How one vintage watch has made cantors’ lives easier for more than 50 years The watch beloved by Buzz Aldrin, Elvis and your cantor: For decades, the Bulova Accutron, a cult favorite that stopped production in 1972, has allowed Jewish prayer leaders to stay on pitch and skirt a Shabbat prohibition on tuning forks. Pitch perfect: Unlike other watches, the Accutron contains a miniature tuning fork as a timekeeping element. Set to 360 hertz, which regulates the sweep of the second hand, the watch doesn’t tick; it hums with a steady continuous sound. This is such a distinctive feature that even though Bulova stopped producing the Accutron a half century ago, the company used the tuning fork as its logo until very recently. Ringing endorsement: “It’s a slightly flat F sharp,” said Cantor Gideon Zelermyer, who works at a synagogue in Montreal. “If you know your theory, once you have one note on the scale, you can find any other.” Kosher cosmos: Because Accutron’s tuning fork could work in a low-gravity environment, it played an integral role in the space race, with NASA using the timepieces on 46 missions. Cantors covet the discontinued watch because there is some debate as to whether a tuning fork is allowed on Shabbat. Yechezkel Klang, a cantorial teacher in Israel, created a side business buying and selling them on eBay, where they go for thousands of dollars. Read the story ➤ |
Was Judy Garland too Jewish for show business? Today would’ve been her 100th birthday, and although she was born Episcopalian, Garland’s associations and collaborations with Jewish artists is the stuff of legend. She even recorded a Yiddish song, and earned an Oscar nomination for her role in an Holocaust drama. Our culture critic, Benjamin Ivry, takes a closer look. Read the story ➤ Opinion | 55 years ago, I was rallying for Israel. Now I worry for its future: As a teenager, Jonathan Jacoby attended an event at the Hollywood Bowl after the 1967 War, along with luminaries including Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan. Jacoby spent decades advocating for the Jewish state and for equality and justice, but now he feels that, “by moving away from the principles on which it was founded, Israel is exposing itself to opposition from liberals and progressives who have always supported it.” Read his essay ➤ But wait, there’s more… |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Type in what you want to see in the painting, and the artificial intelligence software takes care of the rest. (Noam Zur) |
🥑 An artificial intelligence machine has been trained to make paintings featuring avocados practicing Judaism. Picture a parent and child lighting Shabbat candles together and you get the idea. (Jewish Standard) 📘 Sifting through 176 boxes, an archivist unearthed a treasure trove of new content by Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winning author and former Forward writer. The result is a new book, a collection of 19 essays, most of them previously unpublished in English. (Times of Israel) ✝️ The chairman of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial met on Thursday with Pope Francis. The first-of-its-kind meeting took place as a new book shines a light on Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust. (JTA, Forward) 😮 The Hasidic leader of a polygamous cult was found dead in his prison cell Friday morning in Israel. He was serving a 26-year sentence on 18 charges, including sexual offenses, abuse of minors, incarceration and sadistic violence. (Jerusalem Post) 🪄 A Disney-loving couple who brought Mickey and Minnie Mouse to their wedding instead of paying for catering has inspired an unexpected viral discussion online — about religion. Jodi Eichler-Levine, a religion studies professor, tweeted about parallels between Judaism and passionate Disney fans. “Religion is a way of making meaning in the world through stories and rituals,” she said. (JTA) 🤦 Headline of the Day Award: Election-denier who tweeted weird things about Jews nominated by GOP. (Vice) Shiva calls ➤ Fred Manasse, a Boston physicist, sculptor and voice for fellow Holocaust survivors, died at 86 … Thomas O’Dwyer, a longtime Middle East correspondent and Haaretz columnist, died at 79 … Ranan Lurie, an Israeli war hero who set records as the world’s most widely syndicated political cartoonist, died at 90.
Long weekend reads ➤ How Jared Kushner washed his hands of President Donald Trump before Jan. 6 … Rube Goldberg, the man behind the machine, ruminates on his career as an inventor in a 1923 Popular Science article … Inside the fierce battle over America’s oldest synagogue.
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In this week’s edition of our print magazine: Beth Harpaz wrote a moving (and funny) essay about her dad, who stormed Normandy and fought the Nazis; Mira Fox interviewed the kosher-keeping winner of “The Great Australian Bake Off”; Rob Eshman explored how payments to Holocaust survivors could serve as a guide for Black Americans seeking reparations; and PJ Grisar spoke with the author of a new book about Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Shoah. |
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, speaks to Holocaust survivors at St. James’s Palace in 2005. (Getty) |
On this day in history: Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband and the longest-serving royal consort in history, was born on June 10, 1921. As a boy of 12, Philip witnessed antisemitic bullies hold down a Jewish schoolmate and shave his head at school; he gave the boy a cricket cap to cover his head. The prince later called this “a small and insignificant incident” that “taught me a very important lesson about man’s capacity for inhumanity.” During World War II, as part of the British Royal Navy, Philip fought the Nazis. And in 1994, he became the first member of the royal family to visit Israel, when Yad Vashem honored his late mother, Princess Alice of Greece, as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews during the Holocaust. (She is buried in Jerusalem.) After Philip’s death in April 2021, the Queen spent 30 days in official mourning, recalling the Jewish custom of shloshim. Related: How Jewish songwriters wrote the love theme for Philip and Elizabeth On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 11th of Sivan, the wedding anniversary of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson and Rebbetzin Chana Yanovsky. They were the parents of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Last year on this day, we reported that Israel became the first nation in the world to ban the import and sale of animal furs. It made an exception for shtreimels.
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Rukhl Schaechter, our Yiddish editor, has produced more than 130 “Yiddish Word of the Day” videos. Now comes Mayim Bialik, the actress, neuroscientist, “Jeopardy!” host and Yiddish enthusiast. In the video above, posted to Bialik’s Instagram page on Thursday, she defines “Ferschimmelt” as when a fruit is dry and mealy, and goes out of her way to say it doesn’t mean moldy. But Rukhl disagrees. “It really does mean moldy,” she emailed overnight. Perhaps Mayim and Rukhl should hash it out in a joint video. ––– Thanks to Laura E. Adkins, Nora Berman, PJ Grisar, Rudy Malcom, Rukhl Schaechter, Eliya Smith and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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