Israel‘s Sephardic Rabbis and the Fight Over Mandatory Conscription; an Adult Film Mogul‘s Ladino Roots

[View this email in your browser]( June 28, 2024 • Sivan 22, 5784 IS OBAMA THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN? That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.” FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO [DAVID SAMUELS' 2023 INTERVIEW WITH OBAMA BIOGRAPHER DAVID GARROW]( # [The Sephardic Rabbis’ Letter]( Decoding a rabbinical broadside against drafting Torah scholars into the IDF [BY NISSIM LEON AND MENACHEM BUTLER](#) LISTEN TO TABLET # TAKE ONE [Bava Batra 3 and 4]( Today’s Talmud pages tell the bloody story of Herod’s revolt, which ended with the massacre of many rabbis. JUNE 28, 2024 # [A Forgotten Ladino ‘Queen’]( How Chelly Wilson realized her American dream—in adult theaters [BY ROKHL KAFRISSEN](#) IN THE SCROLL On Thursday evening, Israel’s security cabinet will meet to “discuss the possibility of total war against Hezbollah,” according to a report in The Times of Israel—just one week after the IDF approved operational plans for an invasion of southern Lebanon. At a meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Israel was capable of sending southern Lebanon “back to the Stone Age” in the event of a war—but that Israel preferred a diplomatic solution. [READ ALL ABOUT IT]( # # This email was sent to you by [Tablet Magazine](#) Tablet Magazine | P.O. Box 20079 | New York, NY 10001 [Remove me from this list]( | [Forward to a Friend]( You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website, www.tabletmag.com. Tablet Magazine P.O. Box 20079 New York, NY 10001 USA Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp [Mailchimp Email Marketing](