Sundown: Shop ’n’ Pray
Perennial prize-winners, fear of Christ, and Gibson’s luck
October 07, 2009
• A supermarket chain in Israel is committed to “maximizing the shopping experience”—not with low prices or expanded merchandise, but with in-store synagogues. [Ynet]
• Why aren’t Jewish Democrats grabbing the kind of city-wide political offices in New York that they once held? Shrinking demographic? Low turnout? Switching parties? Or maybe Jewish interests dovetail enough with the population at large that we actually vote for candidates regardless of their religion? [Jewish Week]
• The Jewish founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is suing a chaplaincy in Dallas, a member of which, he alleges, prayed to Jesus to “kill me and my family then wipe away our descendants for 10 generations.” [JTA]
• Newsweek puts both Amos Oz and Philip Roth on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature; it also gives Bob Dylan 25-1 odds. At this point, hearing any of those names associated with an award feels like déjà vu. [Newsweek]
• The United Nations will add the Holocaust to its curriculum for Palestinian students, despite protests from Hamas. [Independent]
• Which may give them a leg up on Mel Gibson, whose drunk driving conviction has been “erased,” a bad precedent for a guy who may already have some revisionist views of history. [Reuters]
Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.
