by Matthew Friedman | Apr 15, 2022 | Essays, Features, Jewish Life
Beth Cole had not yet decided whether or not she would make a brisket for the Passover Seder this week. “I was going to bring the brisket, but I think I’m going to do a roast chicken, because I have to cook for, like, ten people,” she says. Besides, it isn’t her...
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 8, 2022 | Commentary
Did Russian boys grow up during the Cold War dreaming of someday being Blofeld? I can imagine a pubescent Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin emerging from the darkness of a 1965 screening of Thunderball at the Leningrad Odeon Theater, rubbing his hands together gleefully,...
by Matthew Friedman | Feb 27, 2022 | Commentary
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is sending negotiators to meet with a Russian delegation at a site on the banks of the Pripyat River, near the Belarusian border. “I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting,” Zelensky said, “but let them try so...
by Matthew Friedman | Feb 7, 2022 | Commentary, Politics
They came in their thousands – by the tens of thousands, if you believe them – belching diesel fumes and blasting air horns. The Freedom Convoy of big tractor-trailer rigs, semis, and private pickup trucks and vans converged on the Canadian capital of Ottawa from...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 27, 2022 | Commentary, Jewish Life
I spent much of the day rereading Art Spiegelman’s brilliant graphic novel Maus. It felt like the right thing to do after the Mcminn County, TN schoolboard voted unanimously to remove it from the eighth-grade curriculum. “There is some rough, objectionable language in...
