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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: A 24/7 protest outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.; Netanyahu’s U-turn on White House visit; and a British dust-up over Eurovision.

OUR LEAD STORY

Sen. Joe Lieberman with Rabbi Daniel Cohen in August 2023. (Courtesy of Daniel Cohen)

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman died Wednesday at 82. Here, two reflections on his legacy:

Joe Lieberman’s rabbi on the senator who was ‘one of us’. “He was a senator, but at the same time, he sat in seats like everybody else, he enjoyed the kiddush like everybody else,” Rabbi Daniel Cohen, Lieberman’s rabbi — and brother of Forward news director Benyamin Cohen — recalled in a Wednesday interview. (Lieberman, he noted, had a particular soft spot for cholent and whiskey.) Cohen, who will officiate Lieberman’s funeral, said he saw the one-time vice presidential candidate “as a role model for the vision of being a Jew which is not isolating oneself from the world, but engaging in elevating the world.” Read the story ➤

Lieberman broke boundaries as the first Jew on a major presidential ticket. But it wasn’t all praise and glory for the “moderate — some would say conservative — Democrat turned independent,” who represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1989 to 2013. “Lieberman was known for his attempts to build bridges in an increasingly polarized Washington, sometimes losing old friends and allies along the way,” an obituary recalls — including when Lieberman blasted his former friend, then-President Bill Clinton, over his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. Read the story ➤

ISRAEL AT WAR

Protesters have maintained a constant presence outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for the past month. (Lauren Markoe)

‘Until a ceasefire’: Nonstop protest rocks the Israeli Embassy — and the neighborhood beyond. For the past four weeks, a small but dedicated cohort of protesters has been staking out the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., night and day. The group, which begins playing the sound of sirens around 7 a.m. and carries on until nightfall, has gathered in part to protect a memorial to Aaron Bushnell, the airman who died last month after self-immolating in front of the embassy in protest of the war. “Every single person in this world, including Palestinians, should have access to freedom and justice,” one protester said. Read the story ➤

Protesters occupied the foyer of the British Department of Business and Trade in London, demanding the government stop granting export licenses to arms companies that work with the Israeli military. (Guy Smallman/Getty Images)

Latest on the war…

A Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza; only 36% of respondents approve of the war. Democrats, Republicans and independents all recorded lower approval of the war than in November.

A State Department official resigned in protest of U.S. military support of Israel, writing in a CNN op-ed that “whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began.”

In a press conference, families of male hostages still held by Hamas claimed the Israeli government had warned them not to speak to the media, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is only meeting with us today after six months, after many official requests and requests through the media.”

Netanyahu is once more in conversation with President Joe Biden’s administration about visiting the White House to discuss Biden’s objections to Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza. Netanyahu earlier this week canceled a planned meeting in protest of the U.S. abstaining from a United Nations Security Council vote on a ceasefire resolution, which allowed the measure to pass.

A 25-year-old Druze man was killed in a Hezbollah bombardment of the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona.

Three Israelis were injured in a West Bank shooting that targeted school buses and cars along a highway.

The U.S., along with several Middle Eastern governments, is pressing Israel over reports that Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti is facing mistreatment in Israeli prison. Barghouti, a leader of the second intifada, is serving five life sentences; he is one of the most prominent prisoners whose freedom Hamas has requested as part of a potential hostage deal.

Hundreds of students occupied an administrative building at Smith College, demanding the school divest from military contractors they say are complicit in Israel’s war.

Rutgers University is the latest campus to face a Republican-led congressional investigation over allegations of antisemitism on campus.

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Richard Serra “didn’t make objects to look at, but rather interruptions in the gravity of a room, plaza, or field.” (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

How Richard Serra found infinity within the void. Serra, a sculptor whose mother was a Russian Jew, died Tuesday at 85. In a remembrance, I wrote of the effect his work had on me, when I first encountered one of his pieces — a giant metal maze — at age 20: “I felt weightless — penned in, but also alone with the sky, and the gravel under my feet, and the sun on my shoulders. There is an unknowable order to reality. Maybe this was what it was supposed to look like.”

New York Republican lawmakers unveil plan to combat antisemitism ahead of budget vote. “In an effort to address and reverse the rising trend of antisemitism, we must work together to ensure resources are provided,” the Republican state senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democratic leaders, of their suite of five proposed bills. Among the items the bills would cover: making vandalism of pro-Israel materials a criminal act, and nixing tuition aid for college students found to have engaged in antisemitic behavior.

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

The Anti-Defamation League held its annual conference on fighting antisemitism in March in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images))

😨 The Anti-Defamation League recorded its highest-ever count of “white supremacist propaganda incidents” in 2023 — the second year in a row to set a new record. (ADL)

👀 Leaders of several American Jewish organizations objected to a proposed $30.5 million cut to a $305 million federal security program that helps synagogues institute security measures. (JTA)

🇩🇪 Germany will shortly add questions about antisemitism and Israel to its citizenship test, including “how is Holocaust denial punished in Germany?” — and, in a more lighthearted vein, “who can become a member of the approximately 40 Jewish Maccabi sports clubs in Germany?” (Washington Post)

🍿 A British senior member of Parliament is demanding that a movie theater that canceled its screening of this year’s Eurovision contest lose its charity status. The theater, which was founded by a Jewish woman in 1909, canceled the popular viewing party over Israel’s participation in the competition. (Express)

💻 The oversight board of tech giant Meta called for the company to end a blanket ban on the Arabic word for “martyr” — “shaheed” — saying the policy suppressed free speech. (Reuters)

🇮🇷 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is launching a new project with IranWire.com, a Persian-language news site run by Iranian journalists living outside Iran, to document the stories of Iranian victims of the Nazis. (USHMM)

Shiva call ➤ Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics, died at 90.

What else we’re reading ➤ “He was a beloved singer in Iran. His granddaughters uncover why he left” … “Why I traveled 100 miles to visit Hannah Arendt’s grave” … Is Benjamin Netanyahu Israel’s “worst prime minister ever”?

Plus: Read my review of a brilliant, outlandish novel about the Peloponnesian War (yes, really!) for The Washington Post.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images))

Pope Francis met Tuesday with Bassem Aramin, a Palestinian, and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, who became friends through a support group for families who have lost children to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after both of their young daughters were killed. The pope praised the duo for looking “beyond the enmity of war.”

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen 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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