The Anti-Defamation League’s latest global study found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic views, amounting to an estimated 2.2 billion people. The survey, which included over 58,000 respondents from 103 countries, revealed that 20% of people have never heard of the Holocaust, while 21% either deny or downplay its historical reality.
- Cole S. Aronson: The Patriarch and the Palestinians
The ongoing depletion of the Middle East’s Christian communities—some of the oldest Christian communities anywhere—is one of the best documented but least publicized religious catastrophes in the world. Pizzaballa assures me that Catholics in the Holy Land are safe from the murderous persecution to which their brethren nearby are subject. This has indeed been true, even under the worst Palestinian rulers, though Christians are steadily leaving the West Bank (mostly for better jobs, but also to escape Muslim thugs). But it has been especially true in Israel, the only Mideast country with a growing Christian population. One of Pizzaballa’s colleagues, Bishop Rafic of Nazareth, told me that he both wants his flock to participate fully in Israeli society and worries that they will find it attractive enough to assimilate. I restrain myself from telling this Levantine Catholic that he sounds like an American Jew, concerned that conditions are too friendly for the good of his coreligionists. Israeli Christian schools have the highest matriculation rates of any schools in the country. Arab Christians have the highest employment rate of any Israeli religious group, and their unemployment and welfare use rates are the lowest. Christian women excel compared to their non-Christian Israeli peers, earning more than six in ten of the doctorates awarded to Christians. (Israeli women in general earn half of the country’s PhDs.) Christian incomes are just below the national average.
- Knox Thames: Will the World Protect Syria’s Religious Minorities?
While the president-elect wants to avoid Middle East entanglements, there are actions his administration can take to support religious freedom and minority rights. Pairing consequential diplomacy with targeted humanitarian assistance can help ensure Syrian Christians and other minorities are not erased from their ancestral homeland.
The couple grabbed their Bibles, legal documents, and a few sets of clothes, and headed to Claudia’s mother’s home across town for safety, all while encouraging their kids to trust in God, even if they ended up losing their home to the fire.
“We told them that we had to evacuate and that we didn’t know if we were going to have a house or not, and that God is the only one that knows what was going to happen,” Claudia said. “We were sad, but we were calm, and we just got out.”
If the abortion lobby continues to degrade prenatal standards of care nationwide, millions of women will pay the price. The Trump administration must restrict access to the abortion pill regimen by reinstating safety regulations surrounding mifepristone use to ensure that pregnant women nationwide receive high standards of prenatal care.
- Vivek Sankaran: Parental Redemption at the White House
Vance’s life story provides a unique lens through which the nation can reimagine its approach to child welfare policy. His own experiences highlight the sanctity of family relationships and the importance of giving parents the chance to recover and rebuild bonds with their children. These values should form the foundation of the Trump administration’s child welfare agenda.
All this sends the wrong message to offenders. Criminals have come to believe that crime pays, and there are no consequences; law-abiding New Yorkers live in fear, especially in the confined spaces of the subway system.
Political leaders assert that the public perception of crime, especially in the subway system, is not aligned with actual crime statistics. Things aren’t that bad, they insist, and it’s only sensational media coverage that makes us feel unsafe. It’s true that overall crime rates have decreased — marginally, compared to the worst of the pandemic years. But compared to the renaissance of the 1990s and aughts, things are unquestionably and dramatically worse.
In nutrition circles, there’s a strategy called “crowding out” your diet: adding in more and more healthy food until there’s simply no room for the junk. Eat four eggs at breakfast and an apple for elevenses, and a mid-morning custard cream doesn’t cross your mind. I decided to do the same with books: by committing to reading for two or three hours a day, I would leave myself with no time for online rage, recriminations and doom-scrolling. I would crowd out the Tweetstorms and embrace the literary greats, and everything would be fine.
13. Seth Kaplan: The Real User Interface: Recovering Our Neighborhoods
The degree to which our “place” fosters in-person relationships indelibly shapes outcomes for children and youth. If we want to revitalize our neighborhood communities, we should ask: which factors explain why so many have declined in the face of technological change? I see four: changes in the physical landscape, decline in local institutions, individualization of religion, and shifts in our education and aspirations. Where these four factors
14. Sasha Chapin in The Free Press: How to Like Things More
Move your attention beyond the part of a thing that first grabs you. A good broth or perfume will have layers beyond the one that is loudest, and teasing them apart is gratifying. But this works especially with music—so many songs feature spectacular bass parts that you might not notice if you’re focusing on the attention-hogging lead vocal. It also works with people you’re talking to. Ask yourself: What is fetching about their outfit, or pronunciation? And it works when you’re watching theater: What about the actors who are not talking? . . .
Life is so dull if you just “like” or “dislike” everything, if you engage only with things you straightforwardly enjoy. Maybe the movie is riveting, but you still hate it; can you find “begrudging enjoyment”? You simply do not understand the outfit of that kid on the subway; can you see that it’s “compelling to someone who is not me”? How do you feel about the song that represents you so well it’s almost personally violating? Can you be grateful for the person who reminds you of all the annoying tendencies you try to repress in yourself? These are all genuine forms of enjoyment to be cultivated and savored alongside the cleaner kinds.
Over the past few years, the British-born Harding has led dual, and often dueling, careers: conducting Mozart and Mahler symphonies one day, piloting commercial flights to Paris, Milan, Stockholm and Tunis the next. He relishes the exacting regimen of flying — checking fuel figures, analyzing weather patterns, tallying passengers and cargo. He is also energized by the risks he can take in music.
“In flying, we have to identify all the threats and make sure we don’t go anywhere near them,” he said. “In music, it’s the opposite: We have to get as close as we can to catastrophe.”
Harding is a rarity in commercial flying: a pilot with a thriving artistic career. And in the high-pressure, all-consuming classical music field, where stars are often expected to show absolute devotion to their craft, he is an outlier, showing there can be life beyond the concert hall.
“I don’t think it’s realistic to say just because you love something, you should do it 24 hours a day, every single day,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s human.”