How Tolerance and Terror Marked the Evolving Fate of Jews Under Muslim Rule Last year, a friend and I visited the Jewish cemetery in Fez during a trip to Morocco. The place had the serenity of a shrine, and it was: By our count, no Jew had died in Fez since 1954, mostly because virtually […]
The Flaunted Necklace Read More »
The effects of globalization notwithstanding, cheek-kissing protocol remains something of a mystery, resolved with regional pique depending on whom you meet and where you go: the Americans do it once, the Europeans twice, and the Brazilians as many times as you’ll let them. The other day at the Pierre Hotel, Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who
Diplomatic Immunity: Not Lost in Translation Read More »
At first glance the new Russian film “Bimmer,” about four car thieves who run afoul of gangsters in Moscow, is a routine exercise in mafia chic, post-Soviet style: leather jackets, flashy cars, copious blood. Such films have appeared regularly on Russian movie screens in the last decade, in progressively emptier theaters. In their obsession with
Its Freedoms No Longer New, Russian Cinema Matures Read More »
I WAS IN CASABLANCA at this time last year, finishing a two-week trek through Morocco. The enormous mosque built by the late King Hassan II on a promontory overlooking the Atlantic Ocean — the second largest in the world after Mecca, so as not to offend religious authorities there — rose so high I had
‘Theirs is the Islam we can learn from’ Read More »
NEW YORK — President Vladimir Putin and his economic team were the heroes of the day at the seventh annual forum on Investing in Russia & CIS, hosted by Sachs Associates and Bloomberg at the Plaza Hotel last Thursday. In formal presentations and private conversations in the lavish reception rooms, conference participants agreed that Putin’s
Investors Toast Putin in New York Read More »
April. I have heard it from dozens of alumni, but privately insisted that it would be different for me. Still, by about the eighth month after university, I am forced to concede that the mystery that hung beyond the horizon of graduation has unceremoniously dissipated into a spiritless routine — rise, commute from the suburbs
There has been much talk of cities in the sky since the recent unveiling of nine designs for the reconstruction at ground zero in Manhattan. Some of the plans envisioned gardens and theaters hoisted 50 stories in the air. The architects hailed the proposals as a new kind of urbanism. In fact, the idea of
A Suburban Street Straight Up Into the Sky? Read More »
The following lyrics are from Their Difficult Work Is Called Spying, a compilation of songs beloved by the Russian secret police. The CD was compiled last winter for the exclusive enjoyment of the Foreign Intelligence Service on the occasion of its eightieth anniversary. Translated from the Russian by Boris Fishman The Nation’s Spies We are
For Your Ears Only Read More »