Remembering Shinzo Abe and James Caan, Jerusalem preps for Biden visit, meet the man who now runs Ben & Jerry's in Israel, and hoard your hummus: there's an impending global chickpea shortage. |
The author with her late mother, Katherine Goldstein, at her graduation from Ithaca College on May 22, 2022. |
Cassie Goldstein, 22, asked her mother, Katherine, to drive her to Monday’s July Fourth parade. Katherine’s own mother had died two days before. Eager to get out of the house, Katherine “dressed up really nicely, wearing her high heels” Cassie said in a new first-person account in the Forward. Within hours, Katherine, a 64-year-old mother of two and avid bird watcher, was one of seven people slain by one of their neighbors, Robert E. Crimo III. “She got pretty excited about the idea of the parade”:Katherine knew how to enjoy herself, even when mourning the loss of a loved one. “She was waving at all the floats,” Cassie said, “and I was laughing at her for waving at all of them, but it was pretty cute, and so after she would wave at each float, I would hug her.”
“It’s a shooter, you have to run”: When shots rang out, Katherine’s high heels — put on for a celebratory occasion in a time of grief — made it hard for her to flee. “I didn’t want to run any faster than she was running, because of her high heels, so I slowed down to run with her — we were side by side,” Cassie said. “Then he shot her.”
“The last words she heard were ‘I love you’”: Cassie knelt by her mother’s body, and told her she loved her. The shooter was still firing, so Cassie kept running. “Every day I’ll remember what my mom taught me,” she said. “She never wanted me to be angry and hold grudges against people, and I always was. But now I won’t be that way. I’ll listen to my mom.” Read her full account ➤ |
A memorial near the scene of the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. (Getty) |
And we have a trio of new opinion essays related to the shooting… Jews know there was nothing random about this attack: Elad Nehorai, who grew up in Highland Park, watched with dismay this week as news outlets described his hometown as an “affluent, mostly white suburb.” To Nehorai, a Forward contributing columnist, that underplayed the fact that the suburb was nearly half Jewish and the suspect had apparently had sized up a local synagogue and posted in an online forum that included antisemitic and racist rantings. What happened, he writes, “is just part of a larger symptom of ignorance and a refusal to listen to the vulnerable populations that are pleading to be heard, and acknowledging the hatred that unites these acts of terror.” Read his essay ➤ There are no more safe places:Rabbi Tamar Manasseh lives on Chicago’s South Side, where the mayhem she’s previously witnessed led her to launch an anti-gun violence nonprofit. Friends from the city’s wealthy suburbs often supported the group, Mothers and Men Against Senseless Killings. Then on Monday, “on a day when we’re supposed to be celebrating America’s freedom,” as Manasseh put it, one of those friends from one of those wealthy suburbs texted for help. “They’re shooting everybody up here,” the message said. Read her essay ➤ I was named for an uncle who was shot and killed, a privilege I don’t bear lightly: In the Ashkenazi tradition, naming children after deceased relatives is an honor. Mark Zimmerman was given the Hebrew name Mordechai after his 29-year-old uncle was murdered in a liquor store robbery. In light of the Highland Park shooting, Zimmerman is mourning the fact that he received this name too soon, thinking he should instead have been honoring a far older relative. Read his essay ➤ Stay updated with our full coverage of the shooting in Highland Park. |
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated Friday while giving a speech, improved his country’s diplomatic and economic relations with Israel after decades of distance. Interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid joined other world leaders in sending condolences, calling Abe “a fierce and distinguished leader and a key architect of modern Israel-Japan relations.” In a statement, the American Jewish Committee called Abe “an unstinting ally to the Jewish people and Israel,” saying: “we have lost a dear friend.” Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, visited a Lithuanian museum honoring a Japanese Holocaust rescuer in 2018, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2015 and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 2014.
In 2018, he made a state visit to Israel to discuss Middle East peace, among other topics. But at a dinner at the Jerusalem residence of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Abe and his entourage took offense when they were served chocolate pralines in a shoe. The chef said the shoes were a “sculpture,” but a Japanese diplomat said, “If it is humor, then we don’t think it’s funny.”
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James Caan in 2003 at his Beverly Hills home. (Getty) |
Remembering James Caan, the ‘only New York Jewish cowboy’:The legendary “Godfather” actor, who died Wednesday at 82, got his start in westerns, but in later years reconnected with his Jewishness – including a 2017 film, “Holy Land,” in which he plays a cardiologist who decides to open a pig farm in Nazareth. Caan’s career was so defined by the mobsters he played that he was once denied entry into a country club by people who thought he was an actual criminal. Read our appreciation ➤
Meet the Israeli who wants to rename Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ‘Judea and Samaria’:Avi Zinger, 70, a small-town factory owner, bought the local license to the famed ice cream brand from Unilever and plans on selling it in the occupied West Bank, against the will of original co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. “I can do what I want,” Zinger said. “Ben & Jerry’s is mine forever.”Read the story ➤
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Rabbi Baruch Lanner spent nearly three years in prison and now has a civil suit against him. (Florida Department of Law Enforcement/iStock) |
🇮🇱 Rabbi Baruch Lanner, convicted two decades ago of sexually assulating students at a New Jersey Jewish high school, has been granted residency status in Israel. Last year, alleged victims filed a civil lawsuit against Lanner and his former employers. That case is still pending. (NY Jewish Week) 🤝 And speaking of Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz met Thursday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank to discuss security coordination ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to the region next week. (Jerusalem Post) 🇬🇧 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who announced his resignation on Thursday, had several memorable Jewish moments during his three years in office, including a broken menorah and speaking Yiddish on Passover. (JTA) 🇺🇦 Ukraine said it will not allow Jewish pilgrims into the country for Rosh Hashanah, a time when tens of thousands usually visit Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s grave in Uman. “Your prayers are important to us,” said Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel. But he asked that this year, people pray instead for the war to end. (JTA) 🎨 Stephanie Clegg paid $90,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in 1994 for a painting by Marc Chagall. Now an expert panel in France says it’s a fake and wants to destroy it. (New York Times) 👋 A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected a $95 million defamation lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen filed by Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who said he was tricked into a television appearance that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him. In the video, Baron Cohen was dressed as an Israeli counterterrorism expert who used a “pedophile detector” that beeped when it got near Moore. (Entertainment Weekly) 😮 Uh-oh! There could be a hummus shortage coming soon. Poor weather and the war in Ukraine have curtailed the supply of global chickpeas, which may dip 20% this year. In lieu of the snack, read our editor-in-chief’s column about what the humble chickpea can teach us about quantum physics. (JTA, Reuters)
Long weekend reads ➤ Georgia’s Jewish senator has some advice for Biden ahead of Israel trip … Artists scrutinize the Nazi family past of a billionaire art patron … This Israeli family risked it all to retrieve a rare Ethiopian version of the Bible called the Orit.
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A view of the underground tunnels built by Hamas militants. (Getty) |
On this day in history: Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in response to missiles fired from the Gaza strip on July 8, 2014. Known as the 2014 Gaza War, the operation was intended to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, including rocket factories and underground tunnels into Israel. It lasted 50 days, and took the lives of an estimated 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis. Last year on this day, Israeli archaeologists revealed that they discovered a “magnificent” Second-Temple era banquet hall.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the ninth of Tammuz when, in 423 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II breached the walls of Jerusalem.
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President Joe Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Thursday to 17 Americans, including former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords. A new documentary, “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” set to be released on Wednesday, follows her from the 2011 shooting that nearly killed her through her late-in-life bat mitzvah last year. ––– Play today's Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle Thanks to Nora Berman, Jordan Greene, Jodi Rudoren and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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