Ben & Jerry's sues parent company, Canada removes Nazi collaborator name from mountain, why many Haredi women are jumping offline, and the Holocaust survivor who taught James Dean to act. |
A security guard at this shul says the accused gunman cased the place on Passover. (Google Street View) |
The police have yet to discern a motive for Monday’s massacre at a July Fourth parade in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Highland Park. The 21-year-old man accused of killing seven and wounding dozens of others, Robert E. Crimo III, was known to local police, having threatened in 2019 to kill himself and others. He nonetheless legally bought the high-powered rifle used in Monday’s attack, which the police said he had prepared for weeks. Here are highlights from our ongoing coverage of the tragedy:
Suspect in shooting was ‘sizing up’ local Chabad earlier this year: Crimo spent 45 minutes at the Central Avenue Synagogue on the last day of Passover this year, according to the congregation’s security director, Martin Blumenthal. There were approximately 125 people at services at the time, Blumenthal said, and Crimo was wearing all black clothes “in the goth style,” including black gloves, and a knapsack. “He didn’t cause a disturbance or anything,” he added, “so I was just watching him.” Read the story ➤
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The Rev. Quincy Worthington hugs the Rev. Bryan Cones at the conclusion of the inter-religious community vigil Tuesday night. (Robin Washington) |
Some 400 people gathered Tuesday night for an interfaith prayer vigil at the Highland Park Presbyterian Church, including our Robin Washington, who is reporting on the ground about the aftermath of the shooting. One minister asked the crowd to turn to their neighbors and describe what they were feeling in a single word: Devastated, angry, worried. Another quoted from Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief, but do justly now.” Read the story ➤ The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band had just struck up the joyous wedding song “Freylekhs fun der khupe” as the players entered the same parade route they’d marched on every July Fourth for the past decade. And then they saw people frantically running. “Our clarinet player says he will no longer play parades,” said the band’s tuba player, Howard Prager, who revisited the scene on Tuesday. Read the story ➤ Michael L. Millenson attended his shul’s active-shooter training two weeks ago in Highland Park. When he heard rapid-fire popping noises at Monday’s parade, he got a pit in his stomach. On Tuesday, Millenson returned to the synagogue for morning prayers. “We are grateful to be alive,” he writes, “but we are haunted forever by what we saw.” Read his essay ➤ Of blessed memory |
Stephen Straus, right, who was killed in the shooting, with his son Jon at a family wedding. (Courtesy of Cynthia Straus) |
‘An unquenchable thirst for life’: Steve Straus, 88, was well past retirement age but still took the train into Chicago five days a week to work as a financial adviser. On Monday, he had invited his brother Laurence to the parade, but ended up going alone. “Steve looked out for the whole family,” said his niece, Cynthia Straus. “He was like a big, big oak tree, an umbrella of well-being for all of us. It’s a big loss.” Read his obituary ➤ ‘One of the kindest people you’d ever meet’: Jacki Lovi Sundheim, 63, grew up in Highland Park and worked for decades at a local synagogue, North Shore Congregation Israel, first as a preschool teacher and later shepherding members through weddings and b’nei mitzvah. “She’s a person who was out there doing good,” said a former classmate, “and it’s sad that she was taken too soon.” Read her obituary ➤ More from Highland Park What you need to know about the local Jewish community
Most area Jews knew someone at the deadly mass shooting
A cantor from Highland Park offers a Jewish perspective on the epidemic of gun violence
Click here and bookmark the page to read all our coverage and keep up with the latest developments |
Ben & Jerry’s files lawsuit against Unilever for sale of Israeli operations: The ice cream maker is hoping to prevent its parent company from allowing an Israeli businessman to sell its products in the occupied West Bank, according to court documents filed Tuesday. But is it too late? Unilever said “the deal has already closed.”Read the story ➤ Opinion | As a child, I shunned my Asian identity. As a Jewish adult, I embrace it: When Christopher Michaelson met his wife and converted to Judaism, his friends and family joked that his Asian heritage and new Jewish traditions would go hand in hand. But he has noticed important differences in his multiracial families. “As well-meaning as the search for common ground between cultural and religious identities can be,” Michaelson writes, “discovering our uncommon ground is also critical to our appreciation of the diverse histories that we each bring to the changing faces and futures of Judaism.” Read his essay ➤ The ‘wild’ acting coach and director who went from hell to Hollywood: You may not know the name Jack Garfein, but the students he taught – James Dean, Steve McQueen, Jessica Tandy and Doris Roberts – became legends. The Wild One, a new documentary, explores how Garfein, a survivor of seven concentration camps and multiple death marches, became a sought-after teacher of method acting and an under-appreciated director of boundary-pushing films. In her review, Simi Horwitz writes that the film is informative but wishes it more directly explored Garfein’s legendary teaching technique. “How did he define truth and how did he elicit it from his actors?” Horwitz was left wondering. Read the review ➤
And one more: At this Lower East Side bookstore, customers exchange tchotchkes for pickles
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Left: Philippe Pétain’s annotations on Vichy France’s Law on the Status of Jews, which became effective Oct. 4, 1941. Right: Mount Pétain, on the border of Alberta and British Columbia. |
⛰️ British Columbia said it would remove the name of Philippe Pétain, a Nazi collaborator, from a mountain, a glacier and a creek in the province. Mount Pétain is among some 1,500 monuments to Nazis around the world documented by a Forward investigation over the last two years. Its name change follows a Belgian town’s removal last year to references honoring Nazis from its town square. (Calgary Herald, CBC) Read more about Mount Pétain ➤ 👶 A Tennessee judge dismissed a Jewish couple’s lawsuit alleging religious bias during adoption. The case focused on a 2020 law allowing a state-sponsored Christian adoption agency to discriminate against LGBTQ parents — and, the Jewish couple argued, opened the door to discriminate against others. (AP) Read our interview with the couple ➤ 📱 Some Haredi women who used social media to promote their businesses selling wigs and baby clothes have deleted their accounts after community rallies exhorting them to spend less time on the internet and their mobile phones. The two rallies in Newark, one in English and one in Yiddish, drew thousands of women under the banner of “nekadesh” — to make holy. (JTA) 🇺🇦 A Fort Lauderdale home was vandalized, with swastikas spray-painted on its garage and on an “I Stand with Ukraine” flag hung on the garage door. Police are investigating. (CBS News) 🕍 Nate Looney, an observant Black Jew, once walked into shul on Shabbat and was directed to the kitchen. “The last thing you want to happen when you go to a synagogue to attend a service,” Looney said, “is to be treated like you don't belong.” He’s now in a position to do something about that in his new job at the Jewish Federations of North America. (AP) ⛪ A Greek Orthodox church destroyed on 9/11 has been consecrated as a national shrine. The space, according to officials, will be a place “where a diversity of beliefs and respect for other faith traditions can be celebrated, taught and enshrined for all people.” (Religion News Service)
What else we’re reading ➤ After years of unofficial segregation, Tel Aviv University is letting some Jewish and Arab students share dorm rooms … Zoroastrians confront depletion of their ancient faith … Henry Winkler once played a Jewish dad in a controversial abortion movie.
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Students organized by the Nazi party parade in front of the Institute for Sexual Research in 1933. Inset: Magnus Hirschfeld. (Wikimedia) |
On this day in history: Magnus Hirschfeld, known in his time as “the Einstein of sex,” opened the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin on July 6, 1919. More than 40 people worked at the institute – conducting counseling work, developing sex education and treating patients. Hirschfeld believed in a diversity of gender and sexual identities, an idea that many people at the time saw as too radical. The Nazis targeted Hirschfeld for his progressive thinking and his Jewish background, and in 1933 forced the institute to close. Though much of his research was destroyed, Hirschfeld nonetheless helped pave the way for today’s LGBTQ+ rights movement. Last year on this day, we reported on Max Solomon Lewis, a 20-year-old University of Chicago student killed by a stray bullet.
Mark your calendar: A century ago, the Lower East Side was home to some 500 synagogues. Join historian Bradley Shaw for a walking tour of the neighborhood on July 10 at 10 a.m. (ET), sponsored by our friends at the Museum at Eldridge Street. Register here ➤
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Rapper 50 Cent performed two shows this week at the Menora Mivtachim Arena in Tel Aviv, despite protests from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The concerts are part of an international tour that includes London, Paris and Zurich. ––– Plus: Play today's Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle Thanks to Nora Berman, Jordan Greene, PJ Grisar, Robin Washington and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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