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Unilever splits Ben & Jerry's from other brands, MTV and CBS to air Holocaust specials, Yiddish book teaches Hasidic kids about sexuality, and Jewish couple launches movie studio in space.
FROM THE FORWARD Skating to ‘Schindler’s List,’ American Jason Brown to make second trip to Winter Olympics:Brown, who is 27 and Jewish, won a bronze in Sochi in 2014 but failed to make the 2018 Games, so Beijing is a chance at redemption. Over the past few years, he has sustained an injury, switched coaches, come out as gay and taken what he described as a life-changing trip to Israel and Yad Vashem. “‘Schindler’s List’ is a piece of music that I wanted to skate to for so many years, but never felt like I was mature enough to skate to it the way that I envisioned I one day could,” he said. “To be able to do it on the Olympic stage is a huge honor.”Read the story ➤
In new documentary, Israeli Jewish filmmakers explore the Nakba: One week after Israel declared independence in 1948, its military engaged in a battle that killed some 200 Arabs in the fishing village of Tantura. The details of this massacre, like many parts of what Palestinians call the Nakba – catastrophe – have long been disputed. A new documentary, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week, mixes historic audio testimony from soldiers and survivors of the village with contemporary interviews. “It’s pretty obvious that things happen that we are not proud of as a nation,” Alon Schwarz, the film’s director, said in an interview. “The best way to go forward is to expose the wrongdoings.” Read the story ➤
More than 500 paintings looted by the Nazis, and a family’s lifelong quest for justice and restitution: The heirs of Jules Strauss stood to inherit works by Degas, Monet and Pissarro before the Nazis seized his collection. The story of this lost art, and the effort to recover it, is the subject of “The Vanished Collection,” a book by a great-granddaughter of Strauss, Pauline Baer de Perignon. Art journalist Michelle Young interviewed de Perignon at Sotheby’s, where one of her family’s paintings, “The Portrait of the Lady Pomona,” is on view ahead of its auction on Thursday. De Perignon came to New York from Paris, she told Young, “to follow my lady Pomona and then I will say goodbye.” Read the story ➤
NYC’s highest ranking Jewish official vows to lead on antisemitism: “I find a lot of the values that undergird my progressive politics are very rooted in Jewish history and values,” Comptroller Brad Lander said in an interview with the Forward. He hopes to find more effective ways to confront hate crimes, he added, describing himself “as somebody who wears my Judaism on my feet and who cares deeply about this being a city in which Jews can thrive.” Read the story ➤
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🍦 Unilever is separating Ben & Jerry’s into a new ice-cream unit as part of a company overhaul. At least five states have moved to divest holdings from Unilever in the wake of Ben & Jerry’s decision last year to pull its ice cream from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and there have been other boycotts and public relations headaches. Over the weekend, news broke that Nelson Peltz, a Jewish billionaire, was acquiring a stake in Unilever. The company also plans to move its other ice cream brands, Breyers and Klondike, into the unit, one of five new category-focused divisions along with nutrition, beauty, personal care and home care. (Wall Street Journal)
📺 Julianna Margulies will host two specials on MTV and CBS in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “As we recently witnessed the harrowing hostage crisis at a Texas synagogue, violence against the Jewish community is reaching record highs,” said Chris McCarthy, CEO of the two networks. “This is why it is imperative for us to learn from the horrors of the Holocaust, use our platforms to showcase the stories of survival and lock arms with those bravely fighting antisemitism and hatred in all of its forms.” The programs air tonight through Monday. (Deadline)
💰 Israel is offering $158,000 to each of the families of the 45 people who died during a stampede on Mount Meron last Lag B’omer. New safety measures are being taken before the next event, in May. (Reuters)
📚 The library of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be auctioned on Thursday – and it includes more than 30 books about Jewish topics. Among them are “Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy,” inscribed by Leah Rabin after her husband’s assassination; “It Takes a Dream: The Story of Hadassah;” and “Jewish Legal Writings by Women.” (JTA)
🖼️ Stuart Eizenstat, a diplomat and lawyer, has advised five U.S. presidents on restitution for Holocaust survivors. Now he’s on the other side of the equation, representing a family friend who’s being sued by a Jewish family to return a piece of art looted by the Nazis. (New York Times)
🚀 A Jewish couple is launching a film and TV studio in space – and one of their first movies is starring Tom Cruise. It’s “an incredible opportunity for humanity to move into a different realm and start an exciting new chapter,” they said. (The Hollywood Reporter, The Verge)
🐠 Scientists have concluded that a 4-foot, 40-pound fish that has been living at the California Academy of Sciences since 1938 is the oldest living aquarium fish in the world. She was brought over from Australia, is now around 90 and is named Methuselah, after Noah’s grandfather who, according to the Bible, lived to be 969 years old. (AP)
What else we’re reading ➤ Two more men were arrested this morning in England in connection to the hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue.… Israel to plant 450,000 trees in cities in an effort to counter effects of climate change … Looking to apply for a fellowship that teaches about the role of technology in the rise of the Third Reich? Here you go. FROM OUR ARCHIVES As we approach our 125th anniversary in April, we remember Forward workers like Louis Eliezer Katz, the paper’s last Yiddish typesetter, seen here in 1969. Ever adaptable, he helped with our shift to digital, and retired in 2013.
A Holocaust survivor, Katz was one of the few people that Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer trusted to convert his handwritten copy into type. “Peering at the photo brought memories of working alongside him, sure, but also of the changing face of the news industry,” said our archivist, Chana Pollack. “Of trying to be heard above the mechanical press noises and of the deadline panic when text was a lot harder to swap.”
Equally important, she said, is Katz’s immigrant story – highlights of which she has strung together, via geo-tagged photographs, as part of the Forward’s partnership with the app and website Urban Archive. “His early days in the city were spent mapping out a life as a union member, a Holocaust survivor and a Yiddish speaker,” she noted. “And now, we can literally walk in those footsteps, something I find just spellbinding.”
ON THE CALENDAR Hans Holzer (left) and Paul Newman. On this day in history: Hans Holzer, an expert in paranormal activity, was born in Austria on Jan. 26, 1920. Holzer’s family fled the Nazi regime in 1938 and relocated to New York. He wrote more than 100 books about the afterlife and hosted a television show called “Ghost Hunter.” Holzer had a particular interest in haunted houses, and made a name for himself investigating “The Amityville Horror” house on Long Island. He died in 2009, leaving behind his two daughters with Countess Catherine Genevieve Buxhoeveden, a sixth-generation descendant of Catherine the Great. As far as we know, he has not returned from the other side.
In honor of Paul Newman’s birthday, read the story of how he once directed a cinematic masterpiece in a Yiddish theater.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 24 of Shevat, when the biblical prophet Zechariah predicted the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.
VIDEO OF THE DAY From my colleague Mira Fox: Orthodox Jews in popular culture are often portrayed as dour and drab — especially the women. They’re modest, which means they can’t be beautiful, right? Wrong. Batsheva Dueck, an Orthodox fashion blogger, introduces us to the distinct fashion personalities in each of New York’s major Jewish neighborhoods and talks about the meaning of modesty for stylish women who still cover their knees and collarbones. In Dueck’s tour of trend-setting Flatbush and hipster Crown Heights, there’s scarcely a lumpy black skirt to be seen.
––– Thanks to Mira Fox, PJ Grisar, Louis Keene, Jacob Kornbluh and Chana Pollack for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].
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