Top aide holds conference call with Jewish papers Speech, designed to help Israel with Europe, could hurt Obama at home Thank God we have better stuff to read The dumbest blog post you'll ever read (and no, it's not this one)  | |  President Obama's new Middle East diplomacy seems to eschew symbolic triumphs in favor of a pragmatic vision that keeps all sides guessing. Israel could have a lot to gain by signing on. One way to distinguish a truly gifted politician from the pack of run-of-the-mill political actors is by how long he can walk the tightrope between ambiguity and commitment while keeping the largest number of policy options up in the air. By keeping his audience guessing about his true intentions for as long as possible, the canny tight-rope walker forces the parties to any given dispute into the role of mesmerized spectators. Boo, and one of the balls might drop to the ground. Applaud, and maybe the juggler will keep juggling a while longer. The circus performer's talent that is required here can be joined to any kind of politics, liberal or conservative, successful or not. Franklin D. Roosevelt had it. Yasser Arafat had it. Ariel Sharon had it. And Barack Obama has it. More  | Long relegated to either Jewish institutions or self-contained collections, Judaica is finding a new home in mainstream museums of art More |  | A philanthropic effort helps low-income immigrant Israeli women build small businesses by cooking the dishes they know best. It's a good program, and it's delicious food. More |  | Trying to make sense of Shakespeare's politics, a complicated web of ideas and contradictions that attracted and repelled some of modern history’s most notorious leaders More BY STEPHEN MARCHE | |
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