LGBTQ youth face a wave of new threats. How should the Jewish community respond? For Pride Month, our Rudy Malcolm spoke with Jewish leaders fighting against a wave of legislation restricting LGBTQ rights. Biblical precedent: Jewish legal writings identify a rainbow of six genders. According to ancient tradition, Mordechai nursed Esther from his own breasts. And Midrash Tanchuma suggests that Dinah was conceived with the soul of a man but that God helped her transition into a woman. Jewish values: Some leaders see the situation as one of pikuach nefesh, the principle in Jewish law that the necessity of saving a person’s life comes before almost any other religious rule. “It is part of my job to make sure that people who are being oppressed and marginalized are being protected and loved,” said Rabbi Eleanor Steinman of Austin’s Temple Beth Shalom. Fighting back: Dr. Morissa Ladinsky is one of seven plaintiffs suing the state of Alabama over its new criminal penalties for medical workers who provide gender-affirming care, which one study associated with a nearly 40% drop in depression and suicide attempts. “Fighting anti-LGBTQ legislation is who we are as Jews and it’s who we are as people,” Dr. Ladinsky said. Church vs. state: Republican lawmakers across the nation are framing similar bans on gender-affirming care and other legislation regarding gender and sexuality in religious terms. But Rabbi Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, California, said this is “not inclusive of Jewish theology” and warned: “This is the canary in the coal mine.” Read the story ➤
Related: A judge ruled on Tuesday in favor of LGBTQ students at Yeshiva University who filed a lawsuit last year claiming they were discriminated against.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a synagogue in Surfside after the deadly building collapse last year. (Getty) |
Synagogue sues over Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban: Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach claims the new law, which has been signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and is set to take effect on July 1, violates the religious rights of Jews. Given that abortion is required under Jewish law if necessary to protect a woman’s health, the suit states that the ban “prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion.” Read the story ➤ Opinion | My fellow Orthodox rabbis need to take a stronger stance against guns:During the social upheaval of 1968, Orthodox rabbis called for stricter gun laws. Now, Rabbi Seth Winberg, who is Orthodox and senior chaplain at Brandeis University, is worried that his colleagues have followed their congregants’ growing embrace of the pro-gun culture of the Republican party. “There is no halachic basis for easy access to weapons of violence,” he argues in a new essay. “The Talmud forbids selling weapons to people who are likely to use them for violent crimes, and cautions against keeping dangerous objects in our homes, lest they cause accidental death or injury.” Read his essay ➤ First person | My father spoke like Tevye the Dairyman: Sheldon Londoner recalls his father, Hershl, enjoyed playing with Yiddish, molding it to his own whims and desires. He “used many sprikhverter” — proverbs — “and dozens, if not hundreds of expressions, which I never heard anywhere else,” Sheldon writes, leaving him to wonder if his dad might actually have coined a lot of them. Read the essay ➤
And one more: The FBI is looking into “The Mapping Project,” a website that lists scores of Boston Jewish organizations and says they are complicit in the “colonization of Palestine.”
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Doug Mastriano, the GOP candidate for Pennsylvania governor, at a rally last month. (Getty) |
🔥 Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor, made a new Nazi analogy, this time about the Jan. 6 attack. While appearing on a podcast, he claimed the insurrection was a false flag operation similar to the Reichstag fire in 1933 that the Nazis used as justification to suspend civil liberties and go after political enemies. (Forward) 🇮🇱 Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition government is closer to collapse after a lawmaker quit Bennett’s party. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is hoping for a return to power, said that the current government was holding “one of the longest funerals in history.” (Reuters, Times of Israel) 🔎 The NSO Group, the controversial Israeli spyware maker, is in talks to be bought by a U.S. defense firm. The negotiations come after a string of reports alleging misuse of the spyware by regimes across the world. If approved, the deal could see NSO removed from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s blacklist. (Haaretz) 🗳️ In the Nevada primaries, Adam Laxalt, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and the Republican Jewish Coalition, won the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. On the House side, David Brog, the Jewish former head of the advocacy group Christians United for Israel, lost his bid for the GOP nomination; and Amy Vilela, who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, lost the Democratic primary. (New York Times) 👍 A former IDF general, Doron Almog, has emerged as a consensus candidate likely to become the next head of the Jewish Agency for Israel after a yearlong search process. Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, is pushing a different candidate — his deputy Idan Roll, who has been tasked with reaching out to disaffected American Jews since the government was formed last year. (Forward) 💉 Some U.S. service members have sought religious exemptions from the military’s mandated COVID-19 vaccine, citing its remote connection to lab-grown cell lines from fetuses that were aborted decades ago. Now a new vaccine from Novavax, which contains no fetal cells, may become a viable alternative. (AP) 📚 The European Union restored funding to the Palestinian Authority that was frozen due to concerns over antisemitic incitement in textbooks. At the same time, the E.U. announced it was funding a second study of Palestinian textbooks would take “appropriate measures” if the texts are not free of antisemitism, hatred and incitement to violence. “What starts with incitement to hatred and violence, becomes terror and prevents co-existence,” said E.U. Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi. (Twitter) 🎬 The long-awaited sequel to Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part 1” – an upcoming eight-episode series on Hulu – is shaping up to have an all-star cast. Steve Martin, Martin Short, Ted Danson, Natasha Lyonne, Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen have all reportedly been offered roles. (The Ankler) Dept. of corrections➤ Yesterday’s newsletter incorrectly stated that Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, had been expelled from Israel over his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Shakir and HRW have never taken a formal position on BDS; they have called for businesses to avoid operating in Israeli settlements. The Israeli government deported Shakir in 2019 under a law that allows it to remove individuals who advocate for a boycott of Israel, but he and the organization dispute the allegation that they support a boycott.
What else we’re reading ➤ Israeli researchers find at least 2,000 reptile species facing extinction … How an immigrant from the shtetl became the father of America’s nuclear Navy … This Jewish vegan deli is bringing its meatless Reubens to Seattle.
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DEPT. OF SELF-CONGRATULATION |
A proud tip of the Forwarding kippah to our three winners in this year’s Society for Features Journalism awards, and to their editor, Adam Langer. Simi Horwitz, who most recently wrote about the documentary “My Name is Andrea,” took first place for arts & entertainment commentary portfolio category with a trio of reviews. Stav Ziv, who specializes in artist profiles, took second place in arts & entertainment features for a story about Meg Adler, who has dedicated herself to preserving the spirit of homes lost in the California wildfires.
And Andrew Silverstein, who has been contributing memorable stories of lost New York won an honorable mention in feature specialty writing for a series of stories about the intersection of food, politics and history.
You can find a full list of Society for Features Journalism winners here. |
A copy of the Magna Carta on display in 2015 in England. (Getty) |
On this day in history: The Magna Carta was signed 807 years ago, on June 15, 1215. Of the 63 clauses in the historic document, which laid out British rights and liberties, three touched on Jewish life. As Rachel X. Landes wrote in the Forward in 2015, it included restrictions on Jews owning or working land; a provision ensuring that “much if not all” of the estates of the Jewish dead reverted to the crown; and, perhaps most egregiously, the establishment of Jews as chattel — or the personal possession — of the monarchy. King Edward I expelled all Jews from England 75 years after the Magna Carta was signed.
Last year on this day, we reported that President Joe Biden named Tom Nides as ambassador to Israel. Biden plans to visit Israel in July.
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Eddy Portnoy and Cameron Bernstein reinterpreted the 'SpongeBob SquarePants' song into Yiddish. |
If you’ve been wondering what the “SpongeBob SquarePants” theme song would sound like in Yiddish, ponder no longer. Eddy Portnoy of the YIVO Institute translated it last week, and posted the lyrics to social media. “For me, it’s just sort of a fun exercise; to see if I can do it, to get it to rhyme, to see if it works,” he said. But wait, there’s more: Cameron Bernstein, a popular Yiddish TikToker, recorded herself singing the translation. Watch her rendition here ➤ ––– Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Arno Rosenfeld and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
Support Independent Jewish Journalism The Forward is a non-profit 501(c)3 so our journalism depends on support from readers like you. You can support our work today by donating or subscribing. All donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of US law. Make a donation ➤ Subscribe to Forward.com ➤ "America’s most prominent Jewish newspaper" — The New York Times, 2021 |
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