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| JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. Give a tax-deductible donation Faith vs. fear in Georgia school masking debate, revisiting a 40-year-old murder in Iran, and how Pope Francis accidentally gave communion to a Jewish bubbe. Plus: Mayim Bialik, Gabby Giffords and more. OUR LEAD STORY Who could hate Anne Frank? These people.
Anne Frank trending on Twitter is rarely a good thing. If often means some group is co-opting her for their own purposes. How has Anne’s place in our culture and political discourse changed – and why? Following a Twitter campaign calling this iconic Holocaust victim a “colonizer,” our digital culture reporter Mira Fox took a deep dive into how her story has been studied, taught, rewritten — and exploited.
Mistaken identity: On social media, Frank’s image has often been hijacked – by those discussing white privilege, abortion and a whole host of other hot-button issues. Like when she’s photoshopped with a keffiyeh draped around her neck. “The image has a powerful shock value,” writes Fox, “suggesting that Israel’s government is comparable to the Nazi regime and implying that Anne would have thrown her moral authority behind Palestinians.”
The big picture: Frank’s story is not only used by advocates for a cause, but by schools and politicians. “Her symbolic power presents a nearly impossible-to-meet benchmark for suffering,” Fox argues in the piece. “If nothing can ever be as bad as the Holocaust, then every other atrocity must be of lesser importance.”
The girl vs. the Holocaust heroine: “Anne is frozen in time,” writes Fox, “enabling the discourse to decide her legacy for her. Anne has been removed from her lived reality and moored entirely in the theoretical realm. There, she can mean almost anything.”
ALSO IN THE FORWARD I won’t let divorce kill my Shabbat: For many Jews, the weekly ritual centers around family. So when Hanna Ingber, a journalist and mother of two small boys, split from her husband a couple years ago, she pretty much stopped lighting candles, eating challah and doing other things that made Friday night special. But those things had always brought a sense of ease and calm to the week. So Hanna recently mustered the emotional energy to go solo to an outdoor service-and-supper at her synagogue. “I let myself feel all the feels,” she writes. Read the essay > Family of executed Iranian Jewish businessman still seeks justice: Forty years later, Fakhri Gedooshim, an 85-year-old grandmother living in Beverly Hills, still weeps uncontrollably when recalling the horror of her late husband’s killing by Iran’s Islamic regime. She is sharing her story now out of concern over the Biden administration’s consideration of renegotiating the Iran nuclear deal that President Trump pulled out of. “My message to the American Jewish community is do not trust this Islamic regime in Iran,” Gedooshim told our L.A.-based contributor. “They killed my husband for only one reason — he was a Jew.” Read the story > ICYMI …. Gabby Giffords: Surviving an assassination attempt gave me a new appreciation for the High Holidays
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🤔 Mayim Bialik and Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings will be splitting hosting duties on the game show through the end of 2021. Producers are still searching for a long-term replacement for Mike Richards, who was fired for past offensive comments about women, Asians and Jews. (CNBC)
✝️ While chatting with reporters aboard his plane this week, Pope Francis recounted the time he inadvertently gave communion to an old Jewish woman. (Reuters)
😷 The debate over a mask mandate in Georgia’s Cobb County School District, the state’s second largest, has pitted faith against fear, with many parents invoking God as an excuse to not wear masks. But Rabbi Larry Sernovitz, who leads a synagogue in the area – north of Atlanta – and has children in the schools, disagrees. “The greatest mitzvah in Judaism is ‘pikuach nefesh,’ saving a soul,” he said. “God has given us all the tools and reason at our disposal to do what it takes. God depends on us to do the right thing.” (Religion News Service)
🥘 WoodSpoon, a delivery service connecting home chefs with people nearby craving homemade food, unveiled an initiative to provide free meals to Holocaust survivors in Queens and the Bronx. (Yahoo)
🏍 The Great American Deli Schlep has come to a close. Steve Goode of Chicago spent 75 days on a motorcycle visiting the best Jewish delis across the country. (ABC 7)
🎭 A new play in London tells the real-life story of a Nazi summer camp on Long Island. Called “Camp Siegfried” and based in the 1930s, the play by Bess Wohl uses the story of two impressionable campers to provide lessons for today. “I was interested in the way that that moment when you’re forming your identity and figuring out who you are is so fragile,” she said, “and how easily you can fall into something really dangerous and evil without even knowing it.” (AP)
Long weekend reads > Nature versus the Jewish ladies … Jon Stewart on his long anticipated return to TV … Antisemitic author’s manuscripts, worth millions, are setting France’s literary scene on fire.
FROM OUR KITCHEN If you didn’t make Molly Yeh’s shawarma-stuffed peppers for Sukkot last year, guess what? You can — and should — make them this year. We collected Sukkot recipes from Molly, Danielle Reno, Elise Bildner and others here.
Not a pepper fan? You can also stuff chard, grape leaves, zucchini — you get the idea.
A PODCAST WE RECOMMEND What’s it like interviewing Naftali Bennett or Hillary Clinton? Find out in today’s new episode of “Unholy: Two Jews on the News,” hosted by our journalist-friends Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 and Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. The duo also chat about their Yom Kippur customs and offer up some pretty good book recommendations. Listen now >
ON THE CALENDAR Left to right: Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat. (U.S. National Archives) On this day in history: The Camp David Accords were signed on Sept. 17, 1978. The agreements led to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat receiving and sharing the Nobel Peace Prize. The intense negotiations were later memorialized in the book “Thirteen Days in September,” by journalist Lawrence Wright. “Camp David is the example of how peace can be made,” said Wright. “It’s endured and it’s the basis of all our foreign policy.”
Also signed on this day? The U.S. Constitution, in 1787 in Philadelphia.
PHOTO OF THE DAY (Getty Images) New York’s Temple Emanu-El hosted Yom Kippur services in Central Park on Thursday. Synagogues across the country offered a mix of in-person, virtual and hybrid services in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant.
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