I tuned in intermittently to the “cultural dance” segment of Olympic ice-dancing last night. In a night filled with several highly questionable routines including a Russian pair’s notorious (and racist) aboriginal costumes, I was jolted out of my apathy by seeing Israeli ice-dancing pair Roman Zaretsky and his sister Alexandra, called “Sasha” enter the rink…
I just called my bookie, and I’ve never been so proud to be a Jew! She gave me good odds on the new sport in town: Predicting the percentage of sermons this Shabbat that will focus on Olympic snowboarding star Torah Bright. (I’m betting on 97% or more.) Honestly, have you seen any sight more…
One day, one day … One day. “All my life I’ve been waiting for, been praying for …” a Hasidic reggae musician to be the voice of the Olympics. Well the day arrived just this week, when NBC launched their promotion for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics set to the tune of Matisyahu’s recent hit “One…
Human rights activists critical of the upcoming Beijing Olympics have gained a surprising new ally: the “re-established Sanhedrin.” Yes, that’s right, the re-established Sanhedrin — a body launched in 2004 by a group of Israeli Orthodox rabbis in a somewhat audacious attempt to reconstitute the ancient supreme rabbinic court of the same name — has…
Against the backdrop of this year’s tumultuous Olympic torch relay, New York Times polymath Edward Rothstein locates the origins of this peculiar ritual: If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its “Journey of Harmony,” as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had…
An article in today’s New York Times reports that the newly-unveiled — and wildly unpopular — logo for the 2012 London Olympics has, among other things, been compared to a swastika. But not all have seen grounds for charging antisemitism. Daniel Finkelstein of the London Times sees embedded in the design the word “zion.”
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