Sundown: The Fall of the AJCongress
Plus Woody goes electric, and more
July 20, 2010
The Woodman in Paris earlier this month.(Flore Giraud/AFP/Getty Images)
• New reporting argues that the American Jewish Congress’s Madoff-related loss of funds was less the inherent cause of failure and more what exposed “longstanding weaknesses” at the nine-decade-old organization. [JTA]
• South Africa is sending its ambassador to Israel, whom it recalled in the aftermath of the flotilla raid, back to the Holy Land. [Haaretz]
• J Street cuts an ad defending Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pennsylvania), a Senate candidate, implicitly picking a fight with Bill Kristol’s new outfit, the Emergency Committee for Israel. [Ben Smith]
• Berlin’s Jewish Museum received approval to buy the necessary land for a $13 million addition, also to be designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. [JTA]
• A Greek-born Israeli had a doctor treat him for the first time in 65 years after having a heart attack. Why had he avoided medical professionals? Because he had been one of Josef Mengele’s “patients” at Auschwitz. [Negev Rock City]
• Woody Allen is predictably curmudgeonly (at best) explaining why he recorded audio versions of his four humor books. [Arts Beat]
Seinfeld goes the thriller route.
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
