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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Hostage deal teetering in Qatar after U.N. resolution, how the war could disrupt the Summer Olympics, historic Brooklyn synagogue set for demolition, Spielberg’s warning to college campuses, N.Y. public library digitized 800 years of Jewish history, and remembering Bert Pogrebin.

ISRAEL AT WAR

Haredi Jews visit Israeli soldiers to show their support as they deploy at a position near the border with Gaza on Oct. 11. (Getty)

Haredi ‘lost boys’ may find themselves drafted into Israel’s army

In libraries throughout Jerusalem, where access to Wi-Fi is readily available, you might spot yeshiva students streaming music from Tupac Shakur or reading about evolution. They are part of a group known as the “lost boys” who make up between 15% and 40% of the estimated 66,000 Haredi Jewish men of draft age.

The exemption: “Haredi communities worldwide expect their young, unmarried men to devote themselves to rigorous Torah learning and a pious way of life that typically precludes, among other things, gangsta rap and Darwinism,” reports our Susan Greene in Jerusalem. “But the public policy stakes are higher in Israel, where studying at a yeshiva at least 45 hours a week — or claiming that you’re doing so — is subsidized by the government and exempts a young Haredi man from mandatory military service.”

Expiration imminent: The loophole, which dates to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948, now threatens to unravel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. With the exemption set to expire this Sunday, many Israelis — some within the Haredi community included — want the government to start recruiting the young men who, like those at the libraries, are falling short of the law’s expectations.

Israel’s Gilad Erdan at a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday for a vote on a ceasefire in Gaza. (Getty)

U.N. ceasefire resolution…

In first, U.S. withholds its veto and abstains from U.N. ceasefire resolution: Tensions between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intensified Monday after the U.S., which has consistently vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, abstained instead. After the vote, Netanyahu canceled the planned visit of a high-ranking Israel delegation for talks with the White House over an impending military operation in Rafah. Our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, writes that it marks “the most serious breach between the two countries since the war’s onset.” Read the story ➤

Opinion | U.N. ceasefire resolution is a signal, not a sanction, for Israel: “Israel is acting like it’s trying to win an argument, not hearts and minds. And it is losing the heart of the one person in the world it needs most of all: Biden,” argues Dan Perry, the author of two books about Israel. He adds: “That is why more painful forms of pressure may follow, until Netanyahu cries Uncle Joe.” Read his essay ➤

And: Israel is recalling some of its negotiating team from Qatar after Hamas rejected its latest offer in talks for a hostage deal and truce. Netanyahu blamed “the damage caused by the U.N. Security Council resolution.”

Former President Donald Trump has been critical of President Biden, and of Israel. (Getty)

Plus…

Former President Donald Trump blamed President Biden for the Hamas attack in an interview with an Israeli newspaper. Hamas “would have never done that attack if I were there” Trump said, adding that Biden is “a very dumb person.”

Two Israelis who were invited to England to share their experiences at the Oct. 7 Nova rave massacre were detained for two hours at Manchester Airport, and told “you’re not going to do what you’re doing in Gaza over here.”

Here’s how the Israel-Hamas war could disrupt the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

An ex-Shin Bet agent, right, attempts to buy someone off in basically every episode. (Courtesy)

A new TV thriller exposes the Israeli power broker no one talks about: East Side, a new Israeli TV show filmed before the war began, feels a lot like Fauda — its hero is also an at-best-amoral ex-spy using manipulation and questionable tactics. It’s fast-paced and there’s a lot of guns and shadowy characters. But instead of the West Bank, the show focuses on East Jerusalem, where right-wing Jewish groups are trying to buy Palestinian homes. When they try to buy property belonging to the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, the intrigue really begins. The church’s congregation is almost entirely Palestinian, but the patriarch needs the Israeli government’s approval to operate — and that gives our shadowy middleman some leverage.

The home of B’nai Adath Kol Beth Yisrael, a Hebrew Israelite congregation in Brooklyn that has been vacant since suffering a fire in 2017, was estimated to cost millions of dollars to repair. (Susan Zinder)

Plus…

A demolition crew on Monday prepared to tear down a historic synagogue in Brooklyn, home to Hebrew Israelites for half a century.

A Russian court ordered Evan Gershkovich, a Jewish reporter at the Wall Street Journal imprisoned for a year, to remain in jail on espionage charges until at least June. Friends and colleagues have recently organized a swim, a run and a read-a-thon to help bring attention to Evan’s plight.

The “Frozen Chosen” has a starting goalie. Boston Bruins all-star goaltender Jeremy Swayman, whose Jewish heritage was previously only rumored, confirmed in a video message to a fan celebrating their bar mitzvah that he, too, had celebrated his bar mitzvah growing up in Alaska.

And speaking of hockey players, a hearty mazel tov to Zach Hyman of the Edmonton Oilers who on Sunday scored his 50th goal of the season. Watch the shot here.

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A photo of a business selling Rosh Hashanah cards on the Lower East Side in 1936 and a photo of the Eldridge Street Synagogue taken in 1930 are both part of a new online database. (Percy Loomis Sperr)

💻 The New York Public Library has digitized 800 years of Jewish history. The collection includes the very first Sunday edition, in 1897, of the Forward, matchbooks from old Jewish businesses and photographs of the Lower East Side from more than 100 years ago. (NY Jewish Week)

💻 A judge in California on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk against a nonprofit group that has chronicled antisemitism and other forms of hate speech on Musk’s social media platform. (Guardian)

🖼️ A judge in New York ordered Sotheby’s to reveal its auction clients in the sale of a piece of Nazi-looted art. (New York Times)

🎤 While he was being honored Monday for his Holocaust remembrance work at the University of Southern California, Steven Spielberg warned that “the machinery of extremism is being used on college campuses.” (JTA)

📉 More than half of Americans say they seldom or never attend religious services, according to new data from Gallup. Less than a third say they attend on a weekly or almost weekly basis. (Religion News Service)

🕍 The federal spending bill passed over the weekend to keep the government open included $1 million to develop a curriculum for elementary and high schools on preventing antisemitism and other hate. The money will go to Tree of Life Inc., a group born out of the 2018 massacre at a Pittsburgh shul. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Shiva call ➤ Bert Pogrebin, who served as the Forward’s labor lawyer for more than two decades and founded a network of 18 justice centers across the U.S. and Mexico, died at 89. He was the father of Abby Pogrebin, a Forward contributor and member of the Forward Association, and husband of the feminist activist and author Letty Cottin Pogrebin, whose work has also appeared in our pages.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Police in Atlanta are investigating after a rock was thrown through a window at a Chabad center in the metro area. The incident occurred last week, and the local news interviewed Rabbi Avremi Slavaticki on Purim, while he was in full costume.

Thanks to Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Mira Fox, Susan Greene, Samuel Norich and Jodi Rudoren 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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