Town trying to take land from Chabad, facial recognition tech helps ID Holocaust photos, and six new films about Israeli politicians – including one narrated by George Clooney. |
PRESIDENT BIDEN'S ISRAEL TRIP |
An aide prepares a display of flags at the residence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. (Getty) |
President Joe Biden arrives in Israel this morning, his 10th visit to the country since 1973. Yair Lapid will be the 11th Israeli prime minister he’s met with. He also will visit President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. “If there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one”:That’s what Biden told a pro-Israel gathering in 2014. As he departed for his first visit to the Jewish state since becoming president, our Jacob Kornbluh picked five key moments in Biden’s history in the holy land. There was the time Golda Meir revealed to him Israel’s “secret weapon” before the Yom Kippur War. There was his 2010 trip as vice president, when he was blindsided by an announcement of 1,600 new housing units planned for a settlement in East Jerusalem. And there is the portrait of Biden that used to sit on former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desk, inscribed: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you had to say, but I love you.” Read the story ➤
Follow Jacob on Twitter throughout Biden’s visit for the latest tidbits.
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Joe Biden often retells a story about the time he met Golda Meir. (Getty) |
And we have two new opinion essays… Biden’s last visit to Israel was spent doing damage control. Here’s what he needs to do now: After that diplomatic disaster in 2010, when the Netanyahu government’s settlement expansion was perceived as a direct rebuke to his boss, President Barack Obama, Nathan J. Diament of the Orthodox Union says Biden has a new opportunity on this trip. “In the U.S., Israel has become a more partisan issue,” Diament notes, “and Biden can reassert its priority amongst mainstream Democrats.” Read his essay ➤ Welcome to Bethlehem, President Biden. We need your help: The president’s itinerary includes a visit to the West Bank’s holy Christian city, which sits on the other side of the separation wall from Jerusalem. Allegra Pacheco, a longtime resident, welcomes the cosmetic updates the city undertook for Biden’s arrival, but doesn’t want her home to become another photo-op while its Palestinian residents suffer under Israeli occupation. “With your advocacy, Mr. President,” Pacheco writes, “Bethlehem does not have to deteriorate into a water- and land-starved city but can thrive as the ancient beacon of coexistence it has been for centuries.” Read her essay ➤ Plus: We mentioned Biden has (so far) met with 10 Israeli prime ministers — Meir and Netanyahu, of course, and also Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Naftali Bennett.Well, there’s a new ChaiFlicks docuseries that probes the lives and careers of four of these — Meir, Begin, Rabin and Sharon — plus David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first premier. Our Simi Horowitz says the films “couldn’t be timelier and “are well worth the effort.” Read her review ➤
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Curt Flood (left) and Hank Greenberg. (Getty) |
50 years ago, a Jewish Hall of Famer testified on behalf of a Black player seeking free agency: Hardly anyone in professional baseball wanted to stand up for Curt Flood, a Black outfielder who sued MLB in the early 1970s over a contract clause that tied players to teams indefinitely. Hank Greenberg, known as the “Hebrew Hammer,” was one of the few to stand up for Flood, who lost the lawsuit but paved the way for free agency. “I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes,” Flood wrote. Read the story ➤ An echo of Jewish Lublin through Yiddish fonts: The sounds of Yiddish that used to flourish in the Jewish quarter of Lublin, Poland, disappeared when the Nazis arrived. But today, some non-Jewish Poles are working to ensure that the memory of Lublin’s Jews stays alive. One is Robert Sawa, a master printer who created a poster showcasing the names of Yiddish streets that no longer exist using Yiddish fonts that have been dormant for decades. Read the story ➤ Remembering the Jewish composer who wrote what might just be the most familiar theme song ever:We mentioned briefly in yesterday’s newsletter the passing of Monty Norman, who wrote the unforgettable music for James Bond’s opening sequence. Our Benjamin Ivry took a deeper dive into the musician’s catalog and uncovered a 1981 Broadway flop that featured a character dressed up as Hitler belting out a comic tune. “Norman’s own fame and good fortune,” writes Ivry, “could be on occasion, like the martinis which James Bond preferred to imbibe, shaken, not stirred with theatrical setbacks, but always with discernible Yiddishkeit.” Read the story ➤
And one more: The 74th Emmy Award nominations were announced on Tuesday. Our culture, reporter, PJ Grisar, breaks down all the Jewish angles.
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
| The Lubavitch Educational Center in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Google Maps) |
☀️ A 3-year-old boy died after being left in a car outside a South Florida Jewish preschool where both his parents work, police said. The child was one of several from the same family who attend the Lubavitch Educational Center in Miami Gardens. “No words can capture the heartbreak and sadness we feel,” said Rabbi Benzion Korf, the center’s dean. The temperature was in the mid-90s. (Miami Herald) 🤰 The new legal landscape surrounding reproductive health threatens to affect young organizations that help Jews fulfill the biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Many legal experts think the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade could lead to new restrictions on infertility treatment like IVF as well as contraception, throwing these groups’ work — and their clients — into turmoil. (JTA) 🕍 A Long Island town has begun the process of using eminent domain to seize two parcels of land owned by Chabad. “We were startled,” said Rabbi Eli Goodman of the Chabad in Long Beach, New York. The two sides are headed to court on Thursday. (Long Island Herald) 📈 The Anti-Defamation League and the Charleston Jewish Federation are creating a database to track antisemitic incidents, which the ADL says jumped 67% in South Carolina and 74% across the South last year, a trend it called “very troubling.” (WISTV) 🏀 Despite going undrafted by the National Basketball Association, Yeshiva University's Ryan Turell still hopes to break barriers for Orthodox Jewish athletes in the league and beyond. “Ryan will be the Magic Johnson of Jewish basketball,” said Bryan Kaplan, who coached Turell back when he was in first grade. (Fansided) 📸 Facial recognition technology identified rockstar Geddy Lee’s mother in Holocaust-era photos. Researchers used artificial intelligence to find a picture of her at the displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen. The public can also use the technology – created by a Google engineer who is the descendent of four Holocaust survivors – to scan through a trove of 34,000 photos from the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s collection. (JTA, Times of Israel)
What else we’re reading ➤ Three hidden Modigliani sketches found under a painting at a Haifa museum … An ode to ‘oy’ — the perfect Yiddish word … How to hora harder, better, faster, stronger.
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Isaac Babel has been called the 'greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry.' (Wikimedia) |
On this day in history (1894): The famed Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel, was born in Moldavanka, a district of Odessa. Babel is best known for his short stories and autobiographical fiction, much of it inspired by his upbringing in an observant Jewish family. And, over the decades, some of his writing appeared in the Forward — including the short story “The Beginning,” which we published in its first English translation in 2009.
Last year on this day, we reported that Elie Kligman became the second Orthodox baseball player to be drafted into the MLB in two days. Kligman, a catcher, opted for college instead of signing with the Washington Nationals. He’s now gearing up for his sophomore season at Wake Forest by crushing the competition in summer ball.
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Netflix is releasing today a documentary about former Israeli President Shimon Peres, titled “Never Stop Dreaming.” Directed by Richard Trank, it features interviews with Peres, his family and friends, as well as Barbra Streisand, and three former U.S. presidents. The film is narrated by George Clooney. ––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle Thanks to Nora Berman, Jordan Greene, Louis Keene, Jacob Kornbluh, Lauren Markoe, Jodi Rudoren, Rukhl Schaechter and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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