From an essay by Adam Gopnik on Winston Churchill in the Aug. 30 New Yorker:

“There was a fine difference between Stalin and Satan, and Churchill grasped it. …the brutality and waste of the Stalinist regime—prisoners left to die in the snow, political commissars ordering the execution of innocents, the dead of the great purges haunting the whole — is sickening. But the murderousness of the Nazi invaders — children killed en masse and buried in common graves — is satanic. It is the tragedy of modern existence that we have to make such distinctions. Yet that does not mean that such distinctions cannot be made, or that Churchill did not make them. His moral instincts were uncanny. In 1944, after the deportation of the Jews from Hungary, when the specifics of the extermination camps were still largely unknown, he wrote that the Nazis’ war on the Jews would turn out to be ‘probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.’”

From a New Yorker essay on crime writer Agatha Christie by Joan Acocella (Aug. 16 & 23, 2010):

  “Racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia turn up constantly in Christie’s books. In one, a hostess serves a special dessert called Nigger in His Shirt (chocolate pudding covered with whipped cream). We also get dagos, wogs, and Eye-ties. Most frequently commented on, however, are the Jews. In an early novel, ‘The Secret of Chimneys’ (1925), Herman Isaacstein, who is, of course, a financier with a big nose, is invited to a political meeting at a country estate. When the host, Lord Caterham, is told who Isaacstein is, he says, ‘Curious names these people have.’ Caterham starts calling him Nosystein. The others take this up and shorten it to Nosy….

  “After the Second World War, some readers, especially Americans, were not amused by her characters’ views on ethnic differences. Christie’s publishers received letters, including one from the Anti-Defamation League. Her agent … didn’t forward them to her. He simply gave Dodd, Mead, her American publishers, permission to delete any politically offensive references to Jews or Catholics. She apparently didn’t notice the changes.”

Newsweek (Aug. 23 & 30) rated 100 countries with regard to providing their inhabitants “with the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous and upwardly mobile life.”
Newsweek focused on five criteria:
Education
Health
Quality of life
Economic competitiveness and
Political environment.
  (To check the data used and how they were weighted, go to newsweek.com.)
    An advisory board included renowned authorities like Columbia professor Joseph E. Stiglitz and Geng Xiao, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, Beijing.
  Here are the top ten, which have a Nordic flavor:
Finland
Switzerland
Sweden
Australia
Luxemberg
Norway
Canada
Netherland
Japan
Denmark
  No. 11 was the United States. Germany was No. 12. New Zealand was No. 13, the United Kingdom was No. 14.
  Israel wound up No 22 – just below Spain, but above Italy, Greece, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Kuwait, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, and China.
  As for Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates was No. 43, Jordan No. 53, Saudi Arabia No 64, Egypt No. 74, Iran No. 79, Syria No. 83.
    Bottom five, starting with the very last: Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, and Uganda.

 

Milton Himmelfarb is supposedly the source of the following:

“Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

  Lacking fins or tail
  The gefilte fish swims with
  Great difficulty.
  *****
  Beyond Valium,
  Peace is knowing one’s child
  Is an internist.
  *****
  On Passover we
  Opened the door for Elijah
  Now our cat is gone.
  *****
  After the warm rain
  The sweet smell of camellias
  Did you wipe your feet?
  *****
  Her lips near my ear,
  Aunt Sadie whispers the name
  Of her friend’s disease.

  *****
  Today I am a man.
  Tomorrow I will return
  To the seventh grade.
  *****
  Testing the warm milk
  On her wrist, she sighs softly.
  But her son is forty.
  *****
  The sparkling blue sea
  Reminds me to wait an hour
  After my sandwich.
  *****
  Like a bonsai tree,
  Is your terrible posture
  At my dinner table.
  *****
  Jews on safari—
  Map, compass, elephant gun,
  Hard sucking candies.
  *****
  The same kimono
  The top geishas are wearing:
  I got it at Loehmann’s.

  *****
  Mom, please! There is no
  Need to put that dinner roll
  In your pocketbook.
  *****
  Seven-foot Jews in
  The NBA slam-dunking!
  My alarm clock rings .
  *****
  Sorry I’m not home
  To take your call. At the tone
  Please state your bad news.   
  *****
  Is one Nobel Prize
  So much to ask from a child
  After all I’ve done?
  *****
  Today, mild shvitzing.
  Tomorrow, so hot you’ll plotz.
  Five-day forecast: feh
  *****
Yenta. Shmeer. Gevalt.
  Shlemiel. Shlimazl. Meshuganah
  Oy! To be fluent!
  *****
  Quietly murmured
  At Saturday Synagogue services,
  Yanks 3, Red Sox 5.
  *****
  A lovely nose ring,
  Excuse me while I put my
  Head in the oven.
  ****
  Hard to tell under the lights.
  White Yarmulke or
  Male-pattern baldness

 

 

This weekend begins a celebration of Alban Berg's music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Although the Nazis banned his "modernist" music, he was not Jewish. He died in 1935.

Nora Bayes (1880-1928)

Listening recently to her sing “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?” I distinctly heard her substitute “Levy” at one point—before changing it back to Kelly. (This was a 1910 recording.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHCwKj7zpc&feature=related

All I knew about her was that she sang while a young George Gershwin played, and complained that he fiddled around too much at the piano.

I also knew that she co-wrote “Shine On Harvest Moon” with her then-husband, Jack Norworth, and was the first to sing his song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” (He wrote just the lyrics.)

Didn’t know that her birthname was Dora (hence Nora) Goldberg, and that she took the name Bayes from the Hebrew letter “beis.”

George M. Cohen had persuaded her to change her name – and insisted that she introduce his song, “Over There.”

Member of the Ziegfeld Follies. Married five times. Adopted three children. Died at 47. One of the few women to have had a theater named after her.

A New York woman writes to The Ethicist (in The New York Times Magazine) that she, a heterosexual, went out on an arranged date with a man. Both live in Orthodox Jewish communities. “We got along well initially, but I grew concerned about how evasive he was about his past.” By dint of research, she learned that he was a female-to-male transgendered individual. “I then ended our relationship.”

  She believes that he converted to Judaism shortly after he became a man.

  She thinks that this person continues to date women from the Jewish community.

  “Should I urge our rabbi to out this person?”

    The Ethicist (Randy Cohen) replies that this man is entitled to privacy – and there should no public notice about his being transgendered.

    But, he goes on, she should feel free to discuss this state of affairs with friends.

  Spread the word informally, but not formally?

    My own view: People who date should be frank about their situations upfront. I know of a fellow who had never told his new wife that he was living on disability payments – he didn’t have a job. There are married men who date – explaining later that they’re getting, or thinking, of a divorce. Then there are non-Jews who date Jews without telling them, early on, that they would never marry outside their faith. (And vice versa.) People who date should be upfront about any illnesses, any past indiscretions, anything at all that might be important to someone seeking a mate.