Minnesota law could impact Jewish burials, Hong Kong builds an eruv, book explores the female spies who worked at Nazi brothel, and meet the NFL cheerleader who also works for a Jewish federation. |
Bystanders watch emergency workers at the site of a car ramming attack this week in Tel Aviv. (Getty) |
As violence flares in Israel, summer programs assure parents their kids are all right:Rocket attacks from Gaza and a car-ramming and stabbing in Tel Aviv — response to Israel’s deadly incursion into the Jenin refugee camp — have distressed American parents who packed teens off to Israel this summer. Programs are trying to reassure them by showing they are in constant contact with Israeli security officials. Read the story ➤ Opinion | Have the protesters against Israel’s judicial overhaul gone too far? “A mass protest movement for the good of the country needs to be led by moderates who want to unite, not radicals who refuse to compromise,” argues Josh Feldman, who writes frequently on Middle East issues. “Will Jewish history remember these protesters as brave citizens who saved democracy, or activists who lost their way and pushed Israel even closer to the abyss?” Read the essay ➤ |
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, at an event last October. (Getty)
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Will Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads app be a decentralized utopia — or just another antisemitic hell? Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, rolled out a competitor to Twitter, but its underlying technology may be a stumbling block. “With so many independent servers,” writes our digital culture reporter, Mira Fox, “there can also be easy homes for antisemites, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and other hate groups to proliferate unmoderated.” Read the story ➤ Related… Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, speaks often of his Jewishness, including giving a very public Yom Kippur apology and reminiscing about his Star Wars-themed bar mitzvah.
With Elon Musk’s deliberate dismantling of Twitter’s guardrails, our columnist Elad Nehorai wondered in an OpEd: Is Musk the most dangerous antisemite in America? |
Two Jewish icons, two very different color schemes. (NBC Universal/Warner Bros.)
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What would a Jewish ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ mashup actually look like?It seems like everyone is making plans for a double feature on July 21, the dual premiere of Christopher Nolan’s biopic of physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s celebration of the world’s most famous doll. Enter PJ Grisar, who imagines what these two disparate films would look like spliced together. He even has a tagline: “Blonde, meet bombshell.” Read the story ➤ Plus… The Nazis destroyed a Munich synagogue in 1938. Construction workers this week stumbled across the rubble — including a stone Ten Commandments that adorned the ark.
Activists unearthed a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democratic presidential candidate who has a history of comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, appearing on a fringe online show where the host once claimed Hitler was “utterly set up” by Jews.
A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams accused The New York Times of fueling “animosity” toward Jews after it published an article highlighting the heavily Orthodox (and male) makeup of the mayor’s Jewish Advisory Council. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference last November in Las Vegas. (Getty) |
🇮🇱 New Hampshire on Thursday became the 37th state to prohibit state contracts or investments with companies that boycott Israel. … Are such bans constitutional? Our Arno Rosenfeld explored the question in 2021, when states threatened to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, after the ice cream maker refused to sell its products in the occupied West Bank. (Times of Israel) 🍦 Speaking of Ben & Jerry’s, one of its co-founders, Ben Cohen, was arrested Thursday while blocking the entrance to the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., where he was protesting the prosecution of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. (Daily Beast) 🪦 A new Minnesota law temporarily blocks cemeteries from offering eco-friendly “green burials” as they explore potential hazards to public safety. But some say the change could adversely impact Jewish and Muslim burials. (MinnPost) 😲 The Madam and the Spymaster, a non-fiction book released this week, explores the untold story of a high-class brothel in wartime Berlin frequented by Nazis — and staffed by female agents gathering intel. (New York Times) 📉 Russia and Ukraine could see an official “exodus” of their Jewish populations by 2030, according to a report released Wednesday. This would be the fourth such exodus — defined as a place losing half its Jews in a short period of time — in the past century, the first being when Jews fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. (Haaretz) 🚶 The several dozen observant Jews who live in Hong Kong built an eruv, providing them flexibility to carry things (house keys, babies) while walking in the city on Shabbat. (Times of Israel) 🏈 By day, Eliza Kanner works in the development office at Boston’s Jewish federation. Her side hustle? Cheerleading for the New England Patriots. (JTA) Shiva call ➤ Jack Goldstein, who secured landmark status for dozens of Broadway theaters and helped launch the TKTS discount ticket booth, died at 74.
Long weekend reads ➤ An inspiring Jewish story happened on this season of NBC’s American Ninja Warrior, but nobody will ever see it … The story behind a George Floyd sculpture, made by an Israeli artist … This rabbi is a Savile Row-trained tailor.
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In this week’s edition of our print magazine: Arno Rosenfeld on a furor over antisemitism and Zionism at CUNY; Louis Keene on a kosher bakery that refused to make Pride pastries; Lev Golinkin on how a group with neo-Nazi ties ended up giving a presentation at Stanford University; Michael Oren on lessons from this week’s violence in Jenin; and Benjamin Ivry on the life and death of Alan Arkin. Download your copy now ➤ |
Max Horkheimer, left, and his colleague Theodor Adorno in Germany in 1964. (Wikimedia) |
On this day in history (1973): Sociologist Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School died at age 78. In response to Hitler’s rise to power, Horkheimer and the school relocated to the United States, where he later served as a consultant for the American Jewish Committee. In one of his last essays, “The German Jews,” Horkheimer wrote that “men should become sensitive not to injustice against the Jews but to any and all persecution.” It’s the 83rd birthday of Ringo Starr! Here’s his secret Jewish history.
In honor of World Chocolate Day, check out this book by a rabbi about the connection between cacao and the Jews.
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Netta, the Israeli pop star who won Eurovision in 2018, released the music video for her new song, “Everything,” which was filmed on location on the streets of New York City. It’s already racked up more than half a million views. She’ll be on tour in the U.S. in November. --- Thanks to PJ Grisar, Matthew Litman, Gall Sigler and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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