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Sundown: Occupy Yom Kippur

Plus some reading for when you’re not eating

by
Marc Tracy
October 07, 2011
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
The march in Lower Manhattan Wednesday.Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
The march in Lower Manhattan Wednesday.Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

We are ending early today for the holiday. Have an easy and meaningful fast. If you have any questions, consult us. Don’t forget, caffeine suppositories are an option. And don’t forget, also, that the best way to end your fast is with a shot of vodka.

• The Kol Nidre service tonight at Occupy Wall Street will be across Broadway from Zuccotti Park, in an deliberate effort to expand the Occupation. (If you go, try to find me and say hi.) [Forward]

• Why Occupy Wall Street is taken most seriously in the Middle East. [NYT]

• Washington Capitals forward Jeff Halpern will Koufax tonight; Coach Bruce Boudreau won’t. [WP D.C. Sports Bog]

• Nor will the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun; the Times’ Richard Sandomir explores further. [NYT]

• It’s kind of adorable how our basic Ashkenazic break-fast foods are seen as exotic in Israel. [Ynet]

• It may be a travesty of democracy, but Russia’s Jews are pretty okay with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s imminent return to the presidency. [JTA/Jewish Journal]

• Calvin Trillin has a tale to tell from Toronto’s diamond district. [The New Yorker]

• Left-wing Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk set an important precedent, getting a court to allow him to register his official religious status as “without religion.” [Haaretz]

• Nukes or no nukes, Tablet Magazine contributor Bruce Riedel insists Iran will not surpass Israel’s qualitative military edge. [The Daily Beast]

• Saul Bellow on being “a Jewish writer in America.” [NYRB]

• Columbia Professor Bruce Robbins is making a movie called Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists. [Kickstarter]

• For only the second time ever, centuries-old Bible manuscripts from Damascus were displayed, in Jeruslaem. [AP/WP]

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? -Isaiah

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.