From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

The classic comedy “Miss Congeniality” has a montage of beauty pageant contestants, one after the other, answering the question, “What is the one most important thing our society needs?” They all give the same answer: “World peace.”  It is a long-running joke – that the notion young beauty queens can have anything to do with resolving long-standing geopolitical tensions is naïve, even slightly offensive. Enter this year’s Miss Universe. If you have been following the news this week, you may have heard that Israel is hosting this year’s Miss Universe competition. Of course, in the shadow of the unassailably ugly underbelly of antisemitism that Dara Horn captures so vividly in her book, “People Love Dead Jews,” greater than average controversy was expected – and delivered.