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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: Hamas and Israel can’t agree at ceasefire talks, Harvard expands kosher dining options, Burning Man to honor victims of Nova music festival, how the Beatles interrupted the career of an up-and-coming comedian, and the secret Jewish history of Costco.

OUR LEAD STORY

Ziporah Janowski joined Generations Forward, a group that helps descendants of survivors excavate their families’ trauma — and their own — for the public good. (Matthew Litman)

As Holocaust survivors die, their descendants are finding new ways to keep their stories alive

What happens when there are no longer Holocaust survivors to share their first-person testimony?

Zoom in: The children and grandchildren of survivors are now being invited to speak at synagogues, public schools and community centers as part of a broader movement aimed at ensuring that Holocaust education and testimony continues while the number of survivors rapidly dwindles.

Go deeper: But what does it mean for descendants of survivors to excavate their families’ trauma — and their own — for the public good? Can you really testify to the world’s greatest horror if you didn’t live through it?

ON CAMPUS

People walk a picket line in May on the Manhattan campus of The New School. (Getty)

It’s the first day of classes at many universities across the nation…

Vanderbilt is requiring all first-year students to attend meetings about the university’s approach to free speech. It is one of many tactics administrators are using to ward off the protests that rocked campuses in the spring.

NYU issued new hate speech guidelines discouraging students from targeting Zionists.

Harvard is expanding its kosher dining options for undergraduates this fall. The move is “one of the preliminary recommendations released by the presidential task force on antisemitism.”

The Oklahoma state superintendent ordered all public schools to teach the Bible, beginning this fall. But as school gets underway, there’s few signs that’s actually happening.

READERS LIKE YOU SHAPE EVERY PART OF OUR WORK

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ISRAEL AT WAR

British Airways joined other airlines in canceling flights to and from Israel. (Getty)

The latest…

Neither Hamas nor Israel agreed to compromises reached Sunday at ceasefire-for-hostage talks in Cairo.

Both Israel and the U.S. are using “ground-penetrating radar” to hunt for Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, who they believe is hiding in hundreds of miles of tunnels.

Israel on Sunday thwarted a Hezbollah attack by destroying dozens of rocket launchers in Lebanon aimed at Tel Aviv.

The family of Agam Berger, a hostage held in Gaza, celebrated his 20th birthday this weekend.

Air France, British Airways and other airlines canceled more flights to and from Israel.

This year’s Burning Man, which began on Sunday in the Nevada desert, features an art installation and other tributes to the victims of the Nova music festival, where nearly 400 people were killed by Hamas on Oct. 7.

POLITICS

Then-President Donald Trump in May 2017 at Yad Vashem, where he originally wanted to announce moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusaelm. (Getty)

News and notes…

Former President Donald Trump said in December 2017 that he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He had originally planned to make the announcement months earlier at Yad Vashem, a new book reveals.

JD Vance’s later-in-life conversion to Catholicism has influenced his political philosophy.

Meet Dr. Howard Krein, President Biden’s Jewish son-in-law.

At last week’s Democratic National Convention, shouts and signs were all for “Kamala.” “Let’s embrace first names for all politicians, and clergy and other professionals,” writes our editor-in-chief, Jodi, “as a way to make our politics and our synagogues and our workplaces a little more human.”

Watch: How are Jewish Democrats feeling about the Harris-Walz ticket?

– From our Sponsors: Hadar–

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Robert Downey Jr., circa 1989. (Getty)

This was Robert Downey Jr.’s most Jewish (or at least most Talmudic) movie:Before Oppenheimer and this year’s Emmy-nominated The Sympathizer, the acclaimed actor wrestled with rabbinical dilemmas in 1989’s Chances Are. He stars as a man who is killed while his wife is pregnant with their daughter. Despite the sad tidings, this is a supernatural romantic comedy, complete with heavenly angels and Torah wisdom.

A reader asks: “I’m trans, frum, anti-Zionist and lonely. Should I stop trying to fit in where I’m not wanted?” Our Bintel Brief column offers some advice.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

French police officers walk past firefighters following a fire and explosion of cars at a synagogue on Saturday in the south of France. (Getty)

🔥 Police arrested a man in France after a synagogue was set on fire early Saturday morning, injuring a police officer, marking at least the second arson attack on a French synagogue in recent months. (JTA, AP)

📚 An event at a Brooklyn bookstore that was canceled because an employee objected to its “Zionist” moderator has been rescheduled for tonight at a different location. “Without being made to traverse the rocky terrain of civil discourse, we lose strength, atrophy and weaken as a society,” wrote the moderator, Rabbi Andy Bachman, in an essay about the experience. (NY Jewish Week, JTA)

🗃️ Archivists at the Anti-Defamation League are sifting through 13,000 boxes dating back to the group’s founding in 1913 to chronicle how hate and the fight against it has evolved in the 111 years since. Once done, the database will be available to the public. (NY Jewish Week)

Mazel tov ➤ To Beth Harpaz, the prolific editor of this newsletter, whose one-act play won best script, best director and best actor after eight performances with 21 other plays at a festival competition in New York City. She’s already at work on her next play.

Shiva call ➤ Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill were a married comedic duo who had the bad luck of performing on the same episode of The Ed Sullivan Show that featured the first appearance of the Beatles. Nobody remembered their set, but their career eventually recovered. Mitzi died at 93.

What else we’re reading ➤ Talking Talmud with Colorado’s Jewish attorney general … Comedian Alex Edelman on how the Jewish laws of mourning helped him recover after his collaborator died … Did you know Costco was founded by the son of socialist Jewish garment workers from Minsk?

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Between Two Temples, a new movie about a depressed cantor and the late-in-life bat mitzvah pupil who gets him out of his funk, debuted in theaters this weekend. Watch stars Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane talk about the comedy on the Today show in the video above.

Is the movie good? Our reviewer calls the film earnest and sweet, and Jason Schwartzman the “Ashkenazic prince of melancholy.”

How did they pull it off? The filmmakers hired a real-life rabbi and a b’nai mitzvah tutor to help with the production.

Thanks to PJ Grisar and Jacob Kornbluh 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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