Navigate to News section

Sundown: Bulgaria Not Blaming Hezbollah

Plus what the ‘knaidel’ debate says about us, poverty in Israel, and more

by
Stephanie Butnick
June 05, 2013
A member of the Israeli rescue and recovery squad collects evidence during investigations at the Airport in Burgas on July 19, 2012 as he examines the site of a suicide blast targeting Israelis took place.(NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP/GettyImages)
A member of the Israeli rescue and recovery squad collects evidence during investigations at the Airport in Burgas on July 19, 2012 as he examines the site of a suicide blast targeting Israelis took place.(NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP/GettyImages)

• Bulgaria’s new government, installed last week, is backing away from previous claims that the July 2012 bus bombing that killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian driver, was orchestrated by Hezbollah. [Forward]

• Meanwhile, the shelling of Qusayr, a Syrian rebel stronghold near Lebanon, has led civilians to turn against Hezbollah guerrillas who, along with Syrian troops, besieged the city. [NYT]

• Dara Horn explains why the whole ‘knaidel‘ debate says much more, tragically so, about the history of the Yiddish language than any of us probably realized. [NYT]

• For all the ‘start-up nation’ talk, Israel was found by a recent study to be the most impoverished of the 34 developed nations. [The New Yorker]

• The winning Powerball ticket ($590 million) was purchased by an 84-year-old woman at a Publix in Florida. If that doesn’t make you call your grandparents, I don’t know what will. [BuzzFeed]

• But are they kosher? Some very aggressive skinless hotdog ads from yesteryear. [HuffPost]

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.