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WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: House Republicans release report on campus antisemitism; embattled president of PEN America resigns after year of tensions over war; and questions over antisemitic texts published by the father of Ta-Nehisi Coates.

ELECTION 2024

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Image / Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Harris and Trump court Jews and Arab Americans in the campaign’s homestretch. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are engaged in “last-ditch efforts to win over Jewish and Arab American voters — a tricky proposition since the constituencies, both of which have traditionally favored Democrats, tend to take disparate views of the Israel-Hamas war,” writes our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh. “I think most Jewish Americans and Arab Americans recognize that what’s in the best interest of Israel and Palestine is peace,” said Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, at a Detroit rally this week, “and Donald J. Trump is the president of peace.” Read the story ►

Plus:

A 1936 essay by a Jewish philosopher anticipated the cult of Trump, writes our culture columnist Robert Zaretsky.

How Jewish security organizations are preparing for an election — and its aftermath — expected to be marked by conspiracy theories, threats against vulnerable groups and even violence.

The Florida Democratic Party’s Jewish chairwoman “told Jewish canvassers in her state that the party was losing Jewish voters because of the robust Republican response to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.”

“Israelis prefer Trump over Harris. In the face of uncertainty, Netanyahu is hedging his bets.”

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Michigan on Oct. 18. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Entering the final weekend before the election, two op-eds examine the candidates’ approach to issues in the Middle East:

Opinion | I have a loved one among the Gaza hostages. Kamala Harris is the candidate I trust to save them: Harris “recognizes that the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict predating Oct. 7 was not sustainable” and has been active in helping with the diplomatic efforts to prevent Hamas from returning to power, and to “put the Palestinian people on a path to self-determination,” writes Alana Zeitchik, who had six family members taken captive on Oct. 7. “Trump, on the other hand, is as likely to abandon diplomatic efforts based on what he deems personally advantageous that day — or based on who did a better job flattering him.” Read her essay ►

Opinion | No, Trump did not bring peace to the Middle East: His signature achievement, the Abraham Accords, “sidelined the Palestinians” and failed to address “the core of the conflict,” writes Dalia Dassa Kaye, a political scientist, who adds, “Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s transactional approach to diplomacy committed the United States to pay a high price for these deals — in the currency of arms sales and bilateral political compromises with authoritarian rulers.” Read her essay ►

ISRAEL AT WAR

Northwestern University president Michael Schill at a hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in May. (Getty Images)

‘They need the patience’: Texts show tension between sympathetic university officials and students protesting Gaza war. House Republicans collected more than 400,000 pages of documents “from Northwestern, Columbia, Rutgers and UCLA as part of a months-long investigation into campus antisemitism,” writes our reporter Arno Rosenfeld. On Thursday, the result — “a 122-page report by the House Education Committee that called for ‘a fundamental reassessment of federal support for post-secondary institutions’” — showed how even campus administrators sympathetic to voices on either side found trying “to balance the concerns of students outraged over Israel’s actions in Gaza and Jewish stakeholders” a baffling muddle. Read the story ►

And…

Two Iranian officials threatened retaliation after Israel struck Iranian targets, including air defenses, last weekend; the leader of the IDF rejoined that if Iran launches another attack, Israel will respond in kind, and hit “the places that we spared this time.” (New York Times, Times of Israel)

An Israeli couple from Lod were arrested Thursday on charges that they had spied for Iran, the latest in a wave of arrests of Israelis suspected of providing intelligence to Tehran. (Times of Israel)

Hezbollah strikes killed seven civilians in Israel yesterday, bringing the total number of Israeli civilians killed in conflict with Hezbollah since Oct. 7 to 39. (JTA)

Multiple Israeli ministries said they would no longer advertise in or share announcements with the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz after its Israeli publisher referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime.” (Times of Israel)

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Reuven Kasten, left, at the gravesite of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. (Courtesy of Leviimart.com)

Did the spirit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe swing the World Series for the Dodgers?“As the Los Angeles Dodgers mounted an improbable, at-times bewildering comeback against the Yankees in Wednesday’s Game 5, sealing a World Series victory over their famous rivals, Fox broadcaster Joe Davis wondered aloud whether the ‘baseball gods’ were tilting the scales,” writes our reporter Louis Keene. “A competing theory — of comparable seriousness, we think — emerged on Thursday: The son of the Dodgers team president had prayed at the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave.”

For ‘Ragtime’ star Brandon Uranowitz, to be Jewish is to be hopeful. A new revival of Ragtime, a musical about the hopes and pitfalls of the immigrant experience in the United States, comes “at a fraught moment in American politics,” writes our editorial intern Samuel Eli Shepherd: “The play’s themes of xenophobia and factionalism feel especially pointed with a national election just one week away.” One of its Jewish stars first appeared in it as a preteen: “I’m just kind of struck that a piece written when I was an actual child still is so unbelievably prescient,” he said.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Outgoing PEN America president Suzanne Nossel speaks during the 2024 PEN America Spring Literary Gala at American Museum of Natural History. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for PEN America)

👀 Suzanne Nossel, the president of PEN America, resigned; the organization’s response to the Israel-Hamas war had come under intense criticism that led to the cancellation, six months ago, of its annual book awards. Nossel will become the president and CEO of Freedom House in January. (New York Times)

😧 A prominent Manhattan synagogue determined a sexual assault allegation against its former rabbi was credible, and removed the name of the late Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer from its rabbinical training program. (New York Jewish Week)

🏫 The new president of Chicago’s school board resigned after backlash over antisemitic social media posts; Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson’s post history included the claim that “the Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews.” (JTA)

🫤 Author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father, William Paul Coates, is set to receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation next week. But his press has a history of publishing antisemitic and homophobic material. (ARC)

What else we’re reading ► “What it means to make art about Nazis now” … “Hezbollah’s losses have led some in Lebanon to imagine a future without it” … Understanding the art-historical significance of the relationship between “the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he said that he understood in advance that his new book The Message, which has generated controversy over its representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would be seen as “a punch that was thrown.”

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Julie Moos for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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