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Tech exec resigns after accusing Jews of wanting to 'euthanize' Americans, omicron protocols close all synagogues in Quebec, and who is passing out New Testaments in Yiddish?
OUR LEAD STORY Samuel Corum/Getty Images A Jewish congressman’s new memoir relives his experience at Capitol riots
When House Democratic leaders asked Rep. Jamie Raskin to present a resolution for President Trump’s second impeachment last year, his daughters begged him not to. It had been only two weeks since Raskin’s son, Tommy, committed suicide, and one of the daughters, Tabitha, had been with him inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection, forced to hide under a colleague’s desk as an aide stood guard with a fireplace poker.
Fear and duty: Tabitha and her sister worried their dad would become “the face and voice of impeachment” at a moment when alt-right threats felt ever-present. Raskin agreed to hand off the job to a colleague, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a few minutes later pressing him to serve. Eventually, with the promise of extra security, Raskin said yes – because, as he explains in a new memoir of that intense emotional time, his son would have wanted him to.
“I feel Tommy with me in every minute,” Raskin recalled telling Pelosi. “He is in my heart, and he is in my chest.”
Detail and authenticity: The book, “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy,” blends family history and philosophical argument, like the heartbreaking post Raskin penned after Tommy’s death that helped normalize discussion of suicide among Jews. It is “the rare politician’s memoir that reads like a genuine exploration of self rather than a branding exercise,” writes our critic, Irene Katz Connelly. “It’s most fascinating for its minutely detailed account of the insurrection.”
Profound and profane: While the book deals with serious topics, Raskin peppers in lighter anecdotes throughout. He notes, for example, that he learned of the riots via an anxious text from Alyssa Milano, the former star of “Who’s the Boss?” and “Charmed.”
Someone else texted Raskin the now-infamous photo of a rioter carrying a Confederate flag through the Rotunda, a photo he showed to Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. “Looks like we’re under new management,” he said. At the end of the day, while they waited to leave the complex, several Domino’s pizzas arrived, Raskin recalled, “to great bipartisan enthusiasm.”
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD Opinion | I quit the BBC after 30 years because of antisemitism: The Queen of England is a fan of Rabbi YY Rubinstein’s broadcasts, but such high-profile adoration was not enough to keep him around. He left the network after it incorrectly accused victims of an antisemitic attack of making offensive Muslim slurs, the latest example of what he calls “inexcusable” behavior. “The BBC cannot fix its antisemitism problem if they refuse to acknowledge that they have one,” Rubinstein writes in a new essay. “Expecting that to happen is as likely as successfully using sand castles to stop tsunamis.” Read the essay ➤
Former Chabad of Poway leader gets jail time for fraud: Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who gained national attention after being injured during the 2019 shooting at his synagogue, was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for tax and wire fraud. Goldstein grifted congregants, donors and the government with sham donations and fake invoices that lined his pockets for decades. “You dragged so many people down with you,” Judge Cynthia Bashant told Goldstein. “And so many of those people thought they were helping Chabad. But really it was just to benefit you, and I can’t ignore that fact.” She also ordered him to pay nearly $3 million in restitution. Read the story ➤
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 'Some of my closest friends are Jews,' David Bateman said after accusing them of wanting to exterminate people. 💉 The founder of a Utah-based software firm, David Bateman, resigned Tuesday night amid backlash over an email he sent claiming the COVID-19 vaccine is part of a plot by “the Jews” to “euthanize the American people.” The email was sent to fellow tech CEOs and other business and political leaders, and begins with an acknowledgement “that many of you will think I’m crazy after reading it.” It goes on to claim that “Hasidic Jews in the U.S. instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason.” Asked for an explanation, he said: “I have nothing but love for the Jewish people. Some of my closest friends are Jews.” (JTA)
💉 Meanwhile, preliminary data from Israel suggests a fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine increases antibodies fivefold. The data has not yet been peer reviewed, but nearly 100,000 people in Israel were expected to have received or scheduled the fourth dose as of Tuesday. (JTA)
🕍 Quebec became the only Jewish community in North America with no in-person services for the foreseeable future as the province’s government ordered all houses of worship to close because of the omicron surge. Rabbi Reuben Poupko, the Jewish representative on an interfaith body that advises the government, called the move an “overreach” and “epidemiologically indefensible.” (Canadian Jewish News)
✝️ Copies of the New Testament translated into Yiddish have been distributed in Jewish communities throughout Rockland County, N.Y., in what some believe is an attempt at evangelizing Haredi Jews. Phone numbers listed inside the bibles direct to missionaries for Jews for Jesus. (Jerusalem Post)
🇮🇱 The Israel Defense Forces plans to create a new all-female border-defense platoon later this year specifically for religious women who want to serve in a combat unit but are concerned about being too close to men. (Jewish News Syndicate)
😮 Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate broker arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, has compared attacks on her to treatment by the Nazis. “Just like they did that to the Jews in Germany. Those were scapegoats,” said Ryan, who has sought to parlay her involvement in the protest into a career as a right-wing media personality. “And I believe that people who are Caucasian are being turned into evil in front of the media.” Her remarks caused the phrase “Jews in Germany” to trend on Twitter Tuesday evening. (NBC News)
Shiva call ➤ Sandra Jaffe, a patron of New Orleans jazz, died at 83. Jaffe and her husband, Allan, in 1961 opened Preservation Hall, the legendary venue in the heart of the city’s French Quarter. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the club’s house band received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush for “displaying the unbreakable spirit of New Orleans.” (New York Times)
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, a women’s rights activist, died on Jan. 5, 2019 at 90. She has been called “the Godmother of Title IX” for her work in the creation of the law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at federally funded educational institutions. “Every woman who has gone to college, gotten a law degree or a medical degree, was able to take shop instead of home-ec, or went to a military academy really owes her a huge debt,” said Margaret Dunkle, a research colleague and friend.
Last year on this day, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock became, respectively, the first Jewish and first Black United States senators from Georgia, in an election that also tipped control of the Senate to Democrats and gave the body its first Jewish Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer. Ossoff was later sworn into office using the Bible that belonged to a civil rights rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.
VIDEO OF THE DAY We teamed up with Polina Shepherd, a well-known figure in the klezmer movement, to produce a new music video. The arrangement is by Shepherd and the lyrics are from a poem called “The Tempest Breakers” by Abraham Nahum Stencl, who edited a Yiddish literary journal, Loshn un Lebn (Language and Life) from 1946 until 1981.
––– Thanks to Rudy Malcom and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter.
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