Sundown: Expanded Fasting Edition

Closing up shop early today to put on our finest suits and our worst sneakers. Use the comments to tell everyone where you’ll be. I’ll start: I’ll be at NYU’s Bronfman Center. Have an easy fast, everyone.

• First off, if you haven’t yet, do consider reading two excellent book reviews we ran this week in the midst of the High Holiday hubbub: Columnist Lee Smith on a revelatory new memoir about Israeli prime ministers; and Itamar Rabinovitch on the Balfour Declaration.

• The West Bank is closed til Saturday night. [JTA]

• Martin Peretz apologies. [The Spine]

• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Nathan Thrall reports on U.S. efforts to buttress Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s security services. [NYRB]

• After having his mom tell him to do what’s right, rookie New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis has decided to play tonight against the Atlanta Braves. [ESPN]

• Leslie Gelb points out that the “nothing bad can come from talking” trope actually isn’t true: Frequently, failed Mideast negotiations have been followed by increased bloodshed. [Daily Beast]

• Somebody wrote a poem about Hank Greenberg playing and then not playing in 1934. [Kaplan’s Korner]

• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Michael Weiss says U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s preferred comparison of Hamas to the Irish Republican Army is facile. [Slate]

• J.J. Goldberg praises strange bedfellows. [Forward]

• And if you haven’t read enough about Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals, here’s yet another take. [n1br]