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| INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. SINCE 1897. Give a tax-deductible donation In today’s briefing: Ruth Pearl was 'strength incarnate,' newly discovered photos of Isaac Bashevis Singer, 132 readers weigh in on the Ben & Jerrys' controversy and much more...
OUR LEAD STORY 👽 How alien artifacts cold save our planet
You heard it here first: At a news conference later today, a team of scientists led by Harvard’s Avi Loeb will announce the launch of the Galileo Project – an unprecedented effort to look for alien artifacts in outer space. The grandson of those who escaped Nazi Germany and the son of Israel’s top pecan farmer, Loeb is one of the world’s leading alien hunters. “The impact of any discovery of extraterrestrial technology on science, our technology, and on our entire world view, would be enormous,” he said.
Why it’s important: For Loeb, the mission is existential. Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet. Eventually, he notes, the sun will boil the oceans, or there could be a nuclear war or a catastrophic asteroid. Any of these events would force us to find a new planet to call home. And finding evidence of intelligent life in outer space is the first step in that search.
Doomsday prepping: None of this will happen tomorrow, perhaps not even in the next century. But the mild-mannered Loeb knows it will happen at some point. “People may prefer to ignore it,” he told me when we spoke earlier this year. “You could ignore any danger in the future, but eventually it will come to haunt you because nature does not care about what we think and what we ignore.”
The man who stares at goats: Loeb was on vacation at a goat farm in Israel when a billionaire investor called to ask him to whip up a PowerPoint on the search for extraterrestrials. “It was 6 a.m. in the morning and I was sitting with my back against the wall looking at the newly born goats that were born just the day before, while contemplating the first trip to the nearest star.” Loeb recalled. “It was very surreal. I’m sure that the owner of the goat farm never imagined that this would happen at that place.” Read our profile of Avi Loeb > Explore the secret Jewish history of UFOs >
ALSO IN OUR PAGES 🧐 Remembering Ruth Pearl, mother of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and ‘strength incarnate’: “She didn’t look like a warrior,” writes our national editor, Rob Eshman. “But when I first met her, over a decade ago, I quickly learned she was.” Pearl died at 85 and leaves behind the legacy of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, where, along with her husband Judea, she helped organize lectures and journalism fellowships, authored books and bridged multiple cultures and religions around the world. Read Rob's eulogy >
5 OTHER THINGS AMERICAN JEWS ARE TALKING ABOUT 🎤 JACKIE MASON IN 1963. (PHOTO: POPSIE RANDOLPH/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES) 1. Fans are remembering Jackie Mason, the famed Borscht Belt comedian, who died on Saturday at 93. Born Yacov Moshe Maza, Mason received rabbinic ordination at 18 and led congregations in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before switching careers. “Not only his father, but his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers had all been rabbis,” the obituary in The New York Times pointed out. “His three older brothers became rabbis, and his two younger sisters married rabbis.” A critic for Time magazine once famously wrote that Mason talked to audiences “with the Yiddish locutions of an immigrant who just completed a course in English. By mail.” Mason’s daughter, comedian Sheba Mason, is continuing in the family business.
Laugh out loud> Watch a roundup of some of Mason’s best routines.
2. Facebook is reaching out to faith groups – including launching a prayer tool and a virtual summit for religious leaders. After the pandemic pushed synagogues, churches and mosques to explore new ways to operate, Facebook sees a strategic opportunity to draw users onto its platform. (Reuters, NYT)
3. A third of Hungarians are antisemitic, according to a new survey. “Over the past decade,” reports Haaretz, “President Viktor Orban’s government has been criticized by Jewish groups for engaging in Holocaust relativism and of scapegoating Hungarian-born financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros for his country’s problems.” (Haaretz)
4. Apple has acquired the film rights to the bestselling memoir of Judy Heumann, the disability rights advocate. Ali Stroker, a Tony-winning actress who uses a wheelchair, is being eyed to star. “I am a disabled Jewish woman,” Neumann told us earlier this year. “I’m pretty secure around disability related issues. But as a woman, I’m still not really fully included in the women’s movement or in the Jewish community. So I think ultimately, what we want to be seeing down the road is being able to bring all of ourselves forward, which does mean a very significantly different way of doing business.” (Deadline, Forward)
5. Former child actor Jonathan Lipnicki, best known as the adorable kid from “Jerry Maguire,” has joined friends in the mixed martial arts community to help protect Orthodox Jews walking to synagogue in Los Angeles. The efforts of the group, known as Magen Am, come as a response to the attack on Jews eating at an L.A. sushi restaurant. (TMZ, Forward).
THE LATEST ON TEAM ISRAEL AT OLYMPICS 🥇 AVISHAG SEMBERG COMPETES AT THE TAEKWANDO TOURNAMENT AT THE OLYMPICS. (PHOTO: GETTY) David Wiseman and Shari Wright-Pilo of “Follow Team Israel,” a social media channel that tracks the country’s 90 Olympians are following the action in Tokyo in real time so you don't have to. Here's their update: Avishag Semberg, 19, nabbed Israel’s first medal with the bronze in taekwondo. “I thank the many people who played a part in my journey,” she said.Anastasia Gorbenko qualified for the 100-meter backstroke final. The medal round is tonight at 9:51 p.m ET. She is the first woman and just the third Israeli to make the swimming final so far. Halfway through their windsurfing races, both Israelis – Katy Spychakov and Yoav Cohen – were in fifth place in the women’s and men’s competitions. Artistic gymnast Artem Dolgopyat was eliminated in pommel horse, but was the top qualifier on floor exercises. He’ll compete in the finals on Sunday. Omer Shapira spent about three of the four hours of the 137-kilometer bicycle road race in the lead. Then, with five kilometers to go, she and a Polish rider who were fighting for second and third place got sucked up by the pack. Shapira finished 24th. In the triathlon, brothers Shachar and Ran Sagiv finished 20th and 35th. Among those who have been eliminated so far: Surfer Anat Lelior, swimmer Andi Murez, artistic gymnasts Lihie Raz and Alexander Shatilov, and shooter Sergey Richter.
PHOTO OF THE DAY 📸 ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER ON THE ELLIS ISLAND FERRY. (PHOTO: ROBERT A. CUMINS) It was “a beautiful, cold day,” the photographerRobert A. Cumins recalled of the day in 1979 that he accompanied Isaac Bashevis Singer on an emotional return to Ellis Island. Singer, a Polish immigrant, had first set foot there in 1935; he went back a year after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature as part of a delegation of international Jewish leaders.
Quiet and mild-mannered, he spoke to a rapt audience of his experience arriving in that same hall. Cumins, a documentary photographer who later made one of the most famous images of a plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, caught it all on film -- but never developed the negatives and lost track of them for decades.
In honor of Singer’s 30th yahrtzeit on July 24, Cumins asked the Forward, where Singer was long a staff writer, to publish the photographs for the first time. “It’s very meaningful to me, as I look at that picture,” Cumins said of a shot of Singer with the Twin Towers in the background. “It’s part of history. It’s part of our history.”
ON THE CALENDAR 🗓
THE ROLLING STONES SONG 'PAINT IT BLACK' HAS BEEN ADAPTED BY KLEZMER BANDS. (PHOTO: GETTY) 🎸 On this day in history: Rolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger was born on July 26, 1943. Do you know the secret Jewish history of the Rolling Stones? The rock band has had a long and fruitful collaboration with Jewish artists and some Jewish themes have made their way into their music and lyrics.
🥯 It’s National Bagelfest Day: The annual holiday was founded in 1986 by Murray Lender of Lender’s Bagels in Mattoon, Ill., home to the company’s largest bagel factory. In honor of the day, check out our report on whether everything bagel ice cream is good for the Jews.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEW PODCAST 🎧 A Bintel Brief, our 115-year-old advice column, is now a podcast: In 1906, the Forward started “A Bintel Brief,” Yiddish for “A Bundle of Letters.” It’s now getting a modern makeover with two very different Jewish mothers – Ginna Green and Lynn Harris – taking your questions about Jewish-American life, identity, culture and politics. The first episode drops on Thursday, but you can get a sneak peek here. Need advice? Email bintel@forward.com or leave a voicemail at 201-540-9728. Listen to the trailer >
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