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This Week on The Scroll

A look back at the week that was

by
Adam Chandler
February 22, 2013
(NYDN)
(NYDN)

• Of course, the big story (oddly enough) was Daniel Blumen’s bar mitzvah video, which featured some rapping and some high profile cameos from Atlanta’s elite.

• Tal Kra-Oz wrote about a speech by Israel writer A.B. Yehoshua at a conference in Israel in which he said that American Jews are “partial Jews,” echoing older controversial statements of his.

• The Chuck Hagel saga took a turn for the surreal after a New York Daily News reporter confessed to being the unwitting source of a story about a speech that Hagel reportedly gave to the Friends of Hamas, a group that doesn’t actually exist.

• We looked at the trial of a Hezbollah courier in Cyprus, which may ultimately play a huge role in the future of the relationship between Hezbollah and the European Union.

• Yoni Brenner imagined what the world would look like if Philip Roth took a page from George Lucas and sold all of his characters to Disney. Hilarity ensues.

• As it turns out, Daniel Blumen’s bar mitzvah went viral after we broke the story, reaching over 200,000 views and ending up on the Today Show and elsewhere.

• The Scroll investigated the history and deletion of the word “Jew” from the Scrabble dictionary and lamented the invalid nature of the word “Goy.”

• Allison Hoffman wrote on the curious reemergence of Rabbi Leib Tropper, who endured some serious scandals and was exiled from his community.

• The Scroll received some sage wisdom on how to win a hamantaschen eating contest from Don “Moses” Lerman, a professional eating champion and legend.

• We assembled our annual guide to the Academy Awards.

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.