More in ‘swine flu’

I’ve been writing about parenting for eight years. And for eight years I’ve joked that if you want to make readers crazy, you only need two words: “vaccines” and “breastfeeding.” So I shouldn’t have been struck by the passionate rantings on Facebook following my colleague Allison Hoffman’s story on how anti-vaccine fears caused a ...

• The Israeli military seized an Iranian ship holding a hidden stock of arms intended for Hezbollah. [Haaretz]
• Meantime, in East Jerusalem, a group of Jewish settlers hired guards to help them forcibly evict a Palestinian family from a house on disputed land. [AP]
• In her continuing quest to clarify her statements about Israeli settlement ...

Know you don’t want to get swine flu but occasionally forgetful of how best to prevent it? Who better to turn to for advice, then, than an bald, dorky, upper-middle-aged Jewish doctor who awkwardly raps about safety tips? Ladies and gentlemen, we present, courtesy of YouTube, Dr. Mache Seibel’s hip-hop “Five Tips to Avoid H1N1 ...

• Admission to religious private schools in England has become so competitive that some families are resorting to synagogue attendance to get their kids in. [Financial Times]
• Israel took a break from its busy schedule of refuting charges of committing war crimes and withholding water from Palestinians to deny involvement in the blood diamond trade. ...

•A federal fraud trial opened in South Dakota yesterday against Sholom Rubashkin, head of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa shut down last year after an immigration raid. It’s being held in South Dakota because a judge ruled that Iowans are already biased against the Rubashkins. [USA Today]
• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is ...

A school in the West Bank city of Nablus is being closed for a week after some students tested positive for swine flu, the AP reports. This isn’t the first time the H1N1 virus has hit the territory—as we noted in July, cases were diagnosed this summer in the West Bank though not in Gaza, ...

• Berlin 36, a new German documentary, tells the story of a female Jewish high-jumping phenom whom the Nazis replaced in the 1936 Olympics—with a man in a skirt. [Times of London]
• An interview with noted Holocaust denier David Irving will be featured in Spanish newspaper El Mundo’s series of “innovative” views on WWII ...

• Like the fabled restaurant mints, it turns out mezuzahs, hung in doorways and traditionally kissed for luck, are covered in gross bacteria from so many pious hands and mouths. In order to prevent the spread of swine flu, one doctor recommends becoming more religious—about hygiene—and sticking with air kisses for the time being. [Ynet]
• ...

Some Jewish leaders may have failed to switch the name of the H1N1 virus from swine flu to Mexican flu, but others are taking a more, er, practical approach to battling the disease. Yesterday morning a group of rabbis and kabbalists boarded a plane in Israel and flew over the country with the goal of ...

Swine flu has hit the West Bank, but, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Israeli blockade that prevents Palestinians from entering or leaving the Gaza Strip has thus far also worked as a blockade against swine flu in that area, proving that there’s always a silver lining.
Meantime, the mufti of Nablus has issued a ...