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Our readers' favorite Jewish pop songs, plus: Prince Harry, Bambi, GoyimTV, Deborah Lipstadt, WeWork, Ben & Jerry's, Mila Kunis, Marcel Marceau, and Stephen Sondheim.
WAR IN UKRAINE Tanya Arbit, an American volunteer standing at right, discovered she went to the same high school in Kyiv as Katya, the refugee in red on left. (Photo: Julie Schack) Our editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, is tagging along on a Jewish Federations of North America trip to Poland to see the Ukrainian refugee effort up close this week. She just sent this dispatch:
Tanya Arbit left Kyiv in 1989 for Milwaukee (by way of Austria and Italy). She went back to Ukraine for the first time in 2000, for her 20th high school reunion. Now Arbit is among 30 Federation leaders headed to Poland’s border with Ukraine Tuesday morning.
Arriving in Warsaw ahead of the group, Arbit and a few other earlybirds decided to bring 35 pizzas to an office building directly across from our hotel that is sheltering about 150 Ukrainian refugees. Among those refugees was a woman named Lyudmila, who like Arbit is 59 years old, and her 27-year-old daughter, Katya. And would you believe: Katya graduated from the very same high school – Kyiv’s No. 152 – as Arbit had a generation before.
“They said they are from Kyiv, I said, what neighborhood,” Arbit told me. “Forest neighborhood. Oh, me too. What street? They lived on Sholom Aleichem Street, and I lived at the end of Sholom Aleichem Street, on Kurchatov Street – he was a very famous chemist. So what school did you go to?”
All three women started to cry. Arbit’s eyes were so red the next morning, she went to the pharmacy to get eye drops. “American Jews opened the door for me, welcomed me to the community,” she explained. “So for me to help refugees, it’s a full circle.”
More from Ukraine Andriy Sheverdi, his fiancée, Tanya Shamis, and her son, David, in Berlin. (Photo: Judy Maltz) Why Jewish refugees from Ukraine are choosing Germany over Israel: Thousands of Jews escaping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are eschewing aliyah because they see the holy land as another conflict zone. Germany also offers financial benefits, subsidies and, in some cases, free housing. This is nothing new: In 1991, Germany granted Jews leaving the former Soviet Union special migrant status, and more than 200,000 found their way there. So about 90% of the 120,000 Jews in Germany before this war broke out were Russian speakers, about half of them from Ukraine, and that community is swelling. Read the story ➤
Holocaust survivor, 96, killed by Russian strike in Ukraine:Borys Romanchenko survived imprisonment in four concentration camps, including Buchenwald. In recent years, he had served on a memorial committee for that site. He was killed in the bombing of Kharkiv on Friday, a month before the 77th anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation. “Survived Hitler, murdered by Putin,” tweeted Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba. Read the story ➤
Related: There are nearly 10,000 Holocaust survivors that call Ukraine home.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a donation of an undisclosed amount that will go, in part, to Jewish communities in Poland and Moldova absorbing refugees. ALSO FROM THE FORWARD The 33 greatest Jewish pop songs of all time (that we left off our original list): When we published the 150 greatest Jewish pop songs, we suspected readers might have some alternative selections. So we invited music aficionados to nominate their own favorite Jewish tracks. Here’s your list of the great music we missed, including the Louis Armstrong classic “Black and Blue” — which reader Harold Pupko calls “one of the quintessential expressions of what it feels to be on the receiving end of racial meshugas” — and Judy Garland’s iconic “Over the Rainbow.” Read the story ➤
Is ‘Bambi’ about Jewish persecution, Zionism or something else? Before the Disney film traumatized millions of children, the novel “Bambi” may have been warning about antisemitism. A new translation posits that Bambi – created by the Austrian modernist Felix Salten, who was a Zionist with a complicated Jewish identity – and other creatures in the forest represent ethnic minorities who are subjugated in their homes. “Whether he knew it or not, and I think he did know it, ‘Bambi’ sort of predicts what is going to happen with the Holocaust,” said the new book’s author, Jack Zipes. Read the story ➤
And more… It’s been 10 years since Samuel Sandler’s son and two grandchildren were killed along with a little girl at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. “I live as if anesthetized, like a ghost,” Sandler said at a memorial event on Sunday. “Their absence haunts me.” Women who sing out loud at the Western Wall are often harassed. They are now forming a choir to amplify their voices. I’ve been enjoying the new “WeCrashed” series on Apple TV+, but my colleague, PJ Grisar, has not. He calls the show, about the meteoric rise and hard fall of the Millennial Israeli CEO of WeWork, Adam Neumann, “a live action cartoon” – and not in a good way.WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🏫 Hebrew Union College, Reform Judaism’s original seminary, may stop admitting rabbinical students to its Cincinnati campus, citing sharply declining enrollment, decreased revenue and competition from other institutions. Aspiring rabbis would instead be asked to attend the school’s New York or Los Angeles campuses. (JTA)
🗳️ The Republican Jewish Coalition’s political action committee endorsed Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has been blocking the confirmation of Deborah Lipstadt as antisemitism monitor for eight months. Johnson has also defended the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who sought to stop Congress from certifying the election of President Biden. (JTA)
🇮🇱 Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made a surprise visit to Egypt on Monday for a summit meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The talks will focus on Iran, Syria and the war in Ukraine. (Jerusalem Post)
🖼️ A scandal is brewing in New South Wales after a local cultural hero was posthumously accused of having been part of the Nazi SS. Bronius Sredersas, known as Bob, was a Lithuanian immigrant to Australia whose art collection became the centerpiece of a beloved local museum. Now, his adopted home must reckon with the question of how to represent his legacy. (The Guardian)
🚪 A journalist knocked on the door of an “antisemitic hatemonger” — and became the subject of his next hate-filled video. The reporter, Phil Barber, spent much of the last month covering the activities of Jon Minadeo II, a Bay Area man who has distributed virulently antisemitic flyers and runs a website called — oy — GoyimTV. Barber finally got Minadeo to speak face-to-face, and it went about as well as you’d expect. “When he posted the video of our interview, he included a Star of David emoji in the description,” Barber wrote. (Press Democrat)
What else we’re reading ➤ Colorado invokes a pro-Israel state law to divest its pension fund from Ben & Jerry’s … At first, the Academy Museum excluded mention of Hollywood’s Jewish founders. Now, a new permanent exhibit will correct that … Rachel Bloom, the comic actress and star of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” will be starring as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor in a new movie.
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Marcel Marceau, a mime who performed for more than six decades, was born on March 22, 1923. He fought for the French Jewish Resistance during World War II and helped lead 10,000 orphans out of France, across the Swiss Alps, and into Switzerland. Marceau entertained and distracted the children during the perilous journey.
The story of this chapter of his life was the subject of the 2020 film “Resistance,” with Marceau portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, himself the grandson of Holocaust survivors. During a break from filming in Munich, Eisenberg took his 18-month-old son to Dachau. “I thought about the theme of the movie: the best way to resist is to survive,” Eisenberg said. “My son laughing on the site where they tried to exterminate us was a strange victory.” Read more about the movie ➤
Stephen Sondheim would have turned 92 today. Here are 856 words to make you fall in love with one of our generation’s greatest musical artists.
PHOTO OF THE DAY President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hopped on a Zoom call with Mila Kunis, the Ukrainian-born Jewish actress, and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, to thank the couple for launching a GoFundMe campaign that has raised $35 million for refugee relief. “Grateful for their support,” Zelenskyy said later in a tweet. “Impressed by their determination. They inspire the world.”
––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)
Thanks to PJ Grisar and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].
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