First Read For Jan. 27

She’s “a Jewish mom in Great Neck” with a second life — as a stand-up comedian.

Who does “racy” material, according to the New York Post.

The paper profiles Talia Reese, who delivers lines like “[My husband] wouldn’t be upset if he caught me in bed with another man — unless we were eating a ham sandwich.”

Reese will start a six-day “residency” Sunday at Atlantic City’s Borgata Country Club.

Being Orthodox has its code of conduct, she tells the Post. “When she was offered an assistant’s job at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ she was forced to pass, since she can’t work Friday and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.”

*

A traffic accident on the West Bank Thursday killed two people and injured seven.

The No. 462 bus from Jerusalem veered off a cliff near Ariel and fell into a ravine, the Jerusalem Post reported. One of those killed was the bus driver, 37-year-old Avishai Kroani from Ariel, a husband and father of five. The other person killed in the incident was a 23-year-old man.
No news reports mentioned the possibility of terrorism.

*

A schoolbook publisher in Germany has apologized for using an anti-Semitic illustration in a text about the euro crisis and said it will send a substitute page to schools, JTA reported. On Thursday, Berlin-based Klett-Verlag also said it was halting all further deliveries of the book, calling the error “serious.” The substitute page can be pasted in.

The book will not be removed from German schools’ bookshelves.

Klett-Verlag told Vice magazine blogger Philipp Frohn that the “regrettable mistake” would be corrected in a future edition, which will not come out for several years.

At issue is an image in the firm’s textbook about politics, called “Impulses 2.” It depicts the euro as a Pacman-like chomping mouth about to devour Europe superimposed over a symbol with the words “Rothschild Bank.” The notion that the Jewish banking family is controlling the world for its own selfish purposes “is a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the Nazis made good use of,” Frohn wrote.

The publisher is halting all further deliveries of the book and is sending a substitute page to all schools that are using the book, which can be pasted in. They described the error as “serious.”

*

In the decades after World War II, the reputation of President Franklin Roosevelt came under critical examination by historians – FDR, who led the United States during its victory over Nazi Germany, was no friend of the Jews, it turns out.

Now the legacy of another iconic WWII leader is undergoing revision.

According to Haaretz, the “myth” of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “special relationship” to the Jews, “perpetuated by Churchill’s official biographer, Martin Gilbert – a British Jew,” may be exaggerated.

Documents in the British Archives show that Churchill’s “main contribution to the war was that he instilled the British people with the hope and confidence that they could continue to fight, and that this was preferable to becoming Hitler’s slaves. However, he might have decided otherwise had he believed that Hitler would be satisfied with the occupation of Eastern Europe and allow England to retain its navy and empire.

“British intelligence had provided reports about the Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe in real time,” Haaretz states. “Throughout the war, he never referred publicly to the murder of Jews.”

*

Hundreds or even thousands of suspected Nazi war criminals may still be at large, a far larger number than previously suspected, Arutz Sheva reports.

Efraim Zuroff, one of the world’s leading experts on the matter, said Thursday, ahead of today’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, that he expects “a spike” in convictions in the coming years although most suspects are in their 90s.

Since 2001, 104 Nazis have been convicted over their roles in the Holocaust. The annual number has been declining, however, and between April 2015 and March 2016 there was only one conviction, with two new cases filed.

*

The Hakoah Jewish sports club in Vienna is undergoing a revival.

According to Deutsche Welle, Hakoah (Hebrew for power), which was established in 1909 to promote Zionism, serving as the home of a successful soccer team, but being  closed by the Nazis, reopened in 2008 and is now flourishing.

“It is a multi-purpose complex that houses a state-of-the-art gym, a volleyball court and an Olympic swimming pool among other facilities,” the German news service reports. “And most importantly, the club’s Jewish connections are felt everywhere. The club refuses to compete on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.  And the Star of David is everywhere.”