Jews are all too familiar with counting the dead The U.S. death toll from the pandemic will soon surpass 1 million – an almost unfathomable number. President Joe Biden this morning plans to order flags to fly at half-staff at all federal buildings through Monday. “As a nation,” Biden said in a formal statement, “we must not grow numb to such sorrow. To heal, we must remember.” As we grapple with the collective toll, we remember, too, the enormous impact each individual death has on families and communities. So today we highlight 10 American Jews lost to COVID-19 – the number required by Jewish law for a quorum to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish. They include a tombstone maker, a camp director, a songwriter and a bank robber. None were particularly well known, but each made their mark within and beyond the Jewish world.
There’s Rabbi Avrohom Cohen, a Holocaust survivor who performed 3,000 circumcisions free of charge. His legacy lives on in the 100 young mohels he trained on the condition that they also perform the service at no cost.
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Rabbi Avrohom Cohen performed thousands of circumcisions for free. (Photo: Heshy Rubenstein) |
Another survivor, Margit Buchhalter Feldman, was born on the same day as Anne Frank. Feldman died in April 2020, one day before the 75th anniversary of her liberation from a concentration camp. Gladys Davis survived two hip replacements, a heart attack and breast cancer. She went to the hospital for pancreatitis in March 2020 and tested positive for COVID, becoming the pandemic’s first reported casualty in Detroit’s Jewish community. And Ted Ruskin, who taught in a federal prison and spearheaded the renovation and annual cleanup of several Jewish cemeteries in the Denver area. Read more about these and six others lost ➤ Since the start of the pandemic, Alex Goldman has been memorializing its victims with capsule obituaries. His “Faces of Covid” Twitter account has profiled more than 7,000 individuals. Our Louis Keene spoke with Goldman about Jewish mourning, monuments to catastrophe, and why he believes the pandemic can still bring Americans together. Read the story ➤ |
Some of Ukraine's 'Righteous Gentiles' who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. (Courtesy) |
15 ‘Righteous Gentiles’ lived in Ukraine before the war. An American Jewish group rushed to help them: Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, had verified these individuals as having risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. They fill out paperwork each year and are sent a small monthly stipend. But amid the chaos after Russian’s invasion, notarizing forms became impossible as did tracking down the recipients who fled their homes. Instead they were simply asked to take proof-of-life photos. “Please excuse the quality of the photo,” one wrote back. “After the air raid we do not turn on the big light.” Read the story ➤ Opinion | Pregnant women in U.S. and Israel face starkly different choices: The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade has unleashed a firestorm of fear and uncertainty for women in considering their reproductive choices. Our contributor Carly Pildis compares the emotional and literal costs of giving birth in the U.S. and Israel, and the results are bleak: “Compared to Israeli policy, and the policy of every other wealthy country in the world,” Pildis writes, “American policy is staunchly anti-family and anti-Mom.” Read her essay ➤ Wednesday was a busy first day for Amb. Deborah Lipstadt, America’s new antisemitism envoy. She weighed in on Lufthansa airlines kicking off all visibly Jewish passengers because some were not masked. “Acting as if a group of Jews are collectively responsible for wrongdoing by a few people who happen to be Jewish would be antisemitic,” Lipstadt said. And in her first interview, with the Washington Post, she took on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s distortions about Nazism in Ukraine. “I don’t shock easily,” she said. “But this, I find breathtaking.”
And one more: Adam Sandler’s daughter’s bat mitzvah was a who’s who of celebrities
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Actress Selma Blair opens up about her past in a new memoir, 'Mean Baby.' (Getty) |
🍷 Selma Blair, the actress best known for “Cruel Intentions,” wrote in her new memoir that her decades-long battle with alcoholism began with “small sips” of Manischewitz at a Passover Seder. “The first time I got drunk it was a revelation,” she writes. “A light flooded through me, filling me up with the warmth of God. But the year I was 7, when we basically had Manischewitz on tap and no one was paying attention to my consumption level, I put it together: the feeling was not God but fermentation.” (People) 👏 Victoria is set to become the first Australian state to ban the swastika. Displaying it in public could lead to thousands of dollars in fines, 12 months’ imprisonment, or both. (The Guardian) 🎥 A new documentary narrated by Kate Winslet focuses on children killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza during last year’s war. Amid backlash, Winslet said she was misled about the exact nature of the film. “That my participation could be interpreted as taking a stand on the rights and wrongs of one of the world’s most tragic and intractable conflicts never entered my thinking,” she said. “War is a tragedy for all sides. Children have no voice in conflict. I simply wanted to lend them mine.” (Jewish News) 🕍 A Chicago rabbi is leaving his Reform synagogue months after complaints that he created a hostile work environment. An investigation found no evidence of criminal conduct, but the board said in a letter that “sometimes relationships are damaged in ways that cannot be repaired.” (Religion News Service) 👉 A swastika and anti-Israel vandalism was found last week at the University of California San Diego. “I’m waking up stressed and anxious,” said one student, “wondering if I’m going to go to campus and be physically attacked by a student who has opposing views and, simply because I’m Jewish, deems me as their villain.” (NBC San Diego) 🕍 A college student started a Twitter feed showcasing photos of New York buildings that once were synagogues. More than 1,000 pictures later, she’s run out of shuls. So she’s embarking on a new journey: tracking congregations from the American West at the turn of the 20th century. (eJewishPhilanthropy) 🫶 Israeli Orna Guralnik is one of America’s most popular couples counselors, thanks to her reality show, whose third season debuts on Showtime Friday. “When people write to me,” Guralnik said, “I don’t think it’s about me personally, I think it’s the function the show provides. People actually have a therapeutic experience.” (JTA)
What else is on our radar ➤ Queen Elizabeth’s annual speech announced legislation against Israel boycotts … Or Sasson, an Israeli Judoka with two Olympic medals, announced his retirement … Titus Brandsma was killed in a Nazi death camp – on Sunday, Pope Francis will make him a saint.
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Our “Bintel Brief” advice podcast is back for a second season, and we’ve got the scoop on the new episode that was released overnight. “Heartbroken Bubbe,” who last year wrote in upset over her granddaughter’s baptism, calls into the show to share what it’s been like since. “I’m surprised I even have a tongue anymore, I’ve bitten it so many times,” she says. Listen the new episode wherever you get your podcasts, or by simply clicking here ➤ |
Daniel Libeskind at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which he designed. (Getty) |
On this day in history: Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect behind the rebuilding of the site of the World Trade Center and Europe’s largest Jewish museum, was born on May 12, 1946. Born in Poland to Holocaust survivors, Libeskind’s latest project is Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, site of America’s deadliest antisemitic attack. Discussing the recently unveiled designs for the new building, he told Architectural Digest that he hopes it “will be a seed of transformation and an affirmation of life.” Last year on this day, we reported that six Israelis and at least 40 Palestinians were killed in the worst fighting since the 2014 Gaza war. Hundreds more died before the crisis ended on May 21.
On the lunar calendar, it’s the 11 of Iyar, my Hebrew birthday.
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CBS News took a trip inside the Yiddish Book Center – a cavernous fireproof, climate-controlled library in Western Massachusetts. Aaron Lansky has run the center for decades and he estimates it’s saved more than a million Yiddish books. But the center’s mission is no longer just about saving books – it also uses those books, many of which are available to download for free, to teach Yiddish to new generations. Watch the video ➤ ––– Thanks to Rob Eshman, PJ Grisar, Rudy Malcom, Eliya Smith, Jake Wasserman and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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