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Sundown: Groovin’ to Philip Roth

An unlikely techno song, keg stands in the holy land, and diaspora equality

by
Hadara Graubart
June 26, 2009

• Journalist James Marcus has created a new techno song out of Philip Roth’s “Jewish shouting” from an interview last year. Word has it, the track will be the biggest thing to hit the clubs since the mashup of Bernard Malamud’s grumbling and John Updike’s harrumphs. [Galleycat]
• Israelis, according to JTA, think of a fraternity “as the wild social club portrayed in American college movies.” In other words, the IDF? Maybe not: Alpha Epsilon Pi has opened a chapter at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. [Ynet]
• “The Conservative movement is the most undervalued stock in Jewish life, hands down,” says Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, who will take the reins as the first female head of the Rabbinical Assembly next Wednesday. [LoHud]
• Now’s your chance to register for the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, taking place in August in Philadelphia. The keynote speaker is, for some reason, a French priest. [IAJGS]
• Israel’s Diaspora Museum will be rebuilt and renamed “Museum of the Jewish People” to minimize the distinction between Jews in Israel and the rest of the world. “Rather than deal with who is more or less important, we should move on together,” says the CEO. [JPost]
The New Yorker‘s Laura Secor recommends six must-reads for understanding the lay of the land in Iran, including Dalia Sofer‘s The Septembers of Shiraz. [New Yorker]
• Russia tells the U.S. courts to stay out of its beeswax when it comes to Jewish texts held in its state libraries, in response to a suit brought by Chabad to recover documents that had been seized by the Nazis and Soviets. [NYT]

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