Mikhail Khodorkovsky, self-styled Russian dissident; Ingall on predictive pastry; Lambert on the researched novel; Kirsch on philo-Semitism

Follow Tablet Magazine: May 31, 2011   Is the Iranian Bomb a Red Herring? Hersh makes the case in 'The New Yorker' Daybreak: Syria Flips on Nukes Plus the mess at Joseph's Tomb, and more in the news Fischer to the IMF: It Could Happen! How Israel's central banker would land the top job More from THE SCROLL Unlikely Martyr Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a brutal practitioner of Russian power politics, becoming its wealthiest oligarch. Now imprisoned by the Kremlin, the Jewish tycoon has remade himself as a noble dissident. BY JULIA IOFFE Instead of defending his innocence at the final day of his trial on nebulous charges last November, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and now imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp near a radioactive mine, read to the court a political manifesto that lambasted the stagnation and corruption into which contemporary Russia has sunk. "The obvious conclusion a thinking person can make is chilling in its stark simplicity," he intoned in the tiny courtroom packed with reporters and the pensioners who'd come to show their support. "The siloviki bureaucracy can do anything," he said, referring to the powerful faction in the Russian government whose roots are in the security forces. "A person who collides with 'the system' has no rights whatsoever." He added: "I am ashamed for my country." It was a moving speech that laid out, powerfully and clearly, everything that is wrong with Russia today; it made even my sober male Russian friends tear up. More Predictive Pastry If Gender Cakes can reveal whether your child will be a boy or a girl—and, in a new trend, they can—just think of all the other life questions that can be answered by clever foodstuffs More BY Marjorie Ingall Archive Fever Why a growing number of today's young Jewish fiction writers—including two of the finalists for the Sami Rohr Prize being awarded tonight—are grounding their novels in scholarly research More BY Josh Lambert Frenemies An anthology on the concept of philo-Semitism shows that 'Jew lovers' have often been just a shade better than anti-Semites—and sometimes no better at all More BY Adam Kirsch This email was sent to you by Tablet Magazine. To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add digest@tabletmag.com to your address book. To unsubscribe to this email, reply to this email with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. Tablet Magazine | 295 Lafayette Street, Suite 501 | New York, NY 10012 Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend