Tepper admits that “when most people—even cultivated ones—hear the phrase ‘modern classical music,’ they instinctively reach for the off switch,” but Asia’s work is not robotic or choppy, and Tepper, a readable critic of life and the arts, isn’t boring.
He also included clips. Go listen.
If You Watch Monday Night Football, Shouldn’t You Be a Tuesday Morning Quarterback?
Yitzchok Adlerstein writes about the Peter Beinart – Daniel Gordis debate last night at the Kraft Center at Columbia. I wasn’t there, and he hadn’t yet been there because he wrote the thing earlier on Wednesday. But is presentation is very good, and I recommend. here’s his depiction of the two debaters, you do the math:
“One of the contenders davens at an Orthodox shul. He is not the one for whom most of our readers will be rooting. Peter Beinart is not just an irritant. He is an irritant equipped with media power. His op-eds land where he wants them. He controls an entire section of The Daily Beast (called Open Zion) from which he can conduct his campaign to save Israel through tough love. Meaning, among other things, calling for a selective boycott of Israeli products, which puts him in bed with the worst of the Palestinian Israel-haters.”
And: “The other contender is Daniel Gordis, arguably one of the most talented and effective advocates for Israel, period. I am not alone in rating his handling of Beinart’s new book, The Crisis of Zionism, as far and away the best of the lot.”
I think you’ll enjoy it, especially before you go looking for the tape of the fight itself.
Words and the Well Meaning People Who Use Them to Start Culture Wars
Harry Maryles comments in Emes Ve-Emunah on the Slutwalk.
It began when Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti said that in order to remain safe, “women should avoid dressing like sluts.” Participants in Slutwalks, mainly young women, march dressed provocatively, like sluts (some don’t). There are also speaker meetings and workshops.
Maryles quotes 22-year-old Or Levy, one of the organizers of the upcoming evening, who told Ynet “I was walking down King George Street in an outfit that was a bit revealing when a woman began cursing at me and calling me ‘Slut …’”
Except, you should know that the choice of Orly et al for the Hebrew equivalent of that degrading term is by far worse and is, actually, the Arabic word for lady of the night.
Surprisingly, though, and this is why I want you to go read him, Maryles is wise enough to note the connection between well meaning religious people and the horrible things they can cause when they move across cultural divides thinking they know what they’re doing.
I say, leave the cursing to the professionals.
Comedian writer Benji Lovitt wrote his blog entry “from seat 28D on my Delta flight back to Israel. Frequent flyers may know that Delta eliminated the direct flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv a year or two ago, probably because they’re raging anti-Semites.”
Good “funny thing happened on the flight” routine, with this great graph:
“‘Mission Impossible’ again: because my stupid controller wasn’t working, I couldn’t hear the audio. While looking up at one point, I saw that they referred to Tom Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt as ‘Eitan’ in the subtitles. NO WAY!!! HE’S ISRAELI!”
And so on.
by DovBear appears to be in the midst of a war against promoters of public breastfeeding. He’s been catching a lot of flac, and so he decided to throw into the battle his nuclear weapon: his wife, Mrs. Bear.
Responding to “one of my tormentors,” as he put it, who asked: “If it is wrong to nurse in Shul, what should I do during the year my baby nurses? Stay home?!” DobBear turned the keyboard over to his improved half, who said:
“‘Usually I just timed it so that I didn’t have that issue. My children did not nurse every minute.’ Also she nursed in the shul bathroom. She did this by choice. No one threw her out of the sanctuary. As she puts it (and she put it very forcefully which is why I have used all caps:) ‘I DO NOT NURSE IN PUBLIC PERIOD'”
Who protects single men from the vicious ladies out there?
Awful Medical Story With OK Ending
You’ll read through this entry in A Soldier’s Mother like a knife through hot butter. Get to the end, it’s kind of unexpected:
“The operation was performed in Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah almost a month ago. After the operation, a CT was performed and the next morning, as the doctors made their rounds, my mother overheard the head of the department explain to the other doctors that the shunt they put in was too short. No one bothered to explain this to my parents.
