In today’s briefing: They built Israel's first baseball field and now their son is an Olympian. Plus: An Orthodox 'West Side Story,' celebrating Norman Lear and much more...

OUR LEAD STORY 👇

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L.A. teachers union likely to shelve resolution criticizing Israel

Staff reporter Louis Keene delivered a scoop this morning from our West Coast office: Following intense pressure from the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, the Anti-Defamation League and a host of other Jewish groups, the L.A. teachers union is likely to shelve a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was slated for a September vote.

What just happened: The resolution, which expressed solidarity with Palestinians and harshly criticized Israel, passed at two small union meetings in May, triggering a union-wide vote this fall. But Jewish parents, teachers, and advocacy groups raised alarms, and now they’re confident the resolution won’t pass — if it gets voted on at all.

Why it matters: With nearly 600,000 students, L.A. is the second-largest school district in the United States. Defeating the resolution would mark a departure from a trend in American labor. Since the 11-day Gaza-Israel conflict in May, teachers’ unions in San Francisco and Seattle passed resolutions backing BDS, as did Vermont’s AFL-CIO state council and the longshoremen’s union in Oakland. At the City University of New York, dozens of professors quit their union after it passed a resolution condemning Israel, taking their dues with them.

Key quote: “They woke a sleeping giant,” said Scott Mandel, a musical-theater teacher who sits on the union’s 36-member board. So many teachers threatened to quit that the union’s treasurer was estimating a loss of about $500,000.

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ALSO IN OUR PAGES 🐶

Faux pets help Holocaust survivors stave off loneliness: The stuffed animals are fitted with sensors that prompt them to “react” with barks, meows and tail wags to make their elderly owners feel as if they have a real pet. Gerda Weissfeld, 102, adopted a faux poodle. “He is an intelligent doggie,” she said. “I call him Peter.” David Lefkowitz, 91, received a soft, robotic cat from Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey. “When somebody comes to my home, I now say, ‘I want to introduce you to Mike,’” Lefkowitz said. “He sits on the couch and looks like he’s king of the hill.” Read the story >

They helped build Israel’s first baseball field. Now their son is pitching at the Olympics:Back in 1983, Rabbi Miri Gold and David Leichman convinced their neighbors at a kibbutz in Israel to clear a field of cotton and corn, procure and lay sod, and carve a diamond. As in Kevin Costner’s diamond in “Field of Dreams,” people came. That diamond is where their son Alon first learned to play the sport that, this week, led him to Tokyo as an Olympian. Read the story >

More coverage of Jackie Mason’s death: “The jokes were so funny that even non-Jews got them,” Michael Goldfarb writes. Read an appreciation >

5 OTHER THINGS AMERICAN JEWS ARE TALKING ABOUT 🖐

ARTIST LOUISE FISHMAN DREW INSPIRATION FROM QUEER, FEMINIST AND JEWISH CULTURES. (PHOTO: KARMA)

1. Former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, 80, was assaulted and mugged on an Oakland, Calif., street Monday. Boxer, born Barbara Levy in Brooklyn, served from 2003 to 2017, and was one of two Jewish women senators representing California. (Forward)

2. Spain said it would give citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. But then rejections started pouring in this summer. “It felt like a punch in the gut,” said María Sánchez. “You kicked my ancestors out, now you’re doing this again.” (The New York Times)

3. Jewish basketball star Sue Bird, Team USA’s flag bearer at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, is going for a record fifth gold medal. Off the court, Bird, 40, has been helping “drive the fight for better pay and benefits for WNBA players.” (Washington Post)

4. Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused the Israeli military of carrying out “war crimes” during the 11-day conflict with Hamas in May, noting the high number of civilian casualties. The group also accused Palestinian militants of war crimes for launching more than 4,000 imprecise rockets and mortars at Israeli cities and towns. (AP)

5. Imagine a contemporary, Orthodox version of “West Side Story” and you have the premise for a new movie that was recently greenlit: it follows the unlikely story of a Hasidic girl and a secular boy who meet on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn and find themselves in a forbidden romance. (Deadline)

Shiva call:Louise Fishman, abstract American painter, died at 82. Her work and research into her Jewish identity was inspired by a 1988 trip to Eastern Europe with a friend who survived the Holocaust. Fishman went on to study Yiddish. Her work is held in major collections including the Jewish Museum in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her last show was in 2016, and she is survived by her wife of nine years, Ingrid Nyeboe.

He shoots, he scores:This video from a Jewish summer camp of a half-court buzzer beater game-winning shot is going viral on Twitter.

What else we’re reading: A man in Germany was forced to remove a statue of his father that he placed at his dad’s tombstone after local residents complained it looked like Hitler. … A former Colombian telenovela star is now an Orthodox Jew in Israel. … Meet Lois Stifel, a rare collector of “exuberantly quirky ashtrays.”

THE LATEST ON TEAM ISRAEL AT THE OLYMPICS 🥇

Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Team Israel in Tokyo, according to David Wiseman and Shari Wright-Pilo, who run a social media channel that tracks the country’s 90 Olympians. Here’s their update:

In judo, both Sagi Muki and Gili Sharir were eliminated in early rounds.
In swimming, Anastasia Gorbenko came in last in the 100-meter backstroke final and didn’t make the 200-meter individual medley final.
In badminton, Ksenia Polikarpova lost both of her round-robin matches and was eliminated.

Looking ahead: The Israeli baseball team, which has a 50% chance of medaling since it is one of six competing, plays its first game on Thursday against South Korea.

And it’s not all about the athletes: Meet one of the world’s most prolific Olympic pin traders, a 76-year-old Jewish philanthropist in L.A.

Check out all of our Olympics coverage >