Interfaith group to protest NRA in Texas, Adolf Eichmann confession discovered, Stephen Sondheim's final musical, Henry Kissinger turns 99, and remembering Ray Liotta's most Jewish scene. Plus: Play today's Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle |
Rabbi Hal Schevitz at the Zionist Rabbinical Coalition gathering in Washington this week. (Jack Hartzman) |
Are American rabbis drifting away from Zionism? The Israeli flag proudly stands on most synagogue bimahs, the largest rabbinical seminaries require students to study in Jerusalem, and rabbis report extremely high levels of attachment to Israel. So a conference for Zionist rabbis may sound a bit redundant. But this week dozens of rabbis, alarmed by what they see as flagging support for Israel in the Reform and Conservative movements, gathered in the nation’s capital to figure out how to convince their colleagues to be more supportive of the Jewish state. Paradigm shift: “There was a time when it was understood to be a rabbi meant to be a lover of Israel,” Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, told the group of nearly 40 colleagues. “That has become less so today.” The shift reflects a broader one across the American Jewish population, with 25% of Jewish voters saying in a survey last year that they believed Israel was an “apartheid state” and 22% stating it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.” Recent trends: Weinblatt said Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, suggested the formation of this new coalition after some liberal Jews offered limited praise for the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The organizers noticed an uptick in criticism of Israel after its war with Gaza last May. Scene setter: Israeli President Isaac Herzog, White House officials and AIPAC leaders spoke at the conference, whose opening event took place at the Museum of the Bible, where Krispy Kreme Donuts and trendy Liquid Death spring water were served. Not binary: Rabbi Josh Weinberg, who leads the Reform movement’s Zionist arm, said that focusing only on the positive aspects of Israel would be counterproductive. “If we don’t acknowledge the occupation and deal with it,” he said, “and say that we are against it — and that it is a moral stain on the fabric of the Zionist enterprise — then we will not be able to maintain a liberal Zionism for the future.” Read the story ➤ Related: New Pew survey shows young Americans as sympathetic toward Palestinians as Israelis |
Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, where a new lawsuit alleges leadership mishandled allegations of sexual assault. |
Opinion | Unless we teach consent to our teens, sexual assault at Jewish summer camps will continue: The recent lawsuit involving sexual assault at Camp Ramah has led Jewish educators to reconsider how they teach about consent. Rabbi Daniel Brenner, whose organization Moving Traditions works with Jewish adolescents on issues of sexuality, gender and wellbeing, says camps don’t use the tools available, or have not adapted to meet the needs of today’s campers. Jewish professionals need to help them “navigate boundaries, particularly boundaries of sex and sexuality, in the internet age,” he argues. Read the essay ➤ Four decades later, a Jewish iconoclast’s searing film gets its debut: Michael Roemer is used to late recognition. The 94-year-old filmmaker’s 1960s films “Nothing But a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry” were celebrated and distributed in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. His latest film, 1984’s “Vengeance is Mine” is only now having a regular theatrical run at the Film Forum. “My timing is very poor,” said Roemer, a Kindertransport kid, former professor of Yale and arthouse visionary. Read the story ➤ But wait, there’s more… “Too many people who fight antisemitism do so with a patch on their eye,” Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt said during her commencement address to Yeshiva University on Thursday. “They see antisemitism very clearly but only see it coming from one direction, the political direction which they oppose.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas suggested this week’s school shooting could’ve been prevented had there been fewer doors. Twitter users brought up the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.
Remembering actor Ray Liotta, by remembering his most Jewish scene. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
People visited memorials for victims of Tuesday's mass shooting at a Texas elementary school. (Getty) |
😢 Texas clergy have planned an interfaith protest at Friday’s NRA convention in Houston. “We’ll gather and pray together,” said one of the organizers, “and do a silent march through the convention center and come back out and recognize the victims.” (Religion News Service) 🔈 The long-lost recordings of Adolf Eichmann confessing to the Final Solution have resurfaced in a new documentary. On the tapes, Eichmann also revealed that his goal was to murder 10.3 million Jews. Some transcripts from the tapes were available at the time of his 1961 trial, but the court refused to admit them into evidence because the prosecution failed to present the original recordings in their entirety. (Haaretz) ✍️ Ahead of President Joe Biden’s possible visit to Israel this summer, 81 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to stop the Israeli government from its plans to evict some 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank. (Twitter) ⚾ “The Baseball Talmud,” a new book,includes factoids like how many players sat out games scheduled for Yom Kippur and stories about the Yiddish Curver and the Rabbi of Swat. “There is far more to Jewish baseball players than simply Greenberg’s slugging and Koufax’s masterful control,” writes author Howard Megdal, who also promises the “definitive” rankings of Jewish players by position. (Twitter) Shiva call ➤ Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, the founding director of NCSY, the youth group of the Orthodox Union, died at 90. Mazel tov ➤ To us! The Forward has six finalists in the Los Angeles Press Club’s annual awards contest. Contenders include Meghann Cuniff’s deep dive into an allegedly antisemitic attack at a sushi cafe; Louis Keene’s oral history of the greatest summer camp prank ever, analysis of how Israel politics are disrupting online dating, and look at rabbis who stood up for Elliott Brody; Rob Eshman’s column on a tiny home village; and Simi Horwitz’s film criticism. What we’re watching ➤ PBS’s “Great Performances” series debuts “Keeping Company with Sondheim” tonight. The special goes behind the scenes of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, which opened days after the great composer died in November at 91.
Long weekend reads ➤Why Iranians are rushing to see this Israeli musician perform live … How the Nazis drove Porsche’s Jewish cofounder out of the company … Inside the last days of a small-town synagogue.
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In the new edition of our weekend magazine: After the Texas school shooting, our columnist asked: When it comes to gun control, why can’t the U.S. be more like Israel? A non-Jew who recounts the time he was called a “dirty Jew” and how it shook him like no other insult. A look at the expansion of the Jewish Queer Youth group. And how ‘Gefilte Fish’ is a metaphor for once and future trauma. Get your copy now ➤ |
On this day in history: Larry Kramer, the playwright and AIDS activist, died at 84 on May 27, 2020. Often criticized for his bluntness, Kramer was also credited with helping activate the belated political response to the crisis. And he often drew on Jewish metaphors to get its seriousness across, including in his 1989 book “Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist” and his autobiographical play “The Normal Heart.” Benjamin Ivry wrote in the Forward in 2020 that the autobiography was criticized for seeming to partly blame gay people for the pandemic by adopting “the controversial, accusatory approach of philosopher Hannah Arendt, who blamed European Jewry for not protesting in a more visible and systematic way against persecution.” In honor of Henry Kissinger’s 99th birthday, read about his complicated legacy in Jewish matters, and also why he was in the news yesterday. Last year on this day, we reported that hundreds of Amazon employees implored the company to support Palestinians.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 26th of Iyar, the yahrtzeits of two prominent rabbis: Rabbi Saadia Gaon, who died in the year 942, and Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, who died in 1747.
Arriving in theaters today is Tom Cruise’s highly-anticipated sequel to a 1980s classic. Before you see the movie, check out our secret Jewish history of “Top Gun.” |
In our Yiddish “Word of the Day” videos, you can learn how to say numbers, seasons, and the different parts of your face. Today, Yiddish editor Rukhl Schaechter is talking mirrors. Yes, mirrors. ––– “Forwarding” is off on Monday for Memorial Day.
We'll be back in your inbox on Tuesday morning. Thanks to PJ Grisar, Arno Rosenfeld, Amanda Rozon, Eliya Smith and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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