Adidas chief says Kanye didn't mean antisemitic comments, a turning point in Nazi-looted art cases, rabbis who set fire to nursing home avoid jail, and the U.S. women rattling a Jewish old boys’ club. |
President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in person on Wednesday for the first time since Netanyahu’s return to office last year. Despite their 40-year friendship, their talk was replete with evidence of the two leaders’ disagreements over Israel’s democratic trajectory. Read the story ➤
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who survived a hostage crisis at his Texas synagogue last year, is calling on Jews in small communities across the U.S. to host “solidarity Sukkot” events in support of the pro-democracy movement in Israel. Read his essay ➤
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Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, spoke to the crowd of protesters. (Gili Getz) |
Several hundred protesters gathered in Manhattan for a second day of demonstrations against Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly on Friday. Read the story ➤
“As someone who cares deeply about Israeli democracy, I won’t stand by while the current government destroys it,” Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller told the crowd, referring to Netanyahu’s plan to limit the power of the Supreme Court. Watch a video of Lander’s speech, and see more pictures from the protests.
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Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, earlier this year in Washington D.C. (Getty) |
Opinion | For Lauren Boebert and her appalling antics, the season of repentance is at hand:The Colorado congresswoman and her boyfriend were recently ejected from a performance of the Beetlejuice musical for being disruptive and groping each other in the theater. Our columnist Rabbi Jay Michaelson argues that “this isn’t mere hypocrisy,” considering Boebert preaches conservative values. “It’s a distortion of ethical values that stems, I think, from an unhealthy relationship to one’s own sexual self — and for religious people, a confusion about what matters most to God — and a projection of that self-loathing onto others.” Read his essay ➤
How Yiddish became a ‘foreign language’ in Israel despite being spoken there since the 1400s:David Ben-Gurion and other advocates of Modern Hebrew denigrated Yiddish, and after the country’s founding, Yiddish theater and periodicals were banned. A new exhibit gives a glimpse into the deeper story and, as our deputy Yiddish editor, Zach Golden, explains, Yiddish lives on in Israel in unexpected ways.Read the story ➤
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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland testifying on Wednesday. (Getty) |
Plus… U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland grew emotional when he invoked his Jewish family background Wednesday after a Republican lawmaker accused an agency under Garland’s direction of religious discrimination.
Threats against libraries across America recall a harrowing antisemitic history, writes our columnist Aviya Kushner.
Bob Feldman, the influential songwriter and producer behind some of the biggest hits of the 1960s including “My Boyfriend’s Back,” died at 83. Our music critic looks back at 10 of Feldman’s greatest songs. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, center, speaks at a ceremony Wednesday to return artworks stolen by the Nazis to a Jewish family, who stand to his left. (Jackie Hajdenberg/JTA)
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🖼️ Seven artworks by painter Egon Schiele were returned Wednesday to the heirs of a Jewish cabaret star who owned them before being killed in Dachau. The news marks a turning point in one of the longest-running restitution cases of Nazi-era looted art. In an emotional ceremony, the relatives said they will give the paintings to Christie’s on Thursday, which will auction the works for charity later this year. The profits are set to go to artists in underserved communities.(New York Times, JTA) 🔥 Two rabbis who pleaded guilty to starting a deadly fire at an assisted living home in 2021 were spared jail time, and on Wednesday were sentenced to probation. (New York Times) 🛢️ Israel is working with the U.S. on a proposal for a uranium enrichment operation in Saudi Arabia as part of the normalization deal between the two countries, according to a report out this morning. (Haaretz, Wall Street Journal) 👟 Bjørn Gulden, the chief executive of Adidas, where Kanye West had a partnership worth north of a billion dollars, said on a podcast that the rapper didn’t mean his antisemitic statements. Gulden also spoke about the German brothers who founded Adidas “during and after the Second World War,” without mentioning they were Nazi Party members. (Guardian, JTA) 🇩🇪 Germany banned a small but influential group of neo-Nazis in a move the government said “sends a clear signal against racism and antisemitism.” The country rarely bans political groups, but makes exceptions if it denies or glorifies the country’s Nazi past. (JTA) 🏫 Two incidents involving antisemitic graffiti on college campuses — one at Syracuse University and the other at the University of Kansas — occurred in recent days. (Algemeiner) ✈️ Air Haifa is set to launch out of northern Israel next year and make short haul flights to Eilat, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey with the hopes of offering consumers cheaper options than those out of Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. (Times of Israel) 🥡 A kosher, quasi-Chinese restaurant in a strip mall in New Jersey landed on The New York Times 2023 list of eateries they’re “most excited about.” (New York Times, JTA) Shiva calls ➤ Julian Bussgang, an entrepreneur who wrote about escaping the Holocaust as a boy, died at 98 … Robert Klane, a novelist and the screenwriter for Weekend at Bernie’s, died at 81.
What else we’re reading ➤ Ireland got its first kosher restaurant in decades and it’s getting rave reviews … The forgotten writers of the Shoah … The American women shaking up the Jewish old boys’ club.
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President Warren G Harding. (Getty) |
On this day in history (1922): U.S. President Warren G. Harding endorsed Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, which supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Harding added his signature to the Lodge-Fish Declaration, which had been unanimously approved by Congress, and stated, in part, “the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which will prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
It’s National Chai Day. Yes, it’s referring to the cozy drink, but, you know, maybe also the Hebrew word chai?
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Arno Rosenfeld, who covers antisemitism for the Forward, recently spoke in Tucson about the “battle to define and defeat antisemitism.” In his speech, which you can watch above, he traced the history of American antisemitism, and how dueling narratives over what antisemitism is — and how to stop it — can sometimes obscure the reality of Jewish safety in the United States. --- Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Arno Rosenfeld and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].
Hope you have a terrific day. |
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