What is 'Zionophobia'? + 12 alternative bagel toppings to cope with cream cheese shortage

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Supreme Court hears case about religious schools, why Mel Gibson still has not been canceled, bagel wars in L.A., and meet the oldest member of Iowa's oldest synagogue.

OUR LEAD STORY

Can a new word — ‘Zionophobia’ — clarify the debate over Israel?

Many American Jews have spent the last few years wrangling over when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism. Now a new word is entering the lexicon that proponents hope will clarify the debate – even as critics mock its creation. Our Arno Rosenfeld has the story….

Meet ‘Zionophobia’: The term refers to discrimination or hate speech targeting Zionism and Zionists, and to differentiate them from an anti-Zionist policy position.

Why it’s in the news: Judea Pearl, a computer scientist at UCLA and the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, appears to have originally coined the term in 2018. But it only drew widespread attention last week after it was used in a letter from University of Southern California faculty calling for discipline of a graduate student who tweeted about killing Zionists.

Threading the needle: “I see hordes of BDS cronies volunteering to fight for the right of Jewish students to have a kosher cafeteria, to pray three times a day, and to wear yarmulke in public,” Pearl wrote in a 2018 blog outlining the term. “And they truly mean it, as long as the yarmulke is not decorated with a blue-and-white Magen David.”

Ridicule from the left: The left has largely rolled its eyes at the concept, arguing that Zionism is a political ideology that people should be free to criticize. “They keep creating new ridiculous terms,” one critic said. “Yeah, I’m definitely apartheidphobic.”

Read the story >

ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

No cream cheese? No problem. A dozen alternate bagel toppings: First it was toilet paper. Then coins. Now, the supply chain’s woes have hit us squarely in the Jewish stomach: there’s a cream-cheese shortage in New York. The good news is, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy the doughy Os. Here’s what the Forward staff puts on bagels when the standard schmear is in short supply. See our toppings >

The prickly reason Mel Gibson will never be canceled: Despite his many high-profile — and in the case of “Passion of the Christ,” highly lucrative — displays of antisemitism, it looks like Gibson will be directing the next installment of the “Lethal Weapon” franchise. This is a man who said his main purpose of making a film about the Maccabees was to “convert Jews,” and, while working on the film, used words like “Heeb” and “oven dodger” to describe the Jewish characters. Our PJ Grisar argues that the reason Gibson is still working in Hollywood might be because of a practice called cactus-hugging. Read his take >

But wait, there’s more…

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Justice Amy Coney Barrett referred to the 'Jewish-Palestinian' conflict while hearing a case. (Getty Images)

💰 In a critical church-state case, U. S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday questioned Maine’s policy of banning the use of state funds for tuition at religious schools. Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested it poses an undue burden on Orthodox Jewish parents, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a state official how he would treat a school that based its teachings about what she called the “Jewish-Palestinian” conflict on how it regarded Jews. (JTA)

⚖️ An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor testified in court against a German woman who was a typist at a Nazi concentration camp and signed his father’s death certificate. Josef Salomonovic was the first survivor to testify at the trial of Irmgard Furchner, 96, who is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 11,412 people at a concentration camp in Poland. (Algemeiner)

📺 A Christian actress who played the prototypically Jewish mother on the popular British sitcom “Friday Night Dinner” said she regrets taking the role. “We are much more conscious today than we were when that show was first aired,” Tamsin Greig said of the series, which ended in 2020 after six seasons. The show, about the weekly Shabbat dinner of a middle-class Jewish family, streams via Amazon Prime. (The Independent)

🥃 Meet Joanne Satin, the oldest member of Iowa’s oldest Jewish congregation. She’s 90 and has been a member since 1936. A favorite memory: helping serve 900 people during the annual sisterhood fundraiser known as the Davenport Smorgasbord. “One gal brought her blender,” Satin recalled. “At the end of the day, she made whiskey sours for all of us. We sure we’re happy.” (Iowa Public Radio)

🏙 The Washington Post has published an eye-popping, immersive tour of one of the buildings in New York’s Tenement Museum using photogrammetry, a technology that combines thousands of images to create a three-dimensional rendering of a space. Like the in-person tours the museum is renowned for, the piece provides a powerful sense of what life was like for legions of Jewish and other immigrants living in cramped apartments at the turn of the last century. (Washington Post)

🥯 Two bagel-shop owners in Los Angeles are, um, beefing with each other over whose delicious doughs are more authentically Jewish. The bagel wars have become so heated that it’s led to threats and – a shonda! – a couple of one-star reviews on Yelp. (L.A. Taco)

What else we’re reading > A new cooking app was created by a trio of Jewish day-school grads … New survey finds Americans are concerned that too many people are seeking religious exemptions to vaccines … Saudis crack down on camel beauty pageant contestants for using Botox.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: Fritz Haber, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, was born on Dec. 9, 1868. His discovery of a new way of producing ammonia and nitrogen-based fertilizers led to much greater agricultural yields and prevented billions of people from starving to death. His legacy is marred by the fact he is also known as the father of chemical warfare, which the Nazis later used against his family during the Holocaust. Haber himself died en-route to Israel in 1934.

Also on that exact same day in 1868, the world’s first traffic lights were installed in London. The technology has come a long way in those 153 years. This fall, Google launched a project in Israel to use artificial intelligence to make traffic lights up to 20% more efficient, reducing fuel consumption and delay times.

Today would’ve been the 105th birthday of Kirk Douglas. “He was a movie legend like no other,” writes Neal Gabler.

Last year on this day, Benjamin Netanyahu said he wanted to be the first Israeli vaccinated against COVID-19.

Tonight at 7 p.m. ET: New York City government is on the cusp of major change as a result of the November 2021 election. What does the future of the city hold under new leadership? Join Ruth Messinger, the Marlene Meyerson JCC’s social justice activist in residence, and Matt Nosanchuk, president and co-founder of the New York Jewish Agenda, for the first in a series of virtual conversations with newly elected officials. Register here >

PHOTO OF THE DAY

This 1930s photo of a snowball fight on the Lower East Side comes courtesy of Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist, who tells me that we have a long and storied history of covering winter storms. Stay warm out there!

Thanks to Louis Keene, Chana Pollack and Arno Rosenfeld for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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