New Yorker cartoonist turns Yiddish teen essays written on eve of Holocaust into graphic novel

View this email in a browser

JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

➤ Give a tax-deductible donation

Harry Potter actress' support for Palestinians draws backlash, student sues over non-kosher pizza, cricket's rich Jewish history and Israeli archaeologists discover ancient luxury toilet.

FROM THE FORWARD

Many are taking advantage of the biblical shmita year to spend more time in nature.

7 ways you can make 2022 a shmita year: As we start off the secular new year, many clergy and Jewish groups are hoping that people use the calendar change to consider recommitting to shmita, which began on Rosh Hashanah. Shmita is a biblically ordained sabbatical that occurs every seven years. One of our interns, Rudy Malcom, collected ways for people to personalize the practice – like working on local environmental projects. We should let shmita “drive our growth to be a more regenerative, sustainable and just society,” said Rabbi Zelig Golden, founder and executive director of Wilderness Torah. Read the story ➤

The Holocaust robbed them of their stories. This artist is bringing them back to life:In the 1930s, there was an essay contest for Yiddish-speaking teenagers with a grand prize of roughly $1,000 in today’s dollars. More than 700 entered, and the prize was set to be awarded on Sept. 1, 1939, the very day the Nazis invaded Poland. Flash forward to 2017 and those notebooks, invisible for decades, were discovered in a church in Poland. Now Ken Krimstein, a New Yorker cartoonist, has turned them into a graphic novel. Read the story ➤

In cricket, instances of antisemitism amid a rich Jewish history: On the list of notable Jewish athletes of all time, you will likely not find many who played cricket. But they exist. Take Israel Abrahams, the author of “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages,” who was appointed to replace Solomon Schechter to teach Talmud and rabbinic literature at Cambridge University. In 1902, a missive from Schechter chided Abrahams for his extracurricular interest in cricket, among other time-wasting Anglophilia: “You must excuse my frankness with you, but this is a Rabbinic Chair, and the first thing which will be required from you is not Hellenism or English history, but the exposition of Rabbinic texts.” Read the story ➤

Opinion | Elder care is a Jewish imperative. So is paying home health workers a living wage: More than half of all home health care workers in New York State live on public assistance and some earn less than the state mandated minimum wage of $13.20/hour. Bobbie Sackman is fighting to pass legislation in Albany to change that. “As the movement to increase wages has grown for workers statewide,” she writes, “family caregivers, older adults and people with disabilities understand home care workers — who are predominantly women of color and immigrant women — can’t be left behind.” Read the OpEd ➤

Genius, jerk, misogynist, everyman — the many lives of Saul Bellow: For most of his life, Saul Bellow was the most acclaimed novelist in America. But he also had his detractors – some in his own family and circle of friends, whom he would fictionalize into characters in his books, often to their dismay. An Israeli filmmaker has produced a new documentary that brings together a variety of Bellow’s critics and admirers. “He had so many facets to his personality,” said Alexandra, his fourth wife. Read the story ➤

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Emma Watson, the 'Harry Potter' actress, posted to social media a picture with the words 'Free Palestine' on it.

🪄 A pro-Palestinian message was posted to the Instagram account of Emma Watson, the actress from the “Harry Potter” franchise and a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations. Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. replied on Twitter: “Fiction may work in Harry Potter but it does not work in reality.” If it did, he added, “the magic used in the wizarding world could eliminate the evils of Hamas (which oppresses women & seeks the annihilation of Israel) and the PA (which supports terror). I would be in favor of that!” (JTA)

🍕 A Hebrew Israelite student athlete whose coaches forced him to violate kashrut by eating pepperoni pizza is suing the Ohio school district where it happened. The football coaches’ “antisemitic and shameful” actions caused the teenager “substantial permanent injury,” the lawsuit says. (Washington Post)

🚨 An Orthodox man in Brooklyn was beaten with sticks Sunday night and rushed to the hospital. “It doesn’t stop,” tweeted New York City Council member Kalman Yeger, referring to antisemitic violence in his district. The attack is being investigated by the NYPD’s hate-crimes unit. (Algemeiner)

👶 In a landmark move, Israel will allow same-sex couples to become parents through surrogacy, reversing a longtime ban. The announcement by the health ministry enacts a July decision by the Supreme Court. Surrogacy was previously limited to heterosexual couples and single women with fertility issues. (Reuters)

🎥 David Kurtz took his 16mm camera and shot three minutes of home video of a vibrant Jewish community in a Polish town on the eve of World War II. Old men in yarmulkes, boys and girls playing, people pouring into a synagogue. The ephemeral footage ends abruptly, and was lost for decades. Now, it is part of a 70-minute documentary called “Three Minutes: A Lengthening.” Said Bianca Stigter, the director: “It’s a short piece of footage, but it’s amazing how much it yields.” (New York Times)

🚽 Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a 2,700-year-old toilet from a luxury villa during the First Temple period. As if that wasn’t enough, they found intestinal worm eggs inside, indicating that even the wealthy residents of Jerusalem of that time had poor hygiene that led to infectious diseases and diarrhea. (Haaretz)

🎉 Lily Ebert, a Holocaust survivor, received thousands of well-wishes for her 98th birthday after one of her 34 great-grandchildren, Dov Forman, asked his 1.5 million TikTok followers to help her celebrate. Dov and Lily have teamed up to write her memoir, which is due out in May. (Daily Mail)

What else we’re reading ➤ Why ‘Encanto’ is a very Jewish Disney film … Decades in the making, a first look inside Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance … Watching Henry Winkler’s TikTok videos are mesmerizing.

FROM OUR KITCHEN

Here’s the new Mediterranean cookbook you need now:Claudia Roden’s first book on Middle Eastern food came out in 1968, when many people thought the now-ubiquitous cuisine was mostly comprised of sheep’s eyes and testicles. “I started collecting recipes in 1956, when the Jews were forced to leave Egypt after the Suez War,” she writes of her upbringing in Cairo. “We thought we would never see each other again, so recipes were something to remember one another by.” One little-known fact about Roden that is not in the book: She was Egypt’s national backstroke swimming champion at the age of 15.Read our interview with Roden and then check out her Sephardic recipe for chocolate birthday cake ➤

Looking for more Sephardic cooking inspiration? The coiled holiday breads, long-simmered stews, and honey-sweetened, orange-scented desserts collected within Hélène Jawhara Piñer’s remarkable new cookbook derive not from family recipes passed down through scribbled notes on food-stained paper scraps, but from years of scholarly research using, among other sources, trial records of the Inquisition. One such record explains how the Fernandes family was reported for their Shabbat cooking: preparing a baked dish of meat with onion, olive oil, seeds, spices and other ingredients, sealed with dough all around. Read the story ➤

And one more: Our 10 best recipes of 2021.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: Ariel Sharon suffered a serious stroke on Jan. 4, 2006, making Ehud Olmert acting prime minister of Israel. Sharon underwent a series of subsequent surgeries but remained incapacitated until his death in January 2014. Those eight “years of silence on Sharon’s part have allowed even his strongest critics from the Israeli right to find something to celebrate from his life,” columnist Nathan Jeffay wrote at the time of the funeral.

Also on this day, in 1896: Utah became the 45th state. Did you know that the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress was born in Salt Lake City? Learn about that and 5 other Jewish facts about the Beehive State.

Last year on this day, we reported that Larry King had been hospitalized with COVID-19. He died 19 days later. “Larry King’s gifts as a Jewish amuser and entertainer, a venerable tummler in the sober news media world, sustained a career remarkable for its longevity and the genuine affection it inspired among his loyal viewers,” Benjamin Ivry wrote at the time.

In honor of World Braille Day, read about how braille can capture the nuances of the Torah.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

The trailer for the new movie, “Save the Cinema,” was just released. It tells the true story of how Steven Spielberg stepped in to save a small town theater in Wales by arranging for the 1993 premiere of “Jurassic Park” to be shown there. Want more Spielberg? Check out our collection of essays to mark his 75th birthday.

–––

Thanks to Nora Berman and Rudy Malcom 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

Copyright © 2021, The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. The Forward Association, Inc., 125 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

Click here to unsubscribe from this newsletter.

To stop receiving all emails from the Forward click here.