In one thuggish and vulgar phrase, a history of turmoil in Putin’s Russia
What was Aleksander Lukashenko talking about when he talked about 'whacking' Yevgeny Prigozhin?
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Fast Forward The Surprising Connection Between Nazis And Nachos
Why were Nazis called Nazis? The full name of the party was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), and you can see in the first word where the “Na” and “zi” come from — just as members of the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei) were called “Sozis.” But there is a more…
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Culture The Secret Yiddish History of Scotland
Recently, as Scotland’s independence vote began to loom large in the media, someone asked me if I had ever heard of Scots Yiddish. “I canna say that I have,” I answered, only to be told that there was an entire chapter on the subject in David Daiches’s autobiographical “Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood.” Scots…
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Culture Spitting and Other Methods of Warding Off Canaries, Jinxes and Evil Eyes
Forward reader Herb Hoffman writes: “I was raised in Brooklyn with the knowledge that spitting three times (or at least making a ritualized spitting movement or sound, which I’ve always rendered as ‘ptu, ptu, ptu’) is an effective way of warding off a kinehore — or ‘canary’ in my native Yinglish. My mother especially used…
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Culture Jan Koum, WhatsApp and the Meaning of ‘The Walls Have Ears’
Benjamin Lerner writes about an interview he came across in the media with Jan Koum, the rags-to-riches Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union who founded WhatsApp and recently sold it to Facebook for a reported $19 billion dollars. Referring to WhatsApp’s emphasis on privacy in its social network, Koum said: “I grew up in…
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Culture When a Sentence Is Cruel and Unusually Long
An article on the Iranian nuclear program in the online paper the Washington Free Beacon tells of a reporter who asked a “senior administration official” about last November’s “Joint Plan of Action” agreement in Geneva. Did it, he inquired, prohibit the Iranians from designing new models of centrifuges? The answer received was: “We, designing is…
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Culture Is ‘Quenelle’ Backwards Version of Nazi Salute?
By now you may think you’ve heard or read all you want to about the quenelle, the double hand movement that was popularized by the French comedian Dieudonné and has been all over the news since the French soccer star Nicolas Anelka performed it after scoring a goal in a game in England on December…
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Culture How ‘Shalom Aleykhem’ Originated and Why It Doesn’t Appear in the Bible
Samuel Sislen of Washington, D.C., writes: “Jews have traditionally greeted one another ‘Shalom aleykhem’ and responded with the words inverted. Arabic speakers greet each other, ‘Salaam aleykum’ and also respond with the words reversed. And I have been told that some Christian services begin with the leader saying, ‘Peace be unto you,’ and the congregation…
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