WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Israel reportedly offers two-month cease-fire for return of all hostages, remembering Norman Jewison, Jewish quarterback a star at Mormon university, and a 35-foot challah bread could set record as world’s largest.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Israeli troops carry the coffin of fellow soldier Capt. Elkana Vizel during his funeral in Jerusalem on Tuesday, a day after he was killed in combat in Gaza. (Getty)

Israelis woke up Tuesday morning to the devastating news that 21 soldiers died Monday in the IDF’s single deadliest incident so far in the Gaza war. Our Susan Greene is on the ground in Tel Aviv.

The story: People were struggling to understand whether an Israeli mine caused the collapse of structures that killed 19 of those reservists, or whether the buildings were destroyed by a Palestinian rocket-propelled grenade. An IDF spokesman said the grenade simultaneously hit an Israeli tank, killing two Israeli soldiers inside. Three other soldiers died Monday in a separate incident.

The scene: Smartphones in hand, Tel Avivians on buses, in a north Jaffa neighborhood laundromat and in a City Center barber shop combed through the list of fallen reservists in search of names they recognized. “Yoav Levi? Could that be Yaron’s boy?” one woman mumbled to another at a bus stop.

Plus…

Israel reportedly proposed a two-month pause in fighting in Gaza in exchange for the release of all the remaining hostages.

A team of prosecutors from countries whose citizens were among those murdered or taken hostage on Oct. 7 — including Germany, Portugal and the U.S. — convened in Israel Monday, potentially laying the groundwork for a criminal case against Hamas.

THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS

Cillian Murphy received an Oscar nomination for his role as Robert Oppenheimer, the Jewish physicist behind the atomic bomb. (Universal)

The nominations for the Academy Awards were announced moments ago, and we have you covered on the Jewish angles.

Oppenheimer, nominated for 13 awards including best picture, only skims the surface of the real-life enmity between its titular physicist (nominee Cillian Murphy) and Lewis Strauss (nominee Robert Downey, Jr.), head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Our PJ Grisar wrote in July that the crux of their bad blood likely involved their different relationships to their Jewish identity. “Strauss was offended by Oppenheimer’s behavior,” Pulitzer winner Kai Bird, co-author of the film’s source material, American Prometheus, told Grisar, “and then he thinks in the back of his mind, ‘This is a brash young man who doesn’t take his Jewish ancestry seriously,’ and that grated on him too.”

Barbie, the hot pink companion piece to Oppenheimer, is nominated for eight awards, also including best picture. In a wide-ranging talk, the Forward’s culture team asked whether Barbie was Jewish, felt like a Shabbat experience (as director Greta Gerwig claimed in an interview) or if the entire film was a retelling of the Book of Genesis.

The Zone of Interest, about the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family, is nominated for five Academy Awards including best picture and best director for Jonathan Glazer. Grisar wrote that the film demands viewers confront the notion that many Nazis enjoyed life despite their proximity to mass murder. He also uncovered the story behind the Oscar-nominated score’s most haunting moment.

Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, is up for seven Oscars, including best picture and best actor and actress in a leading role. Our culture team discussed its shortcomings, with Mira Fox highlighting how it failed to capture Bernstein’s Jewishness and Talya Zax arguing that Taylor Swift’s concert film did a much better job depicting the essence of an artist.

Golda, about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War, was nominated for hair and makeup. In his review, PJ praised Helen Mirren’s performance, but was less impressed with the film overall.

Rustin, about the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, saw a nomination for Colman Domingo’s performance. Our Robin Washington interviewed Rustin’s Jewish partner in November.

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Former President Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. (Getty/Forward montage)

Opinion | Nikki Haley has better pro-Israel bona fides than former President Trump. Here’s why it doesn’t matter: With voters heading to the polls in New Hampshire today, our opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, argues that the former president has a complicated legacy on Israel and has sometimes empowered antisemites. She writes that Haley “is more measured” and “has boilerplate pro-Israel positions,” but that “Republican voters just don’t seem to care.” Read her essay ➤

Related: In a thinly veiled jab at former President Trump on the eve of the primary, Pastor John Hagee, the influential pro-Israel evangelical leader, blasted Republicans for trafficking in “antisemitic politics.”

Director of NYU’s new antisemitism research center doesn’t want to be ‘hamstrung’ by Israel politics:Avinoam Patt, a Holocaust scholar who began his job as the center’s inaugural director on Monday, spoke with our Arno Rosenfeld about the center’s goals, anti-Zionism on college campuses and how he plans to break through the noise. “I’m very, very aware of the political complexities that come with a position like this,” he said. Read the story ➤

Elon Musk at Auschwitz on Monday. (Yoav Dudkevitch)

Elon Musk visits Auschwitz, calls himself ‘aspirationally Jewish’: The world’s richest person, who has been accused of tolerating and promoting antisemitic posts on the social media platform he owns, visited the concentration camp on Monday. Afterward, he said that had social media been around at the time, the Holocaust “would have been impossible to hide.” Read the story ➤

Related: One of our contributing columnists, Emily Tamkin, asks: Is Musk’s visit to Auschwitz the kind of Holocaust remembrance we really want?

Why America was an easy mark for Nazi ideas: From the 1930s through to America’s entry into World War II, many Americans threw their lot in with Hitler. In summer camps on Long Island and in New Jersey and rallies on main streets throughout the country, groups like the German American Bund worked to convince Americans that fascism was the way forward, according to the PBS documentary Nazi Town, USA, airing tonight. But for all its historical context, PJ Grisar writes in his review, the film is unwilling to draw a direct line between the past and the rising tide of bigoted nationalism today. Read the review ➤

David Banks, chancellor of the New York City Public Schools. (Getty)

New York’s schools chief defended students accused of antisemitism — now he has a plan to defeat it: David Banks, the chancellor of New York City public schools, outlined a plan Monday to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia in the nation’s largest school district amid a surge in discrimination and hate crimes against both Jews and Muslims. But he also stressed the need for protecting students from outside criticism. “The way through this moment is not to malign our students,” Banks said. Read the story ➤

California contest: Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in September, leaving an opening for her seat. The top four candidates gathered for their first debate Monday night, where they showed distinct differences over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Steak, without guilt: Israel became the first country to approve the sale of lab-grown beef.

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Director Norman Jewison, right, and star Topol as Tevye on the set of Fiddler on the Roof. (Zeitgeist Films)

📉 There are fewer than 250,000 living Holocaust survivors, according to a new report released this morning. The youngest are on the cusp of 80, while the oldest known survivor is 112. (JTA)

🤷 Americans are far more likely to say they have become more spiritual over time than to say they have become more religious, according to a new analysis of a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. (Pew)

📚 A Holocaust novel, a picture book about Rosh Hashanah and a middle-grades story about an Orthodox girl all won awards Monday from the American Library Association. (JTA)

Shiva calls ➤ Norman Jewison, who was not Jewish but who directed Fiddler on the Roof, died at 97 … Arno A. Penzias, who escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport and became a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who confirmed the Big Bang theory, died at 90 … Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, an all-Jewish girl group in the 1960s, died at 75.

What else we’re reading ➤ ‘90s-era Jewish comic Andrew Dice Clay is making a comeback in self-deprecating TikTok videos … Meet the FBI agent who kept Detroit safe from Hitler’s spies during World War II … How a Jewish quarterback became a star at the largest Mormon university in the U.S.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

The challah was baked in a tunnel oven at David’s Cookies in New Jersey. It was then loaded onto a wooden plank and transported to the Upper West Side where it was unveiled at a day school’s Shabbat assembly. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

A Reform congregation in New York teamed up with the Orthodox Union last week to bake a 35-foot challah. The Guinness World Records is now determining if it’s the world’s largest challah. Read the story ➤

Thanks to Susan Greene, PJ Grisar, Lauren Markoe and Arno Rosenfeld for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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