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Daybreak: NY Senate Approves Gun Control

Plus impressive contents of the Afghan Geniza are revealed

by
Adam Chandler
January 15, 2013
Haggai Ben-Shammai and the Afghan Geniza(Haaretz)
Haggai Ben-Shammai and the Afghan Geniza(Haaretz)

• Following a state assembly vote later today, New York will likely have enacted what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the country. Last night, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state Senate approved changes that would broaden the definition of weapons, ban certain semiautomatic weapons, and curb access to guns for the mentally ill. [NYT]

• 29 pages from the Afghan Geniza, which contains centuries old texts about Jewish life and written in languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic and Arabic, are now being unveiled at the National Library of Israel. [NYT]

• Writing in Bloomberg View, Jeffrey Goldberg reports on the American view that Israel”doesn’t know what its best interests are” and that Israel risks international isolation. [Bloomberg]

• David Bernstein, director of the David Project, argues that the rightward shift in Israel is cyclical and part of any country’s natural political atmosphere. [JTA]

• The National Book Critics Circle has announced its finalists for 2012 in six different categories. There are some fantastic books on that list that you may have read about on Tablet. [NBCC]

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.