Born in the Siberian city of Tyumen in 1888, Israel Baline came to the U.S. at age five, later took the name Irving Berlin, and rose to stardom in 1911 when his composition “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” became a hit. From then on, he was one of most influential songwriters in the U.S., if not in the world. Stephen Whitfield, reviewing James Kaplan’s recent biography of Berlin, considers to what extent, if any, Berlin’s Jewish background influenced his work:

The World Health Assembly—the annual meeting of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO)—will conclude in Geneva tomorrow. As it has every year since 1968, it dedicated part of its time to discussing “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The fact that this is a permanent yearly agenda item for the assembly has nothing to do with any special medical circumstances in these areas, nor with any particular ability the WHO has to provide healthcare to their inhabitants. Rather, it is another example of the capture of the United Nations by the anti-Israel movement. David May explains: