Canadian judge needs proof that Nazism led to murder, Jan 6. witness talks Holocaust denialism, Biden prepped on Torah portion, and a dance-filled trip to the Yidstock music festival. |
Due to rising COVID cases, many Jewish summer camps have decided to cancel visiting day. (Getty) |
‘I don’t think any of us were prepared’: COVID surge pummels Jewish camps Some sleepaway camps sent kids who tested positive home to isolate for a week, wreaking havoc on parental travel plans. Others set up their own quarantine areas, at least one dubbed Camp COVID. A camp in Georgia scrapped a session, and visiting days are going virtual. No bounceback year: After shutdowns in 2020 and strict restrictions on testing, masking and visiting in 2021, this was supposed to be the rebound summer for Jewish camps. Enrollment was back up close to 2019 levels, and counselors were again being allowed to leave the grounds for days off. Camp leaders did not expect the surge of cases due to the highly contagious coronavirus BA.5 variant. Kitchen duty: When nearly the entire 40-person kitchen crew at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires tested positive shortly after opening day, more than 100 parents volunteered to come cook meals. Instead, board members and senior staff filled in. Overall, Ramah has seen about 500 cases across its 11,000 campers and staff nationwide. Virtual visiting day: While many parents are lamenting eight weeks without seeing their children — and many of those children lamenting the loss of care packages filled with cookies and candy — Jordana Horn Gordon is all about the silver lining. Her daughter’s camp had already announced only two visitors per kid, which doesn’t work for her family of eight. “It’ll be really nice to have people be able to come and say hi to their sister from right behind me,” she said. Read the story ➤ |
A group bnei mitzvah for Jewish-American athletes at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. (Joya Creative Ltd.) |
300 Jewish American athletes had bnei mitzvahs in Israel this week:As kids, many of these young adults spent more time on sports than in Hebrew school. But arriving in Israel this week for the Maccabiah Games, one of the world’s largest athletic events outside the Olympics, an opportunity presented itself. “Building Jewish identity,” said the head of the American delegation, “is paramount to what we do.” Read the story ➤ Opinion | He was the spokesperson for a far-right militia group, and quit when they denied the Holocaust:After Jason Van Tatenhove testified this week before the Jan. 6 committee, he spoke with our Rob Eshman about how his Jewish relatives led to his departure from the Oath Keepers — and what has happened since. Van Tatenhove has found connections with people he previously vilified: journalists reporting on hate groups and a federal agent once sent to northern Montana to keep tabs on him. Before his appearance in Congress, he visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where the photographs of Hitler Youth seemed frighteningly familiar. “I saw those same faces, those same eyes of those Nazis,” he explained. “I’ve seen them — but in these patriots, as they call themselves, these militia guys. Like it was the same expressions.” Read our interview ➤ At a Yiddish music festival in bucolic Massachusetts, tradition is everything — and nothing: With its low rooflines designed to mimic the feel of a European shtetl, the Yiddish Book Center is oriented around the preservation of literature and culture once considered at risk of dying out. Yet Yidstock, its annual music festival, is far from championing tradition for tradition’s sake. In its endearing informality and slightly sweaty earnestness, the workshop embodied one of the weekend’s core aims — illuminating the clash between old and new customs that shaped Yiddish culture long before there were festivals commemorating it. Read our dispatch from the event ➤ But wait, there’s more… David Weiss Halivni survived Auschwitz and became a pillar of Talmudic scholarship before dying last month at 94. “He taught us how to learn a page of Talmud,” recalled a student, “but also modeled what it means to be a mensch.”
As the leader of Paris Centre, Mayor Ariel Weil says antisemitism in France is real, but he’s never really had to face it.
On “The Boys,” an Amazon Prime series, America’s superhero obsession births a familiar fascist. |
PRESIDENT BIDEN IN THE MIDEAST |
President Joe Biden met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in the occupied West Bank. (Getty) |
President Biden announced Friday that Saudi Arabia would soon allow direct flights from Israel, a small step toward normalizing relations between the two countries. The news came hours before Biden himself was to make that trip, as he visited an East Jerusalem hospital and Christian holy sites in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “Isn’t it time for this occupation to end?” Abbas asked pointedly after the meeting. He called on Biden to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization from a U.S. list of terrorist groups and reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington that were shuttered by President Trump. “The key to peace and security in our region begins with the recognition of the state of Palestine,” Abbas added. “The opportunity for the two-state solution along the 1967 borders may be available for today only.” But Biden, who had upset many Palestinian activists with his blunt embrace of Zionism as he arrived in Israel on Wednesday, said: “the ground is not ripe at this moment to restart negotiations.” En route to Bethlehem, Biden’s motorcade had passed signs saying “Mr. President, This is Apartheid,” and “Justice for Shireen,” a reference to the Palestinian-American journalist killed in May while covering protests of an Israeli military raid. At the hospital, Biden pledged $100 million for Palestinian hospitals and another $201 million for the agency that supports Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and read a verse from his favorite Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, adding, “It is my prayer that we’re reaching one of those moments where hope and history rhyme.” The White House also announced that Israel had agreed to help roll out 4G mobile-phone service in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank within 18 months. Read the story ➤ |
President Biden at the opening ceremonies of the Maccabiah Games Thursday night. (Getty) |
Opening ceremonies: Biden became the first U.S. president to attend the Maccabiah Games, known as the Jewish Olympics, on Thursday night in Jerusalem. Around 10,000 athletes from 60 countries are participating in the two-week event. “I’m so damn proud,” Biden told the American delegation. Read the story ➤ Torah tidbit: In accepting Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor on Thursday, Biden quoted from a Torah portion, Balak, which he noted “will be read in services across the United States this week.” The subtle distinction is an occasional quirk of the Jewish calendar, when synagogues in Israel read a different Torah portion. “Someone knew to do their research,” commented a former adviser to Israeli prime ministers. Read the story ➤ Unsolved mystery: The Biden administration invited the family of Shireen Abu Akleh, the slain American-Palestinian journalist, to Washington to “determine what exactly happened around the tragic circumstances of her death,” according to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, who said the president wants to make “sure that we find a way to conclude this chapter justly.” And one more: Joe Biden shook hands in Israel despite planning not to. Then a female Orthodox pop star left him hanging.
Here’s our latest coverage of Biden’s trip to Israel.
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt's itinerary this month includes Saudi Arabia, Israel and Argentina. (Getty) |
🛫 Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, is traveling Friday to Argentina to speak at the Latin American Forum to Combat Antisemitism in Buenos Aires. Her visit will coincide with the 28th anniversary of the bombing of a community center there that killed 85 people. Lipstadt, who accompanied President Biden on his visit to Israel, is also slated to visit Chile. (Twitter) 💻 “The Mapping Project,” a website that drew wide outrage for its website labeling hundreds of Jewish nonprofits, companies, individuals and police departments as complicit in “the colonization of Palestine,” uses a web-hosting company in Iceland. The Anti-Defamation League asked Iceland’s foreign minister this week to take down the site. (AP) 🇨🇦 During a trial of a Canadian man accused of promoting hatred against Jews, the judge admonished prosecutors for failing to show how Nazism led to the Holocaust. Jewish groups are now calling on Canada to train judges on antisemitism. “Every Canadian should be appalled,” said Sam Goldstein of B’nai Brith. (Globe and Mail) 👋 Long before Frank Oz brought many Muppets to life, his father, an amateur Dutch puppeteer, made a Hitler marionette as an act of parody and defiance. It will be shown publicly for the first time later this month at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco as part of an exhibit about the senior Oz’s escape from the Nazis. (New York Times) 🎬 Freida Pinto will portray Huma Abedin in the upcoming biopic about Abedin’s life working for Hillary Clinton and public divorce from Anthony Wiener after a sexting scandal. It’s still unclear who will play Wiener. (Deadline) 🥯 Which city has better bagels – New York or Montreal? An event on Monday aims not to settle the argument but to explore the distinctions. “We really wanted to push back against the idea that there’s one great bagel,” said Rebecca Guber, and “embrace the idea that there are many great bagels and they are different and wonderful.” (NY Jewish Week) Shiva call ➤ Mark Fleischman, the nightclub impresario who owned Studio 54, died at 82.
Long weekend reads ➤ Is there a Catskills revival in the works? … In Poland, a return to the scene of an unspeakable crime … Meet the Jewish duo behind Australia’s hottest news service for millennials.
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Don’t forget to print out this week’s edition of our magazine: you’ll find stories about how a Jewish legislator’s 1970 vote legalized abortion in New York; a Conservative rabbi raised without Judaism is now leading five communities through war in Ukraine; an ode to the perfect mezuzah and much more. Get your copy here ➤ |
On this day in history (1965): Leonard Bernstein took the stage at New York’s Lincoln Center to premiere “The Chichester Psalms,” one of his most revered classical works. Bernstein composed the music based on the Book of Psalms, excerpts of which are included in the original Hebrew. Describing the piece, Bernstein wrote in a letter to the Rev. Walter Hussey, dean of Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, that the psalms were “popular in feeling,” with “an old-fashioned sweetness along with its more violent moments.” Read how Leonard Bernstein embraced his Jewishness ➤ Last year on this day, we reported that three Jewish filmmakers were arrested in Nigeria, accused of working with rebels. They were imprisoned for 20 days and then released. On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the yahrtzeit of Chur, the son of Miriam, who died while attempting to dissuade the Israelites from building the golden calf. In honor of National Give Something Away Day, consider gifting a Forward subscription to a friend. |
In a new Holocaust film, “My Name is Sara,” a Jewish girl poses as a gentile and works as a nanny for a Ukrainian farmer and his wife. “The film is sharp at illustrating how Sara is never totally safe,” reads a review in The New York Times, “and how survival requires improvising again and again.” The film is showing in select cities, and you can watch the trailer above. ––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle Thanks to Jordan Greene, Jacob Kornbluh, Jodi Rudoren and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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