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Stanford investigating Jewish quotas, ATM dispenses cash with swastika, opening the New York Jewish Film Festival, and the Christian clergy who tried to kidnap Henry Kissinger.
FROM THE FORWARD The first Jewish senators were slaveowners. How should we reckon with their legacy? When the Washington Post published a blockbuster investigation on Monday showing that more than 1,700 former members of Congress had once owned enslaved Black people, we wondered: how many of them were Jewish? Since the Post made the database it created available to the public, it was easy to check. We found that the only two Jewish lawmakers among those 1,700 were Sen. David Levy Yulee of Florida and Sen. Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana – both of whom have long been recognized as enslavers. But historians say it’s important for Jews to grapple anew with this fact. “What we can do is try and understand how these figures from the past shaped the world in which we live today,” one said. Read the story ➤
Wordle, the enormously popular new online puzzle, has a Jewish precursor: Wordle has had a meteoric rise: It had 90 daily players in November, 2 million last weekend. And they have a guy named Mordecai Meirowitz to thank. No, Meirowitz didn’t invent Wordle (that was a guy named Josh Wardle). But he did invent Mastermind, a popular (analog) 1970s board game with a similar code-breaking format. Meirowitz’s game sold more than 30 million copies and it continues to inform research in the fields of computer science and genetics. Read the story ➤
On the border of Turkey and Syria, a Jewish family desperate to flee a rapidly-changing world: “Neighbours,” which premieres today at the New York Jewish Film Festival, tells its story through the idyllic eyes of Sero, a 6-year-0ld Kurd. A new teacher preaches anti-Zionist views, which confuses the young boy: his neighbors are Jewish and he is their Shabbos Goy. “The film’s powerful imagery lingers long after the credits have rolled,” writes Simi Horwitz. Read the review ➤
‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’ is more timely now than ever: The new opera based on the Oscar-winning 1970 film had what its creators call a “difficult birth.” Its 2020 debut was sidelined by the pandemic. But in its long gestation, the opera, about how two Jewish families were affected by the slow creep of antisemitism in Italy in the 1930s, has only become more timely. “The parallels are actually nauseating,” said librettist Michael Korie. Read the story ➤
Why Netflix should make an Orthodox episode of ‘Queer Eye’:There’s never been a visibly Orthodox Jew featured on an episode of the makeover show, so our Mira Fox went ahead and imagined one. It features Tamar, a mom of three who runs a successful kosher-catering business. The team sweeps in – updating her wardrobe while keeping it modest, teaching her to cook kosher Thai food, styling her wig and thoughtfully installing Shabbat timers around her home. “For once,” Fox writes, “there would be a mainstream narrative framing observant Judaism as something beautiful and fun and rewarding.” Read the story ➤
But wait, there’s more… Antisemitism is on the rise on college campuses. These 13 students hope to change that. A Republican lawmaker in New York compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany. Jewish leaders responded swiftly. How did a Yiddish folk song appear on a 1967 American pop album? Thank this cantor.WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY Hoover Tower overlooks the campus of Stanford University. (Getty Images) 🏫 Stanford University has appointed a task force to investigate whether it had quotas for Jews in the 1950s. “It is important to face our history as an institution and fully understand the impact of past actions,” said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university president. Many top-tier schools had similar discriminatory practices during that era; at Emory University’s dental school, Jewish students were systematically failed or required to repeat semesters. (JTA, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
🇵🇸 An 80-year-old Palestinian man died of a heart attack on Wednesday morning after a predawn arrest by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said the man was beaten and had his hands tied during the incident in a small town near Ramallah; the Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond for comment. (Times of Israel)
💰 An Upper East Side ATM dispensed $100 bills with Nazi symbols stamped on them. “I must have stared at it for a few minutes, and thought, ‘I cannot be seeing what I’m seeing,’” said the ATM user who received the bills, Robyn Roth-Moise. “It was very surreal.” Chase Bank has shut down the ATM and is investigating. (New York Post)
💻 Yad Vashem is putting a searchable database of Holocaust victims online for public use. The records list about 4.8 million murdered Jews; more than 1 million have yet to be identified. Experts are hoping the wide availability of this new tool will allow researchers across the globe to fill in some of those gaps. (JTA)
🚓 The NYPD charged a man with hate crimes on Tuesday for an attack last month on a student wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt. Suleiman Othman, 27, has seven prior arrests, none for hate crimes. The student, Blake Zavadsky, 21, said two men yelled “dirty Jews” at him and a friend outside a Brooklyn Foot Locker. The incident spawned a social media campaign, #IDFshirtchallenge, asking people to post pictures of themselves in IDF-logoed gear. (New York Post)
💰 Some of the $500 million that Netflix paid the family of Roald Dahl for the rights to his work will go to charities that help fight antisemitism. Dahl – the author of celebrated classics including “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach” – had a history of making offensive statements about Jews. (Polygon)
Mazel tov ➤To Aviya Kushner, the Forward’s language columnist, who received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate selected Hebrew poems by Yudit Shahar.
FROM OUR OPINION SECTION Pulitzer-winning Jewish photographer hangs up his lens: One of the most memorable images from the fights over school integration is “The Soiling of Old Glory” — Stanley Forman’s picture of a white man turning an American flag into a weapon to use against a Black man at a school-busing protest. Forman, 76, retired on Dec. 31. Or so he says. He told Robin Washington, our editor-at-large, that he now spends time listening to his police scanner. Read Washington’s tribute ➤
ON THE CALENDAR Henry Kissinger escaped a plot to kidnap him in the early 1970s. (Getty Images) On this day in history: A group of priests, nuns and other religious anti-war activists known as the Harrisburg Seven were indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger – then President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser – on Jan. 12, 1971. Their defense attorney called no witnesses, and the trial ended with a hung jury.
Last year on this day, we reported that the son of a prominent Jewish judge was arrested for his role in the Capitol riots. He pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled for March.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 10th of Shevat, when Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson assumed the leadership of the Lubavitch movement in 1951.
VIDEO OF THE DAY What happens when you invite Mary J. Blige and LL Cool J to Shabbat dinner? You get a rousing rendition of Shalom Aleichem. Read the backstory here ➤ ––– We’re hiring!“America’s most prominent Jewish newspaper,” as The New York Times recently called the Forward, is looking for a reporter with investigative instincts and skills and a track record of landing high-impact stories. Candidates need not be Jewish, but must be curious about the American Jewish world. Check out the job description here ➤
Thanks to PJ Grisar and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
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