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Israel begins fourth COVID shot, Holocaust survivors receive $200M in emergency funds, learning Yiddish is popular pandemic hobby and the Pope releases a Netflix series.
THE WEEK IN POLITICS Each Monday, our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, shares what’s in his notebook. Today, as Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York starts his final week at City Hall, Jacob reflects on eight years of covering him through a Jewish lens.
De Blasio exits City Hall, his Jewish support in tatters: He was elected thanks in part to the support of the city’s Orthodox Jews. But his courting of those voters came at the expense of his relations with liberal and secular Jewish activists. “He really missed out on being able to represent and get to know the vast majority of New York’s Jewish community,” said Rabbi Rachel Timoner, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope.
And now, as de Blasio considers a run for governor, it appears the Orthodox may not follow him. The mayor’s relationships with Orthodox leaders broke down when COVID-19 hit and the community felt targeted and shamed by him.
Eight years of Jewish angles: The arc of de Blasio’s mayoralty coincided with the birth of my own unlikely career in journalism. During the next eight years, working for Jewish Insider and eventually the Forward, I regularly attended City Hall events and in 2015 traveled to Israel with de Blasio, who called Jerusalem “the sixth borough.”
As a reporter for Jewish outlets, I often zagged from what my colleagues saw as the story of the day, focusing on Israel, antisemitism and issues of particular interest to the Orthodox communities of Brooklyn and beyond. Though I stood out because of my Hasidic dress and accent, de Blasio treated me no differently than other journalists, occasionally praising my writing but also challenging “the premise” of my questions.Read the full story here ➤
Meanwhile, outside New York …
The competition to head the Jewish Agency for Israel has narrowed to five finalists. The list includes three women – Omer Yankelevitch, former minister of diaspora affairs; Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem; and Michal Cotler-Wunsh, former member of the Knesset. They and former Israeli ambassadors Michael Oren and Danny Danon have been invited for a second round of screening.
With an annual budget of nearly $400 million, the agency is the largest global Jewish nonprofit. The selection process for a new head has been delayed for months following the withdrawal of the leading candidate, Elazar Stern, over comments he made about shredding anonymous sexual harassment complaints.
The Israeli government has missed several deadlines to present new candidates but has until February to do so. Nachman Shai, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs, had expressed interest in the job. WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY Israel's health minister said travel restrictions are practically pointless against the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The latest on the Omicron surge in Israel…
💉 At the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv on Monday, doctors will begin administering a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to 6,000 people – including 150 hospital staff – in an experiment to explore an additional shot’s efficacy. (Reuters)
✈️ Meanwhile, Israel’s health minister said that international travel restrictions may be lifted next week – not because the number of cases are going down, but because he thinks such rules are ineffective against the already-fast spreading Omicron variant. (Times of Israel)
🌊 Omicron will be so dominant in Israel in the next week or two that quarantining will become “rampant,” a team of Hebrew University professors predicts. Another panel of doctors called the coming wave “a tsunami.” (Times of Israel, Haaretz)
😷 Case in point: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s teenage daughter, who has been vaccinated, tested positive for COVID and is in quarantine. Bennett, who tested negative, left a cabinet meeting Sunday night and also began self-isolating out of an abundance of caution. An aide to the prime minister also tested positive over the weekend. (Jerusalem Post)
And elsewhere in the news…
💰 Some 150,000 Holocaust survivors are set to receive $200 million in emergency pandemic-related funding from Germany in the coming days. Meanwhile, the state of New York has asked banks to waive wire transfer and processing fees for recipients of Holocaust reparations if they do not already do so. (JTA, JNS)
📚 Chaim Walder, an ultra-Orthodox therapist and talk show host in Israel, killed himself on Monday after being accused of sexual abuse by several women – including teenagers. On Sunday, a rabbinical court heard damning new testimony in the case. Walder was the author of 80 children’s books, including the popular “Kids Speak” series. Since the allegations surfaced last month, stores had begun removing his books from the shelves. (Haaretz)
🎬 The Pope has released a new Netflix documentary series called “Stories of a Generation.” The four episodes feature interviews with inspiring people over age 70 – including Martin Scorsese, the award-winning director; Jane Goodall, the environmentalist and primatologist; and Moshe Basson, a Jerusalem chef who makes Biblical food. (Watch the trailer here.)
🥚 More than half a million chickens are being killed in Israel to prevent further spread of the fatal H5N1 avian-flu virus. It’s believed that tens of thousands of migrating cranes in the Hula Valley were infected; park rangers expect to remove nearly 30 tons of carcasses. The chicken culling will cause an egg shortage in Israel in the coming weeks. (Times of Israel)
🗣 Learning Yiddish appears to be a popular pandemic hobby. The director of education at YIVO says enrollment has grown by 500%, and Duolingo, which began offering Yiddish courses on its language learning app this year, says the top reason people give for signing up is culture. “It's never because it's going to get them a job working in a bank or give them any kind of power in society,” said one expert. (NPR)
Shiva call ➤ Ellen Frank, an artist and scholar, died at 75. She was the founder of a nonprofit aimed at building cultural diplomacy that launched the Auschwitz Initiative, an art exhibit created by Holocaust survivors and their families.
FROM OUR CULTURE SECTION 140 Tony nominations later, this Jewish impresario is still energizing Broadway: Emanuel Azenberg’s love of theater began in 1948, when he watched his uncle, a veteran of the Yiddish stage, portray a rabbi in a Broadway play. Judaism has always played a central role in a career spanning a half-century, including Azenberg’s annual trip bringing drama students to Israel. “I never ran away from my Jewishness,” he said. “It didn’t conflict with my American identity.” Read the story ➤
He came from Borscht Belt royalty, and made a name for himself: Bob Einstein, the late comedian known for his antics as Super Dave Osborn and his deadpan performance as Larry’s friend Marty Funkhouser on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is the subject of a new documentary on HBO. PJ Grisar spoke with the director, Danny Gold, about how Einstein developed his own style, after initial reluctance to follow his parents into entertainment. “Bob went for the funny all the time,” Gold said. Read the story ➤
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: “Show Boat,” considered to be the first true American musical play, opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway on Dec. 27, 1927. The music and lyrics were composed by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, descendants of European Jewish immigrants. Up until this show, there had been plays and musical comedies, but none that had merged the two genres. It “was a radical departure in musical storytelling, marrying spectacle with seriousness,” the New Yorker declared. It was staged before the existence of the Tony Awards, but its revival won one in 1995.
VIDEO OF THE DAY Comedian Alex Edelman is performing his new solo show “Just For Us,” which is about his attending a meeting of white nationalists in Queens. Between rehearsals, Edelman made this video with our opinion fellow, Nora Berman, divulging his bar mitzvah theme and playing a game we call ‘Yiddish or Gibberish?’ Read our profile of Edelman ➤
––– Act before the end of the year: As 2021 comes to a close, now is your chance to power independent Jewish journalism in the year ahead. Show your support for the news you trust and make a tax-deductible donation to the Forward today to help support initiatives like this newsletter. Donate now ➤
Thanks to PJ Grisar and Jacob Kornbluh for contributing to today’s newsletter.
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