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November 17, 2011

Empowered women

It takes a little effort to find the exhibition “Women Hold Up Half the Sky” at the Skirball Cultural Center. You have to bypass three alluring gift shops and a bunch of other special exhibitions as well as close your ears to the children laughing in “Noah’s Ark” to get to a quiet gallery at the back of the museum, where a display of photos and wall texts will punch you in the stomach, then fill you with hope.

Who is Woody Allen?

Early on, in a new documentary about Woody Allen, the cultural icon sits in the back seat of his chauffer-driven car, pondering his mortality. He tells a story of a formative near-death experience that occurred when he was a small child in his crib: His mother was at work when his nanny told him, and then demonstrated, that if she wanted to, she could smother him. For a few seconds, she wrapped a blanket around his face.

Amir’s minyan request rejected

An Israeli court has rejected a request by Yitzhak Rabin\’s assassin, Yigal Amir, to allow him to pray with a minyan.

Old game, new spins

When it comes to Chanukah, playing the dreidel game is as ubiquitous as lighting the candles on a chanukiyah and eating latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly-filled doughnuts).

The new ‘Fascism’

These days, the word “fascism” is used here in Israel – as also abroad – almost casually. It is sometimes spoken with glee, often spoken in sorrow. Yet while it is fair (and painful) to say that a crop of laws, recent and prospective, are anti-democratic, the word “fascism” simply does not fit the Israeli reality. Bibi Netanyahu makes a preposterous Mussolini. (Of course, so did Mussolini.) The Israeli people, setting aside the most extreme of the settlers, are grotesquely miscast as Fascisti.

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