WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: Hostage gives birth in captivity, bomb threat at Jewish hospital in Cincinnati, a rabbi goes on a hunger strike, and the latest news of how the war is impacting world Jewry. Switching gears: Fans of Bob Dylan and Jewish comic books are having a good week.

ISRAEL AT WAR

President Joe Biden speaking Wednesday night during a trip to California. (Getty)

The latest…

Opposing international calls for a cease fire, President Joe Biden said Wednesday night that Israel’s Gaza operation will end when Hamas is no longer able to murder Israelis.

Three new polls show American Jews approve of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, while a majority of Americans do not.

A pregnant woman believed to be a foreign laborer who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 gave birth in captivity.

Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech has surged across social media since the war began. Elon Musk endorsed another antisemitic tweet on Wednesday.

George Washington University became the latest campus to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine, following Brandeis, Columbia and more.

About 200 pro-Palestinian protesters filled the streets Wednesday outside of Columbia to protest the war, and the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine.

An Israeli soldier with medical supplies at thr Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza in a handout photo distributed on Wednesday. (Israel Defense Forces)

The Al-Shifa hospital

Israel raided buildings on the campus of Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, searching for evidence of a Hamas military presence. The Israel Defense Forces released a video showing troops had found rifles, ammunition, body armor and other military equipment in a radiology building.

Hamas is believed by both Israel and the U.S. to be operating out of a network of tunnels under the hospital; as Israel’s ground operations have come to focus on Al-Shifa, international conversation about the ethics of raiding a hospital has grown heated.

Opinion | When terrorists are hiding in hospitals, what is the morality of attacking them? A rabbi weighs in:“Even if Israel is overreacting, it is overreacting in the context of Hamas’s cruel calculations, in which the deaths of thousands of Palestinians (who never agreed to be used as pawns) is a price they deem willing to pay in order to destroy the Jewish state,” argues Rabbi Jay Michaelson. “That, together with the appalling suffering of the innocent, is perhaps the only moral clarity we can hope for.” Read his essay ➤

Israeli Rabbi Avidan Freedman on the fifth day of his hunger strike on Tuesday. (Jacob Kornbluh)

An Israeli rabbi says he won’t eat until the Red Cross visits hostages in Gaza: “I felt like I needed to do something a little bit insane,” Rabbi Avidan Freedman told our Jacob Kornbluh outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where he has camped out on a hunger strike, allowing himself only water, for the past week. He drew inspiration for the protest from a Talmudic teaching, he said: “We may need to suffer for our brothers and our sisters in captivity.” Read the story ➤

A Jewish family story about defending a kibbutz in 1948 takes on new meaning: A creative duo who met at Camp Ramah and decided to write a comic book together were putting on the finishing touches when Hamas attacked. The resonance, which gave their story fresh vigor, was also difficult to process: “It’s like a chord progression that’s not resolving,” one of the authors said. Read the story ➤

Related: The story of a mother whose sons were taken hostage by Hamas is now an animated film

Mourners from different faiths grieve for peace activist Vivian Silver, 74, at a memorial service Wednesday in Israel. (Getty)

Vivian Silver, an Israeli peace activist, was originally believed to be a hostage. But new DNA evidence shows she died in the initial attack. A rabbinical student wrote a poem in her memory: “I never knew you,” she wrote, “but I have this feeling I could have been you, long ago.”

In the U.S…

The Biden administration warned Israel it is violating the visa waiver agreement with the U.S. by preventing Palestinian Americans who live in the occupied West Bank from entering Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

Police gave the all-clear after an alleged bomb threat at a Jewish hospital in Cincinnati.

“It’s just very powerful”: Here’s what nine Jewish teens said they took away from marching for Israel in D.C.

As the Israel-Hamas war rages on, Israeli NBA star Deni Avdija plays through the pain.

Across the globe…

Japanese police arrested a man today after a car crashed through a barrier near the Israeli embassy in Tokyo.

The only synagogue in Armenia’s capital was set on fire Wednesday, in the second antisemitic attack in the city since the start of the war.

Two European film festivals are embroiled in controversy over their handling of both Israeli and pro-Palestinian filmmakers.

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Bob Dylan, center, in 1974. (Barry Feinstein)

With a new album, a tour and a giant new book, Bob Dylan remains a neverending juggernaut: The 610-page coffee table book features over 1,100 images from the Dylan archives — including pictures of concert ticket stubs and handwritten lyric sheets as well as rarely seen backstage photographs. And the 82-year-old Nobel Prize-winner is performing three shows in New York City this week. “It’s Bob Dylan’s world,” writes our music critic, Seth Rogovoy. “And we just happen to live in it.”

Related: That Bob Dylan album everybody hated 50 years ago is actually better than you’d think

Talmudic debates, space bar mitzvahs and Jewish plans for Superman: Hundreds of fans — and our culture reporter PJ Grisar — flocked to Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History this week for a comic convention like no other. “One saw more tzitzit and kippot (one with a knit Captain America insignia) than costumes,” PJ writes.

Plus…

Sen. Bernie Sanders, with the “beleaguered gravitas” of a Jewish camp counselor, stepped in to stop a near-fistfight during a Senate hearing this week.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, noted for his fiction, also wrote nonfiction Yiddish articles for the Forward. They’re now available in English.

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Nathan Fielder, left, and Emma Stone in a scene from The Curse. (Showtime)

📺 The Curse, a new series on Showtime, is replete with Jewish themes. The first episode features a Shabbat dinner. One review calls it “an unnerving, erratic, dizzyingly original exploration of the fine line between mitzvah and mishegas.” (New York Times)

⚖️ A New Jersey man, who last year posted threats against local synagogues and Jewish schools, was sentenced to 15 months in prison this week. (AP)

😲 Has an ancient Biblical monument been hiding in plain sight in Jerusalem? That’s what a new theory claims. (Haaretz)

🎥 A filmmaker’s 2020 documentary followed modern-day neo-Nazis. His latest film, released Wednesday on YouTube, is about his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. (JTA)

Mazel tov ➤ Klezmer star Daniel Kahn is set to receive the 2023 “Dreaming in Yiddish Award.”

What else we’re reading ➤ Did Taylor Swift just make Shabbat candlesticks? … 250 years later, “Amazing Grace” has filled churches, concerts, even commercials … Meet the Russian-speaking bubbes who have become TikTok stars, lending a hand to the Israeli war effort.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

“They’ve been living a nightmare”: NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt devoted more than seven minutes of its show to speaking with families of Americans taken hostage during the Hamas terror attacks in Israel.

Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Talya Zax for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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