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This Week on The Scroll

A look at the week that was.

by
Adam Chandler
March 15, 2013
Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid and Jewish Home's Naftali Bennett(Reuters)
Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid and Jewish Home's Naftali Bennett(Reuters)

• This week, The Scroll started out in Austin, Texas, at the technology segment of the South by Southwest Conference. I learned how some Jewish techies managed the difficult task of putting down their devices to observe the Sabbath, was privy to a strange Jewish love story, talked with Alan Weinkrantz about how technology is bringing Israelis and Palestinians together, and witnessed the peers of the late activist and programmer Aaron Swartz pay tribute to their friend.

• Houston’s Beren Academy basketball team, which was at the center of a controversy last year when it was nearly forced to forfeit a game scheduled on Shabbat, made another run deep into the playoffs.

• Batya Ungar-Sargon wrote about renewed hope that Beth Hamedrash Hagadol–a 19th-century Lower East Side shul–would not be demolished.

• As Ellen Ullman’s addition to the Tablet Original Fiction Series debuted this week, Elissa Goldstein sat down with the author for a great interview.

• The Associated Press got some heat for having to correct the caption of an incendiary photograph from the Israel-Hamas conflagration in November, which inaccurately blamed the death of a Palestinian infant on an Israeli airstrike instead of a Hamas rocket.

• Yet another ridiculous bar mitzvah video hit the internet, causing some grimaces.

• Billy Joel made the dreams of a young fan come true when he performed “New York State of Mind” with the student.

• An Auschwitz survivor began an arduous search for his lost twin brother on Facebook.

• There was more disheartening news about the growing exodus of Jews from France.

• Natalie Schachar looked into reports about newly anointed Pope Francis’ years in Argentina during which he was accused of overlooking human rights violations by the military dictatorship.

• We learned that the first Ethiopian to be named Miss Israel, Yityish Aynaw, will be dining with President Obama on his upcoming trip to Israel.

• Sohrab Amari confronted LGBT activist and author Sarah Schulman about her views on Hamas and was surprised to find that she didn’t have any.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.