WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. As Cornell University reeled after antisemitic threats terrified Jews on campus, President Joe Biden announced initial plans for a government effort to combat antisemitism at universities. That, and more of the latest from the war, below.

ISRAEL AT WAR

A gathering last week at B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Opinion | ‘It’s hard to be a Jew’ — old Yiddish proverb never felt more resonant in America. As a group of Rabbi Joshua Davidson’s congregants at New York’s Congregation Emanu-El sat in a park with their kids last week, a nearby man yelled, “Are any of these kids Jewish?” — just one example of the alarmingly altered American environment Davidson writes that many of his congregants are suddenly encountering. High schoolers are feeling excluded because of their Jewishness and college students report “vicious bullying.” “Never in my 25 years in the rabbinate,” Davidson writes, “have I witnessed the level of anguish American Jews are experiencing right now.” Read his essay ➤

And:

• White House convenes summit to address spike in campus antisemitism during Israel-Hamas war

  
  

• In a shift, Democrats are focusing their Jewish campaign on Israel policy

  
  

• A Harry Potter fan’s murder reverberates from Israel to Boston

American Jews are mobilizing to free Israeli hostages — will it make a difference? “There is a cemented will to get this done,” Julie Rayman, policy director for the American Jewish Committee, told our Arno Rosenfeld of efforts to secure the release of more than 200 hostages currently held in Gaza. But, Rosenfeld reports, room for international pressure to sway Hamas in regards to the hostages is likely limited. With that understanding, many of those engaged in the campaign are treating it as a meaningful tool to urge officials to seek a swift resolution to the broader conflict. “Keeping the hostage plight front and center is a necessary condition to solving the overall problem,” one federation board member said, while warning, “It may not be a sufficient condition.” Read the story ➤

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Israel’s war with Hamas “a battle of civilization against barbarians.” (JACQUELYN MARTIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Plus…

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying that just as the United States would not agree to one after Pearl Harbor or 9/11, “Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas after the horrific attacks of Oct. 7.”

  
  

• Israeli forces rescued a soldier held hostage in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces said Ori Megidish, 19, had been “medically checked” and reunited with her family.

  
  

• Hamas released a video of three hostages blaming Netanyahu for the Oct. 7 massacre and demanding he secure their release. A statement from Netanyahu’s office called the video “cruel psychological propaganda.”

  
  

• Israel has reopened two of the three water pipelines it uses to supply Gaza, with officials saying up to 28.5 million liters a day can now flow into the strip. Israel also agreed to allow 100 humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza per day, according to U.S. officials who helped broker the deal, as the IDF reported that some 800,000 Gazans had relocated south within the strip.

  
  

• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul visited Cornell a day after violent antisemitic threats shook the campus, as the FBI confirmed it was investigating the incident. But students remained on edge, with one calling the threats “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read.” Separately, Biden administration officials pledged to release a plan to counter campus antisemitism within two weeks.

  
  

• International tensions around the war heightened, as Jewish schools in Paris and its suburbs were evacuated Monday over a bomb threat; antisemitism escalated in Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan praised Hamas; online antisemitism surged in China as its government aimed for a more prominent role in diplomatic efforts to end the conflict; a Pakistani senator wrote online that the war showed the world why Hitler did “what he did”; and a European Union official warned that antisemitism is a “deeply ingrained racism in European society.”

Supporters of Israel attended a Times Square rally calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

Opinion | The ‘politics of respectability’ must end now for American Jews. What, exactly, do those politics look like? Assimilation; quiet efforts to rise socially; not raising a fuss, writes David Christopher Kaufman. But a global spike in antisemitism in reaction to the war leaves American Jews in the position of “minority groups worldwide” who “have been at this moment before — often slow to fully perceive the threats against them.” Kaufman’s solution: Stop trying to blend in, and start making noise. Read his essay ➤

And:

• Artforum staff resign in protest after editor fired over publication of anti-Israel open letter

  
  

• ‘This s— is not a game’: On CNN, Jake Tapper tells Marjorie Taylor Greene not to use antisemitism to score ‘political points’

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ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Labzik comes home to his Jewish family in the Bronx. (Courtesy of Jake Krakovsky)

What we can learn from a communist puppy puppet. Labzik, created in the 1930s by the communist writer Chaver Paver, had all sorts of adventures: He protested at New York’s City Hall, encountered a corrupt ice cream-eating mayor, and won hearts with his good-hearted perseverance. As a puppet show retelling the stories of Labzik for a modern audience prepares to make its New York debut next week, its creators hope the beloved canine comrade will be a window into “what we would consider broad progressive ideals today.”

A life of music and promise shattered by the Holocaust in an unforgettable film.Winter Journey, a pioneering meld of fiction and documentary, follows the American radio host Martin Goldsmith’s efforts to learn the truth of what happened to his parents before their escape from Germany in 1941. The result: a tale of “contradictory emotional cross-currents,” told with remarkable visual and auditory innovation.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

The airport in Dagestan, Russia, where a mob brandishing antisemitic slogans stormed the terminal as a flight landed from Tel Aviv this weekend. (AFP via Getty Images)

😮  Russian President Vladimir Putin baselessly claimed an antisemitic mob that stormed an airport was an operation staged by Ukraine and its allies. U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby decried the suggestion that “the West” had anything to do with the incident in Dagestan, which took place as a flight from Tel Aviv landed. (Associated Press)

😞  An Illinois man accused of murdering a 6-year-old Palestinian boy and severely injuring his mother pleaded not guilty to hate crime and murder charges. Joseph Czuba, 71, was the family’s landlord; he reportedly attacked them after the mother asked him to “pray for peace.” (Associated Press)

👀  A neo-Nazi who made public efforts to establish a far-right training ground in Maine has sold the property he intended for the facility. Christopher Pohlhaus has cleared the property of all his belongings — including a Nazi flag. (Bangor Daily News)

😨  Georgia politicians condemned a hate group that projected a sign reading “Heil Hitler” on a highway overpass. “This is not who we are as Georgians,” state Attorney General Chris Carr said of the action by the Goyim Defense League. (95.5 WSB)

😳  A far-right German politician was arrested for allegedly displaying Nazi symbols. Daniel Halemba, 22, was elected to the Bavarian state parliament as a member earlier this month; he was detained only hours before his swearing-in would have granted him immunity. (BBC)

What else we’re reading ➤ Israel’s history pre-1948 and “the dangers of distinguishing between ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarous’ peoples” … “Rise in antisemitism ‘brings Germans back to most horrific times’” … “The Hamas massacre, the assaults on Gaza, and what comes after.”

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images)

A group of British Jews gathered in London yesterday to protest in favor of a cease-fire, with one sign reading “Jews will not be free until Palestine is free.”

Thanks to Beth Harpaz for editing today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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