Interview with Orthodox phenom headed to NBA, Lipstadt confirmation expected today, Jewish teens sue airlines over discrimination, lawyer gets payday for not working on Passover.

OUR LEAD STORY

Yvonne Reiter became bat mitzvah via Zoom from her home in Redmond, Washington. (Getty)

Entering a third pandemic year, Jews see reasons to hope — and stay cautious

As the U.S. hurtles toward the grim milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19, we asked a range of Jews to reflect on what comes next. Together, they painted a picture of a community searching for joy and meaning after two years of profound disruption.

Making space to grieve: “I don’t think we’ve fully processed the losses that we’ve sustained,” said Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski, the Chicago-based head of a group of Jewish chaplains. That processing, he and others noted, is essential to moving forward. For Eva Fogelman, a New York psychologist, that means connecting with others. “Jews who feel like they’re part of a Jewish community feel less isolated and cope better than those who are not part of a Jewish community,” she said.

Writing a new chapter: When Tracie Guy-Decker quit her museum job to join a friend’s new nonprofit in October 2020, she knew she was giving up some security — security that, with her husband deployed to Bahrain with the Navy and an 8-year-old at home, was valuable. But the pandemic had made her rethink her priorities. “We all focus on actual dollars and cents,” she said, “but there are other currencies we trade in — including time, happiness and meaning.”

Finding resilience: Susan Einbinder, a Judaic Studies professor at the University of Connecticut, noted that this is one of many times in our history where we have overcome obstacles to gathering and practicing our religion. During a bout of plague in 1631, she said, Jews in Padua, Italy, were told to recite the vidui, the deathbed confession, from their doorways, with witnesses stationed in the street.

“There’s amazing resilience in Judaism,” agreed Rabbi Susan Grossman, who does interfaith and interracial work. “Whatever we’ve experienced, we don’t wallow in it. We learn how to make ourselves and the world a better place because of it.”

Read the story ➤

ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Ryan Turell, center, posing with fans this weekend at Yeshiva University. (Photo by Jackson Krule)

Up close with the basketball phenom who hopes to become the NBA’s first Shabbat-observant player:Our Louis Keene, who covers sports, went for a walk with Ryan Turell, one of Yeshiva University’s best athletes ever. “Even standing 6-foot-7 and wearing a fire-engine red shirt, Turell fits in here,” Keene writes, “a basketball superstar floating in a sea of Orthodox hoops fans who might worship him if it weren’t against their religion.”Read the interview ➤

What happens when a New York kvetcher meets modern-day kitsch? A secular, urban, atheist Jew living in New York, Sol Fields, is the narrator of Alexander Maksik’s fourth novel, “The Long Corner.” Fields learned at an early age that to be Jewish is to be “scrappy, funny, depressed, anxious, worried, nervous, tough, nuts, smart.” In other words, a 21st century version of Lenny Bruce. “If the clash between irony and schmaltz were all there is to the novel, it would be an entertaining trifle – Groucho Marx set loose at Mar-a-Largo,” writes Steven G. Kellman. But there’s more. Read the review ➤

From our culture columnists…

For Israel, a summit imbued with a sense of curiosity reveals a path to coexistence, Aviya Kushner suggests.
Like Albert Camus, Zelenskyy has learned to resist the plague of the absurd, Robert Zaretsky writes.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Roman Abramovich is acting as an unofficial mediator at the Ukraine-Russia peace talks. (Getty)

☠️ Roman Abramovich, the Jewish Russian oligarch, may have been poisoned earlier this month while shuttling between Moscow, Kyiv and other locations in an effort to broker a deal to end the war. Abramovich, who became blind for several hours and had trouble eating, is nonetheless attending today’s peace talks in Turkey where he and delegates from Ukraine were warned not to eat anything. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope in Abramovich and asked the Biden administration not to target him with sanctions. (Wall Street Journal, BBC)

👍 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote this morning on the confirmation of Deborah E. Lipstadt, our Jacob Kornbluh reports. The vote has been repeatedly postponed, first by Republicans opposed to her becoming antisemitism ambassador, and last week because several Democrats did not make the committee meeting.

✈️ A group of Orthodox girls are suing Delta and KLM Airlines for antisemitic discrimination. The teenagers say that flight attendants targeted them for not complying with COVID-19 protocols and prevented them from making a connecting flight as they returned home to New York after a trip to visit Holocaust sites abroad. (Business Insider)

⚖️ The man accused of firing a handgun at a Jewish mayoral candidate in Louisville has been indicted for attempted murder. Quintez Brown, 21, will be arraigned on Monday. The candidate, Craig Greenberg, was not injured in the shooting at his campaign office, but said a bullet grazed his sweater. (Courier Journal)

🇮🇱 Israeli forces arrested 12 people in an overnight raid in an Arab town, on suspicion of connection to the Sunday shooting that killed two 19-year-old border police officers. Officials contend they may be affiliated with the Islamic State, which Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said “requires the security forces to adapt quickly to the new threat.” (Haaretz)

🎙️ An electrical fire burned down the Manhattan studio of Nachum Segal, the Jewish radio personality who streams a three-hour show each weekday. A crowdfunding campaign has raised more than $100,000 since Sunday to help him regroup. “It’s hard to believe how much my audience always comes through,” Segal said. (NY Jewish Week)

Shiva call ➤ Stephen Shalom, the proud Sephardic son of immigrants from Aleppo, Syria, who worked to promote peace and religious tolerance in the Middle East, died at 93. Shalom was heir to a handkerchief-manufacturing fortune and served as a leader of the United Jewish Appeal and the Jewish Agency, among other groups. Read his obituary ➤

What else we’re reading ➤ A Jewish lawyer who claims he was fired for not working on Passover won about $34,000 in a religious discrimination lawsuit … Jewish groups were gratified to see that President Biden’s budget proposal includes $360 million to enhance security at houses of worship and other religious institutions … Crooner Paul Anka is slated to perform in Israel this summer.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: Otto Kahn was a banker and philanthropist who was dubbed “The King of New York.” Some even believe he served as the model for the monocled Monopoly mascot, to which he had an uncanny likeness. Kahn was a patron of the arts and donated to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic as well as to individual artists like George Gershwin. He died, at 67, on March 29, 1934.

On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 26th of Adar, the yahrtzeit of Sara Schneirer. Schneirer, a Yiddish-speaking teacher, established the Bais Yaakov system of Orthodox girls schools. At the time of her death in 1935, there were hundreds of branches across the globe.

Happy 5oth birthday to my brother, Rabbi Ezra Cohen.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

In times of distress, people sing. And Ukraine’s national anthem, called “Ukraine has not yet perished,” has been adopted as a protest to Russian aggression. Its lyrics and melody can be heard on the streets of Ukraine and around the world. Watch the video above to hear it in Yiddish.

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Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)

Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter.

You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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