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Sundown: The More the Warier

Too many converts, segregated lectures, and more

by
Hadara Graubart
June 19, 2009

• Jewish communities in Latin America are having a tough time dealing with recent influxes of converts—they suspect the newbies of ulterior motives like scoring Israeli citizenship, and sometimes there’s just not enough room in the mikveh. [JTA]
• Tired of participating in impromptu wet t-shirt contests while trying to stay covered up at the beach, Orthodox Jewish and Muslim women are designing modest swimwear, including something called the “burqini.” [USA Today]
• At Haifa University, Jewish and Arab students are banned from attending each others’ more incendiary guest lectures (Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and a radical sheikh, respectively). Isn’t hearing guest lecturers that piss you off, like, the whole point of university? [Ynet]
• In a series of articles attempting to debunk myths about Orthodox weddings, like the hole in the sheet (do people really still believe that?), the writer ends up illuminating some more interesting, troubling customs. Like the fact that, in her Brooklyn community, it’s considered “far more scandalous to break off an engagement than to file for divorce.” [Brooklyn Examiner]
The Jerusalem Post polled 500 Israelis and found that only six percent of them see President Obama as “pro-Israel,” compared to 30 percent last month. [JPost]

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