘80s, to raise money to fight AIDS. Today, MFLI raises money to support humanitarian causes of all sorts; this concert supported HelpMeSee... Читать дальше...

That has been the predominant question gnawing at so many of us since the inauguration of Donald Trump last month. At first, the answers entertained were stentorian—Organize! Galvanize! Resist! Then, slowly, we began to learn that even the most committed citizen cannot be sustained in a state of perpetual outrage. Nor should we be: Not least among the indignities of the way we live now is how much of our emotional and intellectual bandwidth is consumed by thinking and talking about the president... Читать дальше...

Paul Auster’s digitally-titled 4 3 2 1 recounts the childhood and 1960s coming-of-age of a literary-minded New Jersey Jewish boy—and, as befits a countdown, the novel’s most striking and appealing trait is a feeling of onrushing momentum, which is a necessary trait, too, given that 4 3 2 1 goes on for nearly 900 pages. The tone of the book is normally relaxed and conversational, sometimes chatty. And yet, a discipline governs the prose rhythms and drives the sentences forward, one sentence spilling into the next. Читать дальше...

Robert Kraft, the owner of the Super Bowl champion Boston Patriots and maybe the most beloved zillionaire in America, has been attacked for being a friend of Donald Trump, not so beloved by the liberal elites and their children. Nor the politicized young of racial—though not especially ethnic—minorities. Affluent Jews are flat-out contemptuous of the president, although they have unduly burdened his son-in-law with the chore of keeping him “reasonable” and “sane.” Watch out, Jared, this constituency is both captious and crabby. Читать дальше...

Yesterday, President Donald Trump made a fairly straightforward statement about the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was promptly inflated into a geopolitical earthquake by much of the media. “I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like,” he said. “I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one. I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two. But honestly, if Bibi and... Читать дальше...

At the tail end of his 96-minute press conference earlier today, an agitated Donald Trump, visibly rattled after a bombardment of tough Russia and national security-related inquiries, craved the solace of an easy question from an admiring questioner. “I want to find a friendly reporter,” the president said at the one hour-and-18 minute mark, in possible open mockery of the forest of raised hands in front of him. He happened on Jake Turx, a reporter for Ami magazine, a Brooklyn-based Jewish publication. Читать дальше...