Wild rain in Tel Aviv is causing some bizarre sights, like a fallen cactus piece stretched across a main street. Today, passersby stopped during their Friday pre-Shabbat shopping to look at signs delineating a path of escape in case of tsunami. “A tsunami means an earthquake,” opined a woman taxi driver, making her way through…
Tel Aviv is a city of night owls, but the Mediterranean morning sun makes it hard to sleep in, which may be why morning means hearing waitresses all over the city respond to patrons’ “Boker tov” — “Good morning” — with boker or, meaning “morning of light.” But where does that response of light come…
In Israel, where everyone has an opinion, it may seem difficult to separate mansplaining from regular telling-you-exactly-what-I-think as well as telling-you-exactly-what-you-should-do-with-your-life-because-I-know-best. But there is, in fact, a charming and relatively new Hebrew word that is equivalent to the English term “mansplaining”—and that word is hasgvara. The Israeli version of mansplaining combines the ancient and the…
This may be the first time in American history when intonation has become a political issue. Of course, 2017 has been a year so chock full of disturbing firsts that it might be hard to pay attention to an extra syllable uttered by a losing candidate’s wife, but in this case, a little bit of…
My first-ever trip to the Vatican took place after an exhausting overnight train ride to Rome from Paris with two friends — one deeply Catholic, the other Buddhist — when we were all 20 years old. We were exchange students with little cash but plenty of curiosity; we knew nothing about Rome and nothing about…
It was strange to hear the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, October 31, quote the Book of Joshua as justification for taking scientific experts off of a committee — but it’s also dangerous. And it has deep implications. Here is Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, said when he invoked the Bible: “Joshua…
Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist who won a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for commentary — and who was, of course, President Reagan’s main speechwriter — sparked a social-media firestorm when she used the Yiddish word “shonda” to describe her reaction to the decision to remove Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee from the stained-glass…
A Tel Aviv coffee shop is offering free challahs for those who need them in a novel way — by leaving challahs on café tables for an hour each Friday afternoon. Coffee Station at 152 Ibn Gabirol Street, the street Israelis pronounce as Even Gvirol, will have challahs on tables from 3:30-4:30 p.m each Friday,…
100% of profits support our journalism
