I’m Turning into My Mother-in-Law & I Think I Like it

By Stacy Reiber for Raising Kvell

“Mah Jongg is an old lady game.”

I tried to block out those words as I carried the small red suitcase of tiles to my first lesson. I had fully assumed I wouldn’t like it, but honestly, once I understood the whole “crack bam dot” business, it was a blast. Challenging, fast moving and competitive, all of the qualities I like best in a game.

“So I like Mah Jongg,” I told myself, “doesn’t mean I’m old.”

Then came the Danielle Steel novels. My kids and I were at the library and I had to choose my books while simultaneously making sure they didn’t put their hands in the newly-installed waterfall (easier said than done since the librarian had already warned me once after catching them in the act). Wanting something light and mindless that I knew I could read on the beach, I chose Danielle Steel (my book club would be horrified). That was the day I realized I’m not only getting old–I am turning into my mother-in-law.

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Is Schindler a Projection of Spielberg Himself?

‘Schindler’s List’ is a story of redemption—for both the film’s protagonist and its director

By Gabriel Sanders for Tablet Magazine

In a 1994 New Yorker profile that appeared a few months after the release of Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg spoke candidly about how his Holocaust epic had transformed him.

In the past, he told the magazine’s Stephen Schiff, there had been projects he’d done for the money—things like the Indiana Jones sequels and Jurassic Park. “But,” he added, “these days I’d rather make the more difficult choices. I was just so challenged by Schindler’s List and so fulfilled by it and so disturbed by it. It so shook up my life, in a good way, that I think I got a little taste of what a lot of other directors have existed on all through their careers.”

Schindler’s List is also a story of transformation—of a hunger for money giving way to a higher calling. At its outset, Oskar Schindler is a dissolute, if charismatic, figure: a womanizer, a war profiteer, an opportunist. It’s more than an hour into the film before the girl in the red coat prompts his course-altering epiphany, and then another hour before the compilation of the list that secures his place in history.

Spielberg has often used characters who serve as stand-ins for himself: Roy Neary, the everyman visionary of Close Encounters; Upham, the brainy cartographer of Saving Private Ryan. Schindler fits squarely into this tradition. He’s a showman, a stager of spectacles, a Mitteleuropean P.T. Barnum. His talents, he tells Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern, lie not so much with work but with “the presentation.” It’s perhaps no coincidence that the name by which Schindler goes most frequently is “Herr Direktor.”

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Word of the Day / Hamas: The terror movement that didn't do its Hebrew homework

It's quite the coincidence that 'Hamas' the terror group is spelled differently from 'hamas' the nasty act, but both originate from an Aramaic word for 'hard'

By Shoshana Kordova for Haaretz

It’s pretty safe to assume that the Islamic terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip didn’t conduct market research on the meaning and resonance of the organization’s name in Hebrew before choosing to call itself Hamas.

The Arabic name of the group is widely described as an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”) as well as an Arabic word meaning “zeal.” But unlike "Islamic Jihad," say, or "Al-Qaida," the name “Hamas” is not just an Arabic term or an English translation of one. It also happens to be a Hebrew word meaning “violence,” among other things.

Hamas – or rather, the lowercased hamas – has been around since antediluvian times. In fact, it was one of the reasons God flooded the earth, according to Genesis: “And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence [hamas]” (6:11).

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Tayyip Erdogan Vows To Protect Turkish Jews

Premier Says Israel Harms Jewry With 'Fraudulent Policies'

By JTA

Turkey will keep its Jewish citizens safe, but the Jewish community should denounce Israel, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a Turkish newspaper.

“Jews in Turkey are our citizens. We are responsible for their security of life and property,” Erdogan told the Daily Sabah.

He added: “I talked with our Jewish citizens’ leaders on Thursday and I stated that they should adopt a firm stance and release a statement against the Israeli government. I will contact them [Jewish leaders in Turkey] again, but whether or not they release a statement, we will never let Jewish people in Turkey get hurt.”

He said, according to the newspaper, that the Jewish leaders in Turkey should criticize “Israeli aggression,” and that the Israeli government “abuses all Jewish people around the world for its fraudulent policies.”

Erdogan on Friday criticized the United Nations for being “silent” on Israel’s operation in Gaza and said that Turkey has had difficulty delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza because of Israeli restrictions.

In an interview with CNN, Erdogan said that “If Israel is sincere on establishing a cease-fire, we will convince Hamas [to do the same].”

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