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Sundown: Evolution of Evil

Von Brunn’s descent, school rules, and parking protests

by
Hadara Graubart
July 06, 2009

• Alleged U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter James von Brunn’s life seemed to start off on the right track, but devolved steadily into paranoid anti-Semitism, particularly following the death of his son two years ago. [WP]
• A new project investigates the number of children left in foster care in Denmark during WWII while their parents fled the Nazis to Sweden. [Copenhagen Post]
• A recent ruling in Britain, which determined that it was unlawful for a Jewish day school to deny admission to a student based on the relative rigor of his mother’s conversion, has opened a debate as to whether the decision brands Judaism racist and whether a religious-observance test would be any fairer a way to filter applicants. [Jewish Chronicle]
• A recently-discovered 2,000-year-old stone quarry in Jerusalem proves the “intensity” of construction projects such as the Second Temple, says an expert. [Bloomberg]
• “There is a difference between the desecration of the Sabbath on an individual basis and the cancellation of the Sabbath,” says one ultra-Orthodox leader of the ongoing protests against a municipal parking lot in Jerusalem with plans to be open on Saturdays. [WPost]

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