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Sundown: You Don’t Call, You Don’t Tweet

Israeli etiquette, Ahmadinejad shunned, and a happy new yarrr!

by
Hadara Graubart
September 17, 2009

• Not finding enough followers on Twitter? Focus on the one you can count on: your mother. She just wants to know where you are, what you’ve eaten, and whether you’re wearing a sweater. [YouTube]
• Despite the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be joined on his visit to New York “by the only Jewish Iranian serving in his parliament,” Jewish organizations have—along with pretty much everyone else he invited—declined an offer to have dinner with the Iranian President. [Ynet]
• In case you haven’t picked up on it from Tablet’s holiday coverage, this Saturday, September 19, is Rosh Hashanah. What you may not know is that it’s also International Talk Like a Pirate Day! We will be forever indebted to anyone who sends us a video of their rabbi saying “shiver me timbers” or the like on the bimah. [Talk Like a Pirate]
• Using the slogan, “Fighting the settlement freeze, saying no to Obama, we are building sukkot for eternity in Judea and Samaria” (rolls right off the tongue, no?), some settlers in Israel are, well, building (traditionally temporary) huts they hope will be exempt from any future demolition. [Ynet]
• A new initiative aims to spruce up Israelis’ manners through lessons “such as showing courtesy on the roads and not blowing cigarette smoke into other people’s faces.” One commenter is optimistic: “Now Mashiach will come!!” [JPost]
• Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit the synagogue in Rome after the High Holidays; he’ll be the second pope to do so, after John Paul II in 1986. [JTA]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.