• After meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, reports that the country “is an essential player for bringing peace and stability to the region.” [Haaretz]
• Really interesting revelation: How your ancestors prepared their gefilte fish probably correlated with which dialect of Yiddish they spoke. [Forward]
• France and Israel’s “break-up”: a model for the United States and Israel’s? [NYT]
• A consideration of Raul Hilberg, whose histories of the Holocaust inspired Hannah Arendt (much to his chagrin). [The Nation]
• (Jewish) singer Amy Winehouse’s single “Rehab” … in Yiddish:
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.