Philologos
By Philologos
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News Sorry Can Be the Hardest Word
Editor’s Note: This column by our Philologos ran in July. We are reposting it now because the diplomatic tussle between Turkey and Israel has escalated. Turkey and Israel, we are told, have been trying to bury the hatchet over the Mavi Marmara incident. The main sticking point, it now seems, is the Turkish insistence that…
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Culture Unpacking ‘Umgepotch’ A Word for Sloppy
Menorah Rotenberg of Teaneck, New Jersey writes: “The other day, I was telling someone about a recipe that I no longer make because it is too much of a ‘potchkie’ — that is, it has too many ingredients and is too time-consuming. “I then thought of ‘umgepotch,’ too much or over the top, as in…
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Culture Was Amy Winehouse ‘A Nice Jewish Girl’?
From Massapequa, N.Y., comes this e-mail from Stephen Listfield: “What is the origin and current rationale of the expression ‘nice Jewish boy’ or ‘nice Jewish girl’? The latest example I’ve come across in the media is the repeated reference to Amy Winehouse as a ‘nice Jewish girl who blah, blah, blah.’ Yet I don’t know…
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Culture What Do John Boehner and an Ugly Root Vegetable Have in Common?
Writing in the August 4 issue of The New Republic, columnist Jonathan Chait, commenting on the debt-ceiling negotiations between President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, said of the latter, “Perhaps he contracted a Washington version of Jerusalem Syndrome, succumbing to delusions of grandeur.” Since this is the first time I’ve seen the…
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Culture At the Heart of Self-Hatred
Since reading the front-page profile of Richard Falk in the July 29 issue of the Forward, I’ve been thinking about the phrase “Jewish self-hatred.” Falk, for those of you who missed the article, is a retired professor of international law who has pilloried Israel repeatedly in different places and capacities, among them that of a…
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Culture Legend of Moses’ Death Sets the Example for an Easy Exit
Julius Karash writes from Kansas City, Mo.: “Today, a family member called my father and told him that his 94-year-old brother died this morning. My uncle had been up and about, performing his usual routine, and then suddenly died. “The family member told my father that the manner in which my uncle had passed away…
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Culture How Israel Became the Promised Land of Eggplant
Forward reader Mike Benn writes: “A distinct childhood memory of visits to my maternal grandmother’s home is of eating bronjenas. This was an eggplant dish made by grilling the eggplant over a naked flame and then scooping out the cooked contents. Recently, I’ve been wondering about the word. “My grandmother was born in Palestine in…
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Culture Doubling Dutch
Native Dutch speaker Gerda Elata-Alster writes in response to my column on “shtick,” which spoke of Yiddish words in American English sometimes taking on — or, as I put it, “intermarrying with” — non-Jewish meanings: “Many Yiddish words have been integrated into Dutch, too, although I can’t remember any ‘intermarriages.’ Unfortunately, many of these words…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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News Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent group on Israel
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Fast Forward Jewish Rep. Steve Cohen will not run for reelection after Tennessee GOP redraws his district