Allison Kaplan Sommer, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week.
Helsinki, Helsinki
Israel’s top bioethics board says that PM Netanyahu’s deal to give Pfizer data on everyone who got the vaccinated is illegal, because it amounts to a massive human experiment that was never approved by, well, Israel’s top bioethics board. Should the deal be vacated?
Jenin, Jenin
A judge orders confiscation of the 2002 movie “Jenin, Jenin” – a record of Palestinian accounts of the IDFs 2002 incursion into that city – while still letting the movie stream on Youtube. Is there any sense to that verdict?
What’s in a Name?
What do the names Israelis give our babies say about our society and our souls?
I Got My COVID Vaccine and I Feel Miserable About It
For our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra-special, special extra discussion, following a terrific, viral essay by Allison in Haaretz headlined, “I Just Got My COVID-19 Vaccination – Here’s Why I Feel Miserable About It,” we discuss how we’re feeling about getting vaccinated (or not getting vaccinated yet), which turns out to be surprisingly complicated. Their guilt, jubilation, worry, relief, and so many other feelings.
All that and the music of the odd and fascinating EOK Project!
Songs
- Higher Ground (dedicated to the Balfour Protestors)
- Jolene
- Hotel California
- Black
About Haagen Dazs not being Jewish……….Reuben and Rose met in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York. ………… the two married in 1936.[3] Reuben consulted some books and started to make a new heavy kind of ice cream. In 1959, he decided to form a new ice cream company with a foreign-sounding name. He invented the Danish-sounding ‘Häagen-Dazs’ as a tribute to Denmark’s exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War. (From Wikipedia)
Loved this comment, Varda, but still I simply cannot accept its implication.
No Yeshiva boy in America back in the 1970s (like me) could escape the story of the Mattuses. We parsed it with talmudic attention to detail. I know *all* about the Mattuses. But their story is part of what made Haagen Dazs so dangerously goyishe, their wish “to pass.” In Lenny Bruce’s scheme (and mine) things by Jews can be majorly goyishe. Among his examples were Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. Mine might be Danny Kaye or Ali MacGraw or Drake. Haagen Dazs was invented by Jews, but it remains *definitely* goyishe, in my book. I’d say it was designed to be goyishe.
Sorry to be so inflexible on this matter. Sometimes — when what’s at stake is important enough — you have to take a stand!
I find it irritating that no one is “allowed” to have a dissenting opinion about this pandemic, masks, and the vaccines.
But, but, but, every day there are countless dissenting options (about whether schools should be open or closed, and about businesses and airports, about who should get the vaccine first, about who should get priority medical care, and a million other things.) What dissenting opinions do you think are disallowed, Eva.