JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: U.S. sending troops to Israel, new DNA analysis claims Christopher Columbus was Sephardic Jew, Weather Channel apologizes over ads some deemed antisemitic, Paul McCartney shows up to shul for Yom Kippur, and much more.

ELECTION 2024

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris at recent campaign stops. (Getty)

The Jewish vote

There are just 22 days until the election.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are intensifying their outreach to Jewish voters. Recent polls show the race is neck and neck in key battleground states, where Jews remain a pivotal voting bloc.

Actor Ben Stiller, songwriter Benj Pasek and comedian Alex Edelman joined Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, at a Sunday event for Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. (Pasek, Edelman and Emhoff broke the fast together Saturday night.)

Trump has made several recent appearances at events with Jewish audiences, including a 20-minute visit to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York last week.

A group of Jewish conservatives — including officials from the administrations of both President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush — will make the case for Harris today on a virtual call.

Related: How the Jewish vote could swing the election in seven battleground states.

The 1939 German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden. (Marshall Curry Productions)

Garden variety

Trump is teasing an upcoming rally at Madison Square Garden — home of the Knicks, the Rangers, and 150 Billy Joel concerts. It was also the site of a famous 1939 rally that “married fascist imagery with Americana,” writes our PJ Grisar. Red, white and blue bunting hung alongside swastikas at the event, held months before Hitler invaded Poland and organized by the German American Bund. Read the story ►

Related: 81 years ago, at a mass rally at Madison Square Garden, Hollywood stars pleaded for Europe’s Jews.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail…

Emhoff’s friends and family wished him a happy 60th birthday on Sunday. His parents, Michael and Barbara Emhoff, wrote him a poem. (X)

Harris spoke at a Sunday church service in North Carolina, where the community is recovering from Hurricane Helene. She cited the Book of Isaiah, and referred to those helping with the cleanup as “a refuge for the needy in their distress.” (The Hill)

Tens of thousands of evangelical women gathered at the National Mall in Washington on Saturday for an event that called on them to be inspired by the biblical Esther to vote for conservative causes. (NY Times, NBC News)

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ISRAEL AT WAR

A man walks past a store entrance in Jerusalem on Sunday with portraits of Israeli hostages. (Getty)

Iranian threat

The Pentagon said on Sunday it would send around 100 troops to Israel, along with an antimissile system “to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.” (JTA, NY Times)

The move signals that the Biden administration backs an Israeli strike against Iran. (JTA)

Vice President Kamala Harris, in a pre-Yom Kippur call with Jewish voters, said “all options are on the table” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. (JTA)

Hamas tried to convince Iran to join its Oct. 7 attack, according to a review of the minutes of 10 secret meetings among the terror group’s top leaders. (NY Times)

Yirmiyahu Danzig, inset, writes that “the amount of not just respect, but personal connection” he feels to the previous work of Ta-Nehisi Coates, pictured, makes Coates’ “new misfire on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that much more painful to consider.” (Getty)

Opinion | I’m a Jew of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates can’t apply U.S. lessons to Israel: The acclaimed author is under fire for comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Jim Crow South. The history of conquest and oppression in the Holy Land “is infinitely more complicated than in North America,” writes Yirmiyahu Danzig, an antiracism activist whose great-grandfather was born in Jerusalem in the final years of the Ottoman Caliphate. Read his essay ►

More Israel news…

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone strike on an Israeli military base Sunday that killed four soldiers and wounded dozens of other people. (NPR)

An overnight Israeli airstrike on a Gaza hospital compound, which the IDF says was being used as a Hamas command center, killed three and wounded dozens of others. A separate strike in Gaza on Sunday night is “said to have killed at least 22 Palestinians at a school sheltering displaced families.” (Times of Israel)

Nicaragua is breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel, calling the Netanyahu government “fascist” and “genocidal.” (Reuters)

Tune in: The latest episode of our new podcast, Make Art Not War, just dropped. Host Libby Lenkinski chats with Tamer Nafar, a pioneer in the Palestinian hip-hop scene, who’s gone from writing music to writing op-ed articles. Listen to it now, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Adam Brody and Kristen Bell in a bat mitzvah scene from Nobody Wants This. (Netflix)

Take two

Netflix renewed Nobody Wants This for a second season. The hit romcom stars Adam Brody and Kristen Bell as a rabbi and a non-Jewish sex podcaster in a budding relationship. The first season drew some criticism for its depiction of Jewish women as “nagging shrews,” writes our culture reporter Mira Fox. She offers a few ways the show can improve — including highlighting more of the immigrant experience of the rabbi’s parents, writing more nuanced Jewish women and having a storyline where Bell’s character tries to observe Shabbat. Read the story ►

Plus…

No film this year has had as polarizing a reception as Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a sci-fi epic with a convoluted plot. Something that hasn’t been discussed that much? The film’s use of Nazi motifs.

Sunday was the 100th birthday of Terry Gibbs, a Jewish jazz great. He celebrated by releasing a new album.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

People visited the tomb of Christopher Columbus Friday at the Cathedral of Seville in Spain as news broke about his possible Jewish ancestry. (Getty)

😲 Christopher Columbus may have been a Sephardic Jew, according to a new 22-year investigation of DNA analysis released ahead of Columbus Day. (Guardian, JTA, Reuters)

⛰️ A prominent German neo-Nazi was recently hiking on what was thought to be Hitler’s favorite mountain. He slipped, and fell 196 feet to his death. (NY Post, Times of Israel)

✍️ Evan Gershkovich, the Jewish journalist who spent more than a year in a Russian prison and was freed this summer, is writing a memoir. (NY Times)

🇺🇦 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Francis on Friday at the Vatican, where they discussed the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine amid its war with Russia. (Religion News Service)

☔ After backlash from a Jewish group, the Weather Channel apologized and removed advertising posters which featured a woman wearing a kaffiyeh. Then there was the backlash to that, with some people accusing the channel of being anti-Muslim. (Haaretz)

On Yom Kippur…

🏀 Israeli NBA star Deni Avdija skipped the Portland Trail Blazers preseason game Friday night in observance of Yom Kippur. “Some things are more important than basketball,” he said. (Jerusalem Post)

🏉 Jake Retzlaff, the starting quarterback at Brigham Young University, a Mormon school, opted to play on Saturday, when he led his team to a 41-19 victory over the University of Arizona. (JTA)

👮 Toronto police opened a hate crime investigation after shots were fired on Yom Kippur at a Jewish girls’ elementary school in Toronto, the second time this year the school was targeted. No one was injured in either incident. (CNN)

🕍 A historic synagogue in Prague has been closed since the Nazis shut it down. On Saturday, it was used for the first time since the Holocaust. (JTA)

🎶 Paul McCartney, wearing a kippah, and his wife Nancy Shevell, who is Jewish, attended Yom Kippur services Saturday at a shul in Santiago, Chile. He was in town to perform a concert the previous night. Social media was full of puns, including: “Hey Jew,” “Eleanor Rigberg,” and “I get by with a little help from Hashem.” (JTA)

Related: The secret Jewish history of Paul McCartney

But wait, there’s more…

Shiva call ► Allan Blye, a writer and producer on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, died at 87. His first language was Yiddish and he began his entertainment career as “a child soloist in his temple’s choir and sang on radio and in Yiddish theater.”

What else we’re reading ► When the hurricane-relief worker turns out to be a neo-Nazi … Why Jewish groups are distancing themselves from a plan to combat antisemitism … Meet Kinori Sugihara Rosnow: the Jewish player on Japan’s national lacrosse team.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

A new 30-second ad starring Billie Jean King, Shaquille O’Neal and other sports celebrities is airing during the televised games of eight sports leagues — including the NBA and NFL — called “Time Out Against Hate.” It is funded by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, a group helmed by Robert Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots. Watch it above, and watch Kraft talk about the campaign on CNBC.

Thanks to PJ Grisar, Jacob Kornbluh and Julie Moos for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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