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Estee Ackerman, a 17-year-old Jewish girl from New York, is one of the top table tennis players in the United States, and is setting her sites on competing in the 2020 Olympics. As a Jewish table tennis champion, Ackerman is actually following in a long tradition of Jewish success in the sport. When table tennis began to develop and grow throughout Europe, many of the sport’s earliest champions were Jews from Eastern Europe and Germany. A number of overlapping factors led to a high rate of Jewish participation and success in table tennis. As a newer sport that took off[…]

In one of Louis C.K.’s classic stand-up routines, he rails at the people who complain throughout inflight service. “You’re fucking sitting in a chair in the sky,” he roars. “And you have the nerve to complain that the omelet has no mushrooms?” A recent ride with a particularly nervous cab driver reminded me of that bit. While we were talking, I realized the source of his rage: WAZE. He claimed that the navigation app frequently misled him and that his experience taught that it tended to choose obscure routes. “How grateful is this driver?” I wondered. This moment in which[…]

Shame. That word seems to best define what Orthodox Marxists felt after World War I. “How did the tweedy high-brow men who filled the salons of Berlin, Vienna, and London screw up our proletarian revolution?” they asked each other. Why was it a Russian nation comprised mainly of illiterate farmers that adopted the collectivist utopia – not the enlightened Germans, Austrians, English, and French? After all, the vision of our founding father Karl Marx maintained that after the profound capitalism that prevailed in early 20th century Europe, the workers of the world would unite in singing a throaty rendition of[…]

Israel is awash in a wave of nostalgia. Hipsters model 60s styles in Tel Aviv. Khaki pants star in Fashion Week. And retro raves attract hundreds of victims of the Static and Ben-El era, who gather to trade stories about the First Gulf War to the strains of Queen songs. Foreign media notes that nostalgia also pervades this year’s Purim celebrations, with 50s and 60s costumes making a comeback. Two classics are the cowboy costume and that of his eternal rival in the Pan-American war, the Native American. Alongside the Palmahnikim, IDF soldiers, and cops and robbers that were ubiquitous[…]

We can venture a guess as to what Walther Rathenau had on his mind during the few moments he lived after extreme right-wing assassins riddled his upper body with bullets in his hometown of Berlin. Perhaps one of the early 20th century’s greatest statesmen thought: My lifelong conflict has finally been solved. I am finally rid of the internal struggle that has plagued me since birth – the question of who I am.  A member of an inferior Asian tribe or the exalted Prussian elite? A descendant of Moses and Aaron or Schiller and Goethe? A Jew or a German?[…]

Itzig Stern did everything possible to hide his Jewishness. He took pains to lose his Yiddish accent, read only anti-Semitic papers, and underwent dozens of plastic surgeries to fix his beaked nose, doe-like eyes, meaty lips, and thick tongue. His efforts paid off when he married a German-Christian bride. But the charade was revealed when he got drunk on his wedding night. Itzig Stern starred in Oskar Panizza’s anti-Semitic satire “The Operated Jew,” written in Germany in the 19th-century. This was, of course, a poke at the image of “The Cultured Jew,” which appeared in Germany during the same period.[…]

Use of Hitler’s accursed name to slam one’s adversaries is not the invention of poets. At least in this sense, Yitzhak Laor is in “good company.” One of the first to drop the German despot’s name for the sake of debasement is none other than Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion. A diplomatic genius with prophetic political vision, Ben-Gurion was also vengeful and aggressive. The great leader had four eyes – two to see the present and two the future.  Aware of his central role in history, he understood that turning a fleeting aura into eternal glory relied not only[…]