Netflix drama spotlights Sephardic Jews, the midrash on the multiverse, the secret Jewish history of Doris Day, Friday the 13th, a Mormon 'Fiddler on the Roof,' and revealing this year's Hanukkah stamp. I'll be off next week. Expect your morning news from my colleague Talya Zax, who will be filling in on the Forwarding desk. |
| Gloria Kaplan filled out paperwork for compensation for three homes lost during the Holocaust. She never heard back. |
Holocaust survivors filled out nearly 200,000 claims for restitution. Then they heard nothing. In 2011, Israel launched Project HEART, an ambitious program to compensate survivors and their heirs for property lost during the Holocaust. Over the next three years it collected nearly 200,000 claims for about 2 million pieces of property. And then: nothing happened. What the survivors and their families did not know — and what thousands of other claimants are still likely unaware of — is that Project HEART quietly stopped collecting applications in 2014. And never paid any of the claims. Holocaust heist: Families who invested hours and sometimes far more time gathering deeds for their lost homes, records of insurance policies, and photos of their stolen Judaica, art, jewelry and other valuables, did not hear back from Project HEART, an acronym for Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Task Force. “The records compiled in the Project HEART database serve as uncontroverted proof that the Holocaust was not only the greatest murder ever committed, but the greatest robbery in history,” Natan Sharansky said at the time of the group’s inception. A noble mission: The better-known Claims Conference brokers agreements with countries to compensate victims “and then see if anyone qualified,” said Project HEART’s former director, Bobby Brown. “We decided for the first time that we would go from the bottom up — collect claims and then confront countries and companies and ask them to compensate.” A second chance? A former employee of Project HEART said that all the documents were sent to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, but a spokesperson there said it does not have the paperwork. Now an Israeli nonprofit has filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court seeking to compel the government to restart the project or turn over the files to those who will carry on the work. Read the story ➤ |
A flyer shows Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who was killed this week. (Getty) |
Opinion | American Jews must demand the truth about this week’s killing of a Palestinian journalist in the West Bank:Shireen Abu Akleh was fatally shot while doing her job – covering Palestinian protests of an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp.Now, advocates on both sides of the conflict are sure the bullet was fired by the other side. Our Rob Eshman calls for a full and fair investigation. “No matter the tragedy, we see the same responses,” he writes. “An investigation that exonerates Israel,” Eshman adds, “could only help the country’s international standing, differentiating it from Putin’s Russia or Mexico, where journalists work with targets on their backs.” Read his column ➤ Did Jewish theologians predict Doctor Strange’s alternate realities?Roy Schwartz, author of “Is Superman Circumcised?,” looks at what the multiverse of Midrash has to say about Marvel’s latest box office hit. Is there “an alternate universe in which Eve never ate the fruit?” he asks. “Or Moses was never found by pharaoh’s daughter Bithiah, or Hitler died in his crib, or Mel Brooks isn’t funny?”Read the story ➤ How should Jews respond to new data showing 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021? Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman, a Chabad emissary in Atlanta who founded a support group for those in recovery and their loved ones, said “there’s no magic thing that everyone’s going to start doing to solve the problem.” But our communities can foster a culture of healing, he said, by “helping people live more deeply and more fully and being there for each other.” Read the story ➤
More than 100 Jews of color gathered for Shabbat. For many, it was the first time they felt like they belonged: “There was a moment during services,” said Heather Miller, “where I looked around, just soaking in the fact that many of us are usually the only ones or one of a few in Jewish spaces. Here we were all sitting, praying, enjoying space and community. It was like, wow, this is what it must be like for everyone else.” Read the story ➤
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Deborah Lipstadt during her Senate confirmation hearing in February. (Washington Post via Getty) |
🇺🇸 Amb. Deborah Lipstadt gave her first public speech since being sworn in as antisemitism envoy. “Too many people, organizations and institutions do not take antisemitism seriously,” she said at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “They fail to include it in their litany of legitimate prejudices. They wonder, 'What is it that Jews are complaining about? After all, they’re powerful. They have no reason to complain.’” (JTA) 🇮🇱 With funding from a hedge fund billionaire, a new group is aiming to be a New York version of AIPAC and funnel money to stridently pro-Israel candidates in the state. “You put three Jews in a room,” said Liz Krueger, a state senator from Manhattan, “and you get four or five organizations, because none of them can get along.” (New York Times) 🖼️ The Guggenheim in New York and the National Gallery of London have become the latest museums to remove from its buildings the name of the Sackler family, the billionaire philanthropists whose fortune was made selling OxyContin, the drug at the center of the opioid crisis. Tel Aviv University, meanwhile, has decided to keep its Sackler School of Medicine for now. (New York Times) 📺 A new Netflix series, “Heirs to the Land,” takes a deep dive into life as a Jew in Spain during the Inquisition. The producer said he hoped to do for the Inquisition in popular culture what “Schindler’s List” did for the Holocaust. (JTA) 🍳 Eitan Bernath, a food influencer, is CEO of his own company and has a new cookbook. Also, he just turned 20. “I think what I’m doing right now has always been my goal,” Bernath said. “Obviously, I didn’t think it would happen this fast.” (NY Jewish Week) Mazel tov ➤ To Jeanette Kuvin Oren, whose hand-dyed, appliqued quilt showing an abstract image of a menorah was chosen by the United States Postal Service for its 2022 Hanukkah stamp. Shiva call ➤ Sol Drimmer, a Crown Heights resident who tried to calm the community during the 1991 riots, died at 71. Our Jacob Kornbluh spoke with Drimmer last August on the event’s 30th anniversary.
Long weekend reads ➤ The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt talked with The New Yorker about why he thinks anti-Zionism is antisemitism … Baking Challah in Dubai: A Jewish community heads out into the open … How a polarizing bestseller became required reading for Orthodox Jewish women.
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In the new edition of our Shabbat magazine: We visited with congregants in Texas who were in the final days of closing their small-town synagogue. Speaking of the Lone Star state, there’s a rumor going around that pastrami is from there and not New York. We investigated and got to the bottom of the deli debate. Plus, with the U.S. reaching 1 million deaths from COVID, we profiled a minyan of Jews lost – including a tombstone maker, a Holocaust survivor, and a bank robber. Print your copy now ➤ |
Doris Day had many Jewish stories to tell, beginning with her name. (Getty) |
On this day in history: Doris Day — actress, singer and activist — died on May 13, 2019. In a reflection on her life and many ties to the Jewish world, the Forward’s Seth Rogovoy wrote that this “iconic, American girl-next-door” developed her unforgettable stage name when a bandleader told her that her actual surname, Kappelhoff, “sounded too Jewish.” Once Day made the jump from singing to movie stardom, she took on a series of Jewish agents who doubled as her lovers; one of them, Martin Melcher, became her third husband — much to the disdain of her parents, who were both openly antisemitic. Day died at 97 after a bout of pneumonia, and by her own request, received no public memorials — not even a grave marker. Read the secret Jewish history of Doris Day ➤ Last year on this day, we reported that the remains of a Holocaust survivor got lost in the mail.
In honor of Friday the 13th, check out these five horror movies from Jewish directors.
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Why did Brigham Young University, a Mormon school in Utah, put on “Fiddler on the Roof,” a profoundly Jewish musical? Mira Fox, one of our culture writers, spent months deeply reporting on the production and its implications for the two faith communities, and she recently chatted with some of the cast members — one of whom has since left the church — about their experiences and her analysis. Watch the video ➤ ––– Plus: Play today’s Vertl puzzle, the Yiddish Wordle Thanks to Mira Fox, Eliya Smith and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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