JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Happy Valentine’s Day! Celebrate with the 10 best Jewish love songs, some R-rated advice from Dr. Ruth, or some R-rated advice from, uh, the Talmud.

Today: A surprising Jewish note to Idina Menzel’s new Broadway musical • Defiant Jewish responses to Kanye West’s swastika stunt • Oh, great, a pro-Hitler ad on X.

Scheduling: We’ll be closed for Presidents Day. This newsletter will return on Tuesday.

ON ISRAEL

Peter Beinart has some questions — and some warnings — for American Jews. (Joe Mabel/Courtesy of Knopf)

Opinion | Peter Beinart’s quest to disrupt our relationship to Israel. “Everything I do is based on my belief about what’s best for our people,” Beinart, a columnist with Jewish Currents, told our senior columnist Rob Eshman. His new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, argues that what’s best for the Jews must involve a reckoning with what Beinart perceives as a lack of “moral red lines when it comes to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.” Read his essay ►

Sharon Sharabi. (Getty Images)

Opinion | How a hostage’s brother became a hero in Israel. Sharon Sharabi, the only one of three brothers not to be taken into Hamas captivity, has appeared on TV night after night to advocate for the remaining hostages, becoming a symbol of strength in Israel. “In the English-speaking world, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin have made their mark,” writes our language columnist Aviya Kushner. “In the Hebrew-speaking world, Sharabi has shown everyone how to be a brother, and how to be part of the Jewish people.” Read her essay ►

And:

Hamas said that they would release Sagui Dekel-Chen, Alexander Troufanov and Yair Horn during tomorrow’s scheduled hostage release. Dekel-Chen is one of the last American citizens among the remaining hostages. (New York Times)

The U.S. sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, over the court’s issuing of warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes. (Haaretz)

In 2013, the Israeli film director Tom Shoval featured David Cunio — now a hostage in Gaza — in his film Youth. Today, Shoval will screen his latest film, A Letter to David, an ode to his kidnapped friend, at the Berlinale film festival. (Times of Israel)

ON TRUMP

President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter after signing a series of executive orders. (Getty Images)

Opinion | A Jewish philosopher and mystic understood Trump’s Achilles’ heel. In 1940, Simone Weil turned to the Iliad to help make sense of the world as she fled south in France to escape the Nazis’ invasion. In the resulting essay, she conveyed “a warning,” writes our culture columnist Robert Zaretsky: “If you thought that force, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, think again.” Amid President Donald Trump’s efforts at implementing radical change through force, Weil’s conclusions about what that warning means not just for those trying to survive force, but also those wielding it, are worth revisiting. Read his essay ►

Plus:

Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, resigned Thursday after Trump’s Justice Department ordered her to drop an ongoing corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Sassoon is a graduate of the Upper East Side Orthodox private school Ramaz, and was active in pro-Israel groups as an undergraduate at Harvard. (JTA)

Vice President JD Vance said a Thursday visit to the Dachau concentration camp left him “very moved.” Today, Vance will meet with Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, amid concerns over Trump’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine war. (Forward, AP)

- From our Sponsor, Friends of Mishpacha Orphanage Odessa

ON CULTURE

Idina Menzel’s new musical has some deep Jewish resonances. (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

In Idina Menzel’s new Broadway musical, a show tune about Tikkun Olam soars high. On Thursday night, as Tu B’Shvat — the Jewish “new year of trees” — came to a close, Menzel’s new show Redwood opened. Set around a mammoth tree in a northern California forest, the work has cute references to synagogue, and “a deeper Jewish message about preserving nature and repairing the world,” writes our Samuel Eli Shepherd.

His calling: Wrapping the Jewish rich and famous — and Jake Paul — in tefillin. “Yossi Farro, 21, adapts a classic Chabad hustle for the age of the influencer,” writes our Louis Keene: “Styling himself a media personality, he wraps the Jewish rich and famous, riding a wave of national spirit during a fraught moment for Jewish identity.” His latest exploit: celebrating the bar mitzvah of boxer and onetime YouTube personality Jake Paul.

Plus: What’s Valentine’s Day without a little drama? For the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, that aspect of the holiday came early, as accusations exploded that its chosen venue for a Valentine’s mixer was “a Zionist Israeli venue.” Read more ►

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Some X users this week encountered an ad offering praise for Hitler. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

🥴 Elon Musk’s social media site X, formerly Twitter, displayed a pro-Hitler ad amid a swell of content on the platform indicating approval of the Nazis. (Forward)

👕 As the old saying goes: Fight fire with fire, and fight T-shirts with other T-shirts — hence a deluge of merch decrying antisemitism after Kanye West, known as Ye, put a T-shirt bearing a swastika up for sale during the Super Bowl.(JTA)

📰 Hundreds of Jewish artists, celebrities and rabbis, including comedian Ilana Glazer and playwright Tony Kushner, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times protesting Trump’s proposal to forcibly relocate Gaza’s populace. “Jewish people say no to ethnic cleansing,” the ad reads.(JTA)

👀 The U.S. approved the extradition to India of a suspect in a 2008 series of attacks in Mumbai. The attacks, which killed 166, targeted a Jewish center alongside hotels and a train station. (Reuters)

🎤 Azerbaijan’s entrant to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will be Asaf Mishiev, who comes from the country’s Mizrahi community, known as the Mountain Jews. (Jerusalem Post)

🐳 Missed opportunity to become a modern-day Jonah: A kayaker who was briefly swallowed by a whale near Patagonia in Chile this week escaped unharmed, and presumably without the benefits of Hashem’s wisdom that are (I’m told) only made available when swallowed in full. (AP)

What else we’re reading ►

On grief and the Jewish themes of Paddington (New York Times)

Inside Iris Apfel’s ultra-glamorous estate sale (New York Times)

How the first-ever winner of Best Actor at the Oscars became a Nazi stooge (Independent)

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Enjoy these olden-days Valentine’s Day-themed ads from a 1928 edition of our very own publication! The one on the right proclaims the benefits of a particular brand of milk for babies; now you know what to get the infant you left off your gift list.

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Julie Moos for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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