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| JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. Give a tax-deductible donation Israel may make Facebook liable for content, Jared and Ivanka meet with Netanyahu, Monica Lewinsky takes on cancel culture, Columbus brought first Jew to America and more. OUR LEAD STORY The secret Jewish history of the Great Chicago Fire
A hundred and fifty years ago this weekend, the fire razed nearly four square miles, killed hundreds and left 100,000 more homeless. The spark can be traced with certainty back to Catherine O’Leary’s barn. We still don’t know what or who exactly started it, but one possibility is an 18-year-old German-Jewish immigrant.
Meet Louis M. Cohn, who made a posthumous admission in his 1941 will that it was he, and not the O’Leary’s oft-blamed cow, who knocked over a lantern in the hayloft during a hot game of dice, prompting a blaze that lasted two days. Cohn’s claim remains apocryphal, but his presence — and that of some 32 other Cohn households in the 1870 census — paints a picture of the Windy City’s Yiddishkeit at that moment.
It happened on Simchat Torah. As the flames spread to synagogues, Jews who were observing the festival rushed to save their sacred Torah scrolls.
Jews have taken a leading role in commemorating the fire. Sonya Levian helped pen the script to the best-known film depiction of the conflagration, 1938’s “In Old Chicago.” Lew Pollack, the co-writer of “My Yiddishe Momme,” worked on the music. The film follows the O’Leary family — Louis M. Cohn is nowhere to be seen.
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ came at the right time in the Jewish calendar:The Korean drama about people who are in debt and play a game where the winner receives a big windfall – and everyone else is killed – is on track to be the most popular series ever on Netflix. Our digital culture reporter, Mira Fox, argues that its timing is propitious – it launched in the shmita year, a Biblically mandated debt-forgiveness cycle in Israel.Read the story >
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🍦 The founders of Ben & Jerry’s appeared on “Axios on HBO” to defend the company’s decision to stop selling ice cream in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. “It’s a very emotional issue for a lot of people,” said Jerry (Greenfield). Ben (Cohen) said the founders “hugely support Israel’s right to exist,” but believe the government’s policy is hindering a two-state solution to the conflict. Watch the interview. (Axios, JTA)
💻 Israel is considering making Facebook legally liable for content on its platform. In the U.S., a law known as “Section 230” grants social media platforms protection from bad actors on their sites. Israel’s discussion of a different approach comes after a Facebook whistleblower shared internal reports showing the company is aware of the harm its platforms inflicts on users. (Times of Israel)
🏅 A Jewish professor at MIT was named one of three winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics this morning. Dr. Joshua Angrist was recognized for his research on cause and effect. (CNN)
🏫 Along with English, science and math, California students will now have to take ethnic studies to graduate high school. The new curriculum, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, includes a section on antisemitism, but some fear it opens the door to teaching objectionable criticism of Israel that could lead to Jew-hatred. (J. The Jewish News of Northern California)
🇮🇱 Jacob Kornbluh, our senior political reporter, just texted to alert me that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are visiting Israel Monday to participate in the inaugural meeting of the Knesset Caucus for Promoting the Abraham Accords. The couple also visited former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
💰 Sen. Bernie Sanders secured a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for increased humanitarian aid to Gaza in 2022 in exchange for Sanders’s support for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. (Jewish Insider)
⚖️ A Florida man has sued his Germany-based employer for firing him because he’s Jewish. The suit details numerous accusations of antisemitic comments and behavior by executives, including that they were proud of the company’s support of the Nazis in World War II. (Sun-Sentinel)
🏀 Months after his suspension from the NBA for making an antisemitic slur while streaming a video game, Meyers Leonard wants to get back on the court. Leonard has expressed remorse in talks at various Jewish organizations. “The people who have been the most loving and the most compassionate, showing the most grace, have been so many people from the Jewish community,” he said. (Sun-Sentinel)
Shiva call > Tobias Levkovich, a prominent Wall Street analyst, died at 60 after being struck by a car while walking to morning services on Long Island. In a memorial, Danielle DiMartino Booth, a colleague, recalled how Levkovich, who was known as Tuvia, balanced international travel with mourning his mother’s passing. “Though something of a challenge for those planning the extensive journeys, he always stayed at a hotel within walking distance to a synagogue so he could adhere to Kaddish’s strictures and, in doing so, properly honor his mother’s life,” she said. “That’s a good son. It’s also a story you never forget.”
FROM OUR CULTURE SECTION In Russia, a Jewish couple dubbed ‘Spartacus.’ In Israel, they’re doing phone sex and voicing air-raid alerts:In the new film “Golden Voices,” a couple from the collapsing Soviet Union arrive in Tel Aviv in the 1990s with few prospects – save their talent for dubbing films. The wife, Raya, finds a job as a phone-sex operator. The husband, Vladimir, a Fellini fanatic, is relegated to dubbing bootlegged tapes of “Home Alone” for an underground video store. Their marriage is tested just as much as their voices. Read the story >
But wait, there’s more… If Steven Spielberg had known about this Dutch hero, he might have made a different movie. Meet the man who out-Schindlered Schindler. Len Berk, who we like to call our lox columnist, this week takes a break from smoked fish to tell the story of how a Brooklyn music teacher, the Lone Ranger and two temples changed his life. “I was patient zero of having a reputation completely destroyed worldwide because of the internet,” Monica Lewinsky says in her new cancel-culture documentary, “15 Minutes of Shame.” Three years after the Tree of Life massacre, a new book explores how Pittsburgh’s Jews rebounded. Read our review, and my interview with the author.
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Chico Marx, the oldest of the Marx Brothers comedy troupe, died on Oct. 11, 1961 at 74. Dan Epstein, a Forward culture critic, recently revisited the film “Monkey Business,” which he calls “The Marx Brothers movie that matters right now.” He goes on: “Almost as soon as Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo make their initial appearance — emerging from kippered herring barrels in the hold of an ocean liner that they’ve stowed away upon — I know that I have truly found my people.”
Also on this day: The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in 1890. The rare Jewish members include Abigail Minis, Tamar Fox and Lynn Harris, co-host of our Bintel Brief podcast.
DEPARTMENT OF MAZELS The Forward won two awards from the Religion News Association last week. Ari Feldman was honored in the news category for his coverage of COVID in Orthodox communities, and Abigail Pogebrin’s series “Still Small Voice: 18 Jewish questions about God” in the enterprise category. Congrats to them as well as to our innovation editor, Talya Zax, and lox columnist, Len Berk, who each recently won awards from the Society for Features Journalism. The judges called Zax’s profile of Philip Roth’s caretaker “intimate” and “universal,” and dubbed Berk “the Anthony Bourdain of lox.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY (Getty Images) (Left to right) Yisrael Meir Lau, the former chairman of Yad Vashem; Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; and Amb. Dani Dayan, the museum’s current chairman, look on as German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses after laying a wreath in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance in Jerusalem on Sunday.
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