A shocking new poll about Israel, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar and Mark Zuckerberg's very bad week

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In today’s briefing: A Hasid and a farmer write a cookbook, Ben & Jerry's Middle East problem, remembering the only Jewish winner of the Miss America pageant and much more...

ONE BIG STORY 🇮🇱

(Photo by Getty Images)

1 in 4 U.S. Jews think Israel is an apartheid state. Now what?

How American Jews think about the conflict in the Middle East has never been easy to describe. What’s the old saying? Find two Jews and you’ll get three opinions.

That axiom was certainly evident this week when a new poll found that 25% of American Jews think Israel is an apartheid state, and 22% agreed that it was committing genocide against Palestinians. “I’m just speechless and horrified,” Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth professor and longtime observer of the Jewish community, told our reporter Arno Rosenfeld. “It breaks my heart and it comes like a tornado hitting me in the face.”

While a slim majority, 52%, disagreed that Israel is an apartheid state, the findings raised eyebrows at a time when activists and politicians who use the term are accused of antisemitism.

If future surveys produce similar findings, American Jewish organizations will have to confront the fact that the communities they serve include a significant minority whose views on Israel radically diverge from their institutional party lines. The poll also raises questions about whether Israel is more of a unifying or divisive force within American Jewry, and the extent to which educational and other programming to strengthen ties to Israel has fallen short.

“We’re at the center of this debate over whether criticism of Israel is antisemitic,” Arno said when we talked about the story. “And this is the first time American Jews have been asked where they stand on some of the most loaded accusations facing the country.” Read the story >

Listen: Arno talks about the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the push for Holocaust education and other related topics in the latest episode of the podcast “Never Again Is Now.”

6 THINGS TO READ FOR TISHA B'AV THIS WEEKEND 🕯

On Tisha B'Av, it is customary to read the Book of Lamentations by candlelight. (Photo by Gil Cohen/AFP via Getty Images)

Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, begins Saturday evening: for 25 hours, many Jews fast and deny themselves certain other comforts to mourn the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago, along with myriad other tragedies in Jewish history. A lot of synagogues, camps, and other Jewish organizations schedule lectures or screen Holocaust movies on the holiday, but our opinion editor, Laura Adkins, wrote a powerful personal essay this week calling for a different approach: just sitting in the sadness.

“Spending a day focused on sadness and pain is not easy,” she said in the piece, which includes some very specific suggestions about how to get through it. “But amid a year full of trauma and a lifetime of over-intellectualizing, I’ve made an intentional choice to do so.”

Here are some other Forward articles to help you prepare for or mark the day:

7 OTHER THINGS AMERICAN JEWS ARE TALKING ABOUT 🍦

(Photo courtesy iStockPhoto)

1. It’s been 58 days since Ben & Jerry’s posted on social media. The company’s last Twitter post, in May, was a simple question about mint ice cream. Turns out, it was about so much more. In this Boston Globe article, Hanna Krueger, explains how the silence of the iconic ice cream company may be tied to the conflict in the Middle East.

2. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been “inundated with antisemitic abuse” after posting a photo of his dog wearing a yarmulke, according to the American Jewish Committee. This comes on the heels of the Anti-Defamation League asking members of Congress to stop using the term “Zuckerbucks” because it is enabling an “antisemitic trope.” In what has clearly not been a great week for Zuckerberg, an explosive new book was published that paints him in a very poor light. In the Forward’s review of the book, Dan Friedman dubs Facebook “history’s most dangerous golem.”

3. An Israeli hacking firm known as Candiru has helped governments spy on more than 100 victims around the world – including politicians, dissidents and journalists. “The full capabilities of Candiru’s spying tools aren’t clear,” reports The Washington Post, “but they probably allow users to intercept victims’ communications, steal their data, track their location and spy through microphones and cameras.”

4. Justice Stephen Breyer, at 82 the oldest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, said (again) that he has not decided whether to retire. In an interview CNN published on Thursday, Breyer said that his health and the court's future are the main factors he is weighing.

5. Michelle Zauner’s memoir “Crying in H Mart” reached No. 12 on The New York Times best sellers list this week. Zauner, the daughter of a Korean mother and Jewish father, writes about creating her own identity after her mother died of cancer. “So much of writing this book was that I needed people to know what I went through,” she told the Forward’s Irene Katz Connelly in an interview.

6. Looking for something to watch this weekend? Try “Gunpowder Milkshake” on Netflix. CNN’s film critic, Brian Lowry, says the highly stylized action movie, from Israeli director Navot Papushado, “weds the spaghetti western with the colorful visuals of anime.” It's been getting such good reviews that Papushado has already started work on a sequel.

7. Some long weekend reads for you: A “haunted” Dybbuk box – a wine cabinet that once belong to a Holocaust survivor – was sold on eBay in 2003 and inspired a Hollywood film. But, it turns out, the whole thing might have been a hoax. … In 1799, was Napoleon about to declare a Jewish State in Israel? The answer might surprise you.

FROM OUR KITCHEN 🚜

Odd couple: The two men have worked together on a cookbook. (Photo courtesy Adamah Treasures)

A Brooklyn Hasid and Ohio Christian farmer create kosher recipes to feed the needy: Since it was posted last week, this story has been one of the most popular on our site. What's not to love about the unlikely duo of Alexander Rapaport and Lee Jones? Since their first meeting seven years ago at a conference for culinary leaders organized by Jones, our contributor Rachel Ringler writes, the two have become one of the food world’s most fascinating odd couples. "It seemed," said Jones, "like a sock and a shoe working together." Read the story >

Fishwife brings elegance, taste and style to…canned fish?: Rachel Ringler, a writer, cook and challah instructor, also brought us the tale of two women in Hollywood – Caroline Goldfarb, a TV comedy writer, and Becca Millstein who worked in the music industry – who found themselves eating a lot of canned fish during the pandemic. For them, it was a miracle fast food. So they launched their own tinned fish company. (And, yes, you can order it online.) The business is, arguably, in Goldfarb’s DNA: her dad once worked for Starkist Seafood Company, and her mom sent her to school with sardines for lunch. “I lived,” Goldfarb told Ringler, “in a fish-positive household.” Read the story >

On the menu: Looking for a recipe that works for Shabbat, Tisha B’Av and the freakish heat? Carly Pildis has you covered with her Smoked Salmon Salade Nicoise. For the pre-fast and break fast meals of Tisha B’Av, traditional Jews abstain from eating meat. Carly’s no-oven recipe uses lox or hot-smoked salmon in place of the usual tuna – a smart switch, and delicious. Get the recipe >

ON THE CALENDAR 🗓

Bess Meyerson was the only Jewish winner of the Miss America pageant. (Photo courtesy of the Museum of Jewish Heritage)

👸🏻 On this day in history: Bess Myerson, the only Jewish woman ever crowned Miss America, was born on July 16, 1924. She was crowned in 1945, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and became a national celebrity. “In the Jewish community, she was the most famous pretty girl since Queen Esther,” historian Susan Dworkin wrote. Check out Myerson’s obituary in The New York Times, which traces her run for Senate, her efforts to raise money for Jewish charities (she helped establish New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage) and why she was indicted by Rudy Giuliani.

📺 Sunday night, after Jews around the world mourn the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem on the fast of Tisha B’av, the series “Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury” premieres on CNN. In the three episodes made available for review, writes our culture reporter PJ Grisar, “the series paints an incomplete, but surprisingly nuanced picture, aiming to explain how this universal city remains a pressure point of geopolitics and faith.”

📚 Wed. July 21 at 3 p.m. ET: Join the Forward Book Club for its (virtual) discussion of "The Art of Leaving" by Ayelet Tsabari. Praised for its "vivid storytelling" in our review, this memoir tells the story of a young woman leaving her family in suburban Tel Aviv for the United States, Canada, India, Thailand and other countries, fleeing grief and loss. Email [email protected] to register for the free event.

ENJOY OUR FREE WEEKEND MAGAZINE👇

Every Friday, we put our favorite Forward stories from the week together for you in a free, downloadable magazine for some restful offline weekend reading. (Around the office, we refer to it as "the Shabbat PDF.")

In this week's edition, you'll find stories about a unique synagogue in a Colorado ski town, a Hasidic art gallery in Brooklyn, the most bizarre doctor-patient relationship you've ever heard of and a few more.

You can read and print out the magazine by simply clicking here.

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