Raphael Magarik
By Raphael Magarik
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Culture Long, Long Ago in a Jewish Fantasyland Far, Far Away
The Book of Esther By Emily Barton Tim Duggan Books, 432 Pages, $27 The medieval kingdom of Khazaria has long been used as a Jewish Zembla, or fantasyland, a shadowy alternative to unpleasant realities. In the 12th century, the Spanish philosopher Judah Halevi dreamed up a Khazar king who converted to Judaism, imagining an upside-down…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think The Joneses
Coastal elites, we have been told recently, need to pay more attention to rural, white America. Fine, let them watch Moby Longinotto’s documentary, “The Joneses,” set in the trailer parks and small-town churches of very red, working-poor Mississippi and focusing on a transgender grandmother. Jehri Jones, 73 and divorced, shepherds her hard-luck family (two of…
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Opinion What the Movement for Black Lives Teaches Us About the Appeal of BDS
Why did the newly released Movement for Black Lives platform call Israel an “apartheid state” and accuse it of “genocide” against Palestinians? Mainstream Jews and radical activists want to debate the justice or morality of the platform, but neither group is interested in explaining how it came to be. But that means they are missing…
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Opinion How Both the Left and the Right Get Israel’s Gay Rights Struggle Wrong
Jerusalem’s gay pride parade, in which I marched on Thursday, was full of contradictions. On the one hand, Israeli politicians competed to show their support for the march. Likud MK Gilad Erdan came with his posse of security guards, and party members waved Yesh Atid banners in the march’s staging area. On the other hand,…
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Opinion How John Kasich Accidentally Rehashed a Classic Jewish-Christian Debate
Invoking Jesus , as John Kasich did last week, is obviously incompetent campaigning. Visiting Borough Park before the New York Primary, Kasich explained to several ultra-Orthodox Jews that the paschal lamb prefigures Christ, the “lamb of God.” For a politician, this is roughly equivalent to biting a baby when you were supposed to kiss it….
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Culture When a Holocaust Memoir Becomes a Ghost Story
But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir By Marceline Loridan-Ivens Translated by Sandra Smith Atlantic Monthly Press, 112 pages, $22 In 2015, more than 7,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel. A Jewish agency think tank began planning for 120,000 more, roughly a quarter of all the Jews in France. Jewish schoolchildren increasingly cannot attend…
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Culture How Pastrami Helped To Create American Jewish Culture
Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli By Ted Merwin NYU Press, 256 pages, $26.95 I have always loved the theater, because no matter how many years of confuting experience intervene, Pavlovian associations lead me to expect that corned beef sandwiches at the 2nd Ave Deli will follow every play in New…
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Opinion ‘New York Values’ Are Plenty Religious — Just Not in the Way Ted Cruz Likes
To many Jews, Ted Cruz’s attack on Donald Trump’s “New York values” . We are familiar with Republicans suspicious of “money and the media,” because 20 years ago they were the people complaining that the golf club was getting crowded with hook-noses. But to religious Jews like me, this vision of a materialistic, secular New…
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