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The Week In Rear View, January 26 Edition

All the news that’s fit to skim

by
Jesse Bernstein
January 26, 2018
(Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
Vice President Mike Pence is seen during a visit in the Western Wall on January 23, 2018 in Jerusalem.(Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
(Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
Vice President Mike Pence is seen during a visit in the Western Wall on January 23, 2018 in Jerusalem.(Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

It’s that time of the week again. Kick back, relax, and check out the what the Tribe was up to this week. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Female reporters kept behind mehitza Pence’s event: At an event at the Kotel, female reporters and photographers were barred from photographing the Vice President as he prayed. WHO could have guessed that a press event for the man with the “never take a one-on-one meeting with a woman” rule would have weird gender politics.

Obama joked that he was “basically a liberal Jew”The former president made the remark during a talk at Temple Emanu-El. Upcoming guests to the synagogue include Dan Rather, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, all of whom also confirmed that they had converted to liberal Judaism.

Store will no longer sell yellow stars that say “gun owner”: Shouts out to the good folks down at, this is not a joke, Violent Little Machine Shop that made this patch without laughing so hard that they accidentally sewed it on to their own hands. Also, this email from the gun parts store owner that sold them: “We will not make a habit out of removing products simply because they offend someone, however we are making an exception in this situation due to the religious implications and because the patch is in fact no longer relevant under the Trump Administration.”

The Chosen Eagles fan: Phil Basser is 99 years old, Jewish, and quickly making a name for himself as the newest mascot for the Super Bowl-bound Philadelphia Eagles. If you were still on the fence for this upcoming fence, I don’t know what else I can do to bring you back to the derech.

Fraudster dressed up as Orthodox Jew: A man from Shreveport, Louisiana is accused of defrauding banks and investors out of nearly $100 million over 8 years, but what really takes the cake here is that, in 2013, he dressed himself up as an Orthodox Jew to meet with investors in New York. I’d like to imagine that they weren’t even Jewish, but that they had somehow made it known that they expected him to be, and he just ran with it. Or maybe he was just challenging himself.

Jesse Bernstein is a former Intern at Tablet.