There have been several interesting Jewish- or Israel-related items in The New York Times over the weekend. Here’s a sampling:
- Magazine contributor Joshua Hammer writes about how he got caught up in an effort by the U.S. Department of Justice to bring Palestinian terrorist Jihad Jaara to justice: "The Palestinian Terrorist and Me."
- A section of a highway in Missouri has been renamed for Abraham Joshua Heschel — and he has the local neo-Nazi chapter to thank for it.
- William K. Rashbaum offers an insider look at Rabbi Leib Glanz, the Satmar power broker whose role in organizing a jailhouse bar mitzvah made headlines last week.
- A campaign over the weekend in New York by an anti-Semitic group generated little interest — by participants or bystanders.
- Simon Romero writes about a group of Peruvians with Jewish roots who converted to Judaism and made their way to Israel. For a related story, see JTA correspondent Florenica Arbiser’s story on the plight of a group of mass converts in Colombia, which we published last week.
- David Adjmi has written a new play on the Syrian Jewish experience in Brooklyn. Felicia R. Lee has the review.
- Punk is Jewish — who knew? Ralph Blumenthal writes about the four New York godfathers of punk who packed an auditorium last week at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to excavate the unlikely roots of the rebellious and stripped-down 1970s rock genre, replete with fascist trappings.
- Op-Ed contributor Tony Judt takes aim at Israeli settlements.
- Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, in an Op-Ed that appears online only, writes that most analysis failed to understand why Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Palestinian state was of historical importance: "On the one hand it seals Israel’s psychological and ideological conversion regarding the Palestinians; on the other hand it calls for a similar Palestinian conversion. It commits even the Israeli right to the need to establish a Palestinian state, but it demands an unequivocal Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state."
- In response to demand from students, SAR Academy — a yeshiva day school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx — offers Arabic classes, Joseph Berger writes.
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