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| INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. SINCE 1897. Give a tax-deductible donation In today’s briefing: The latest scoop in the ongoing Ben & Jerry's saga, meet Biden's new Mideast aide, how we covered Hitler's Olympics and much more...
OUR LEAD STORY 💰 THE JEWISH COMMUNITY MAKES UP ABOUT 4.6% OF PHILADELPHIA'S POPULATION. (PHOTO: ISTOCK) After scandal, challenges abound for Philly Jewish Federation
The Philadelphia Jewish Federation, which serves an area with 283,000 Jews, has, to put it mildly, had a rough few years. A former employee was recently indicted for embezzling $1.19 million from the newspaper it runs. It’s endured layoffs and accusations of a toxic workplace. And the organization has been punching below its weight in the fundraising department: In 2019, for example, Philadelphia’s Federation brought in $66 million, while Cleveland’s, which covers an area of 85,000 Jews, raised nearly $96 million.
To help steer the ship in a new direction, the Federation tapped Michael Balaban, who became CEO on June 1. He brings decades of Jewish communal experience, including at Federations in South Florida and Atlanta, and in a recent interview, said his mantra was that “we can’t continue to do business as we've always done and expect a different result.”
“Far too often, people cling on to the ghosts of the past,” he said, “and we need to be an organization that respects that past, but that’s really forward focused.” Read the story >
And with this story we say a bittersweet l’hitraot to Molly Boigon, who joined the Forward two years ago, and is now heading to the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. “It’s been a privilege to learn how to cover the nuances of the community,” Molly told me. “Every community within the community has its own complexity and seeming contradictions, and it's been rewarding to navigate those and try to portray them accurately.”
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE 🍦 SOLDIERS INSIDE A BEN & JERRY'S SHOP IN ISRAEL ON WEDNESDAY (PHOTO: EMMANUEL DUNAND/GETTY) News surrounding Ben & Jerry’s decision to not sell its ice cream in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank continues to drive conversation across the Jewish world. Here are our most recent stories on the controversy: What Airbnb can teach Ben & Jerry’s about boycotting the West Bank: The popular lodging website faced a series of lawsuits when it stopped listing properties in West Bank settlements.Never mind Ben & Jerry’s. Hanna Spiegelman’s ice cream has war and peace in every scoop: The 28-year-old Brooklyn entrepreneur creates flavors based on historical figures whose lives were steeped in controversy. Don’t be distracted by the Ben & Jerry’s mishigas— the real challenge is the occupation: “Everyone needs to calm down,” Dany Bahar argues in this OpEd. “Israeli settlers will survive without their Cherry Garcia.” Kosher certification should not be a political weapon: In the days since Ben & Jerry’s made its announcement, Kof-K – which provides kosher certification and supervision in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia – has fielded many calls from upset consumers asking it to de-certify the ice cream.
5 OTHER THINGS AMERICAN JEWS ARE TALKING ABOUT 🥇 NORIKO HAYASHI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES 1. Japanese comedian Kentaro Kobayashi was fired as creative director of the Olympics opening ceremonies, after a 1998 routine in which he made antisemitic jokes resurfaced. Kobayashi is the second creative director of the opening ceremony to step down. (New York Times) 2. The next Miss Universe competition will take place in December in Eilat, Israel. Only one Israeli has won the pageant: Rina Messinger in 1976. (Associated Press) 3. Washington Mideast experts are praising the Biden administration’s nomination of Tamara Cofman Wittes to a senior post. She “has a very clear moral voice,” her colleague Nathan Sachs told our senior political reporter Jacob Kornbluh, “while also being able to look at the world very pragmatically and to deal productively with almost anyone.” (Forward) 4. Several participants in a rally in Poland blamed Jews for the coronavirus pandemic. Police recordings from the march are being handed over to the prosecutor’s office. (JTA) 5. Rabbi Michael Ungar of Cleveland Heights donated his kidney to a stranger. “We’re all capable of making huge differences in people’s lives,” he said. “You just have to ask yourself, ‘What’s holding you back?’” (Cleveland Jewish News) Shiva call > Sylvia L. Juran the editor of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, died at the age of 91. “Sylvia's elegance of language and manner, her biting wit and outsized compassion for the world's marginalized are warmly remembered by all,” her obituary read. (Legacy) …. Chuck E. Weiss, the musician who helped launch the Viper Room with Johnny Depp and was a fixture of Los Angeles’ music scene for decades, died at 76. (Los Angeles Times) What else we’re reading > There’s a rabbi who still blows the shofar every night at 7 to salute health care workers … A rap song lays bare Israel’s Jewish-Arab fracture — and goes viral … Shlomo Noginski says that after he was stabbed in Boston, he now feels more proudly Jewish ... U.S. Sen. James Lankford is calling for the blocking of Ben & Jerry sales in Oklahoma … “Orthodox Jews have the best sex,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes in response to the Netflix series “My Unorthodox Life” (though he has not watched it).
FROM OUR ARCHIVES 🏆
In the more than 50 Winter and Summer Games since the Forward’s inception in 1897, there were many Jewish moments: from the triumphs of gold medalists including Mark Spitz and Aly Raisman to the tragic killing of Israeli team members by Palestinian militants at the 1972 Games in Munich.
And then there was 1936, when the entire event was tainted with antisemitism — Hitler’s Olympics. David Klein dove into our archives and discovered that for the 17-day run of the Games that August, we printed only six articles about the Berlin Olympics. Instead, we published 17 about an alternative event, the World Labor Athletic Carnival, which was put on by the Jewish Labor Committee at New York’s Randall Island Stadium. “It was likely an ideological act,” Klein writes, “in line with the social-democratic principles of the Forward’s founders, to not give undue voice to fascism, but to shine a light on its resistors.”
ON THE CALENDAR 🗓
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 🧪 On this day in history: Nobel Prize winner Selman Waksman, a biochemist and microbiologist, was born on July 22, 1888. His work led to the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. He died in 1973.
🗽Also on this day in history: Jewish poet and activist Emma Lazarus – whose poem is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty – was born on July 22, 1849. Even though she lived a short life (she died at 38 in 1887), her legacy lives on in the likes of avant-garde musician and artist Laurie Anderson. In our culture section, Laurie Gwen Shapiro tells the tale of how these two feminist heroes are actually connected.
🥇 Today at 12 p.m. ET: Join us for our Olympics preview, broadcasting on both Facebook and YouTube. I’ll be talking with Team Israel experts David Wiseman and Shari Wright-Pilo about the country’s medal chances and which storylines they’ll be following in Tokyo.
PHOTO OF THE DAY 🇮🇱 NIR BARKAT (LEFT) CHATS WITH SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM IN D.C. (PHOTO BY SHAHAR AZRAN) Nir Barkat, former mayor of Jerusalem and member of the Knesset, lobbied members of Congress to block the re-opening of a U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians. Among those he met in Washington: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat.
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