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Sundown: Maidel-on-Maidel Action

Online Yiddish, comedic justice, and evangelical fervor

by
Hadara Graubart
August 25, 2009

• A new film to be directed by Darren Aronofsky features Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis engaging in “ecstasy-induced hungry aggressive angry sex.” But, of course, the real question is: “Does the story that surrounds the sex”—a psychologically probing tale of a Russian ballerina and her doppelganger—“disappoint or excel?” [ScriptShadow]
The Nation’s blog speaks up for Israeli professor Neve Gordon’s recent—and much maligned—op-ed supporting a boycott against his own country, which he believes is practicing apartheid. [Nation]
Google Translate has added Yiddish to its list of available languages. According to the commenters on Vos iz Neias?—who would know—the service is faulty, so you might want to cross-reference before you try to impress your grandparents. [VIN]
• Sunda Croonquist, a half-black, half-Swedish comedian who converted to Judaism, is being sued by her mother-in-law for jokes like this one about what the older woman said in advance of the birth of her granddaughter: “I want to know what you’re naming that little tchotchke. Now we don’t want a name that’s difficult to pronounce like Shaniqua. We’re thinking a name short but delicious. Like Hadassah or Goldie.” [AP]
• An open letter to Mike Huckabee asserts that the former governor’s “hopes for an eventual violent apocalypse in Israel” have blinded him to the Zionism of “Jewish Americans who would dare to see the grandkids of their Israeli cousins living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors.” [True/Slant]

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