Why Orthodox high schools love basketba ll + Why Israel’s government is falling ap art

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Princeton students to vote on Israel boycott, Jews find ways to add Ukraine to Passover rituals, remembering Yentl's papa, and a Jewish wedding in a war zone.

THE SPORTS SECTION

Clockwise from top right: Oz Pearlman; Leo Fishel; and the Sarachek basketball tournament.

It's Major League Baseball’s opening day, so we decided to start you off with a few sports stories...

‘It feels like March Madness for Jews’:Dozens of Jewish high schools gather in Yeshiva University’s gymnasium for the annual Sarachek basketball tournament. At its most basic level, it’s a recruiting tool for Y.U. but it is above all a testament to the depth of modern Orthodoxy’s love affair with basketball. “These institutions enable Orthodox Jews to enjoy the riches of American pluralism without compromising on identity,” writes our Louis Keene, who covers sports. “In this sense, basketball may represent a kind of final frontier of acculturation without assimilation.” Read the story ➤

How TV’s favorite mind reader is running for refugees: You may be familiar with Oz Pearlman as the mentalist who came in third place on “America’s Got Talent.” But what you may not know is that he’s also an ultra-marathoner, often running 30 miles, just for fun, before shows. On Friday, he hopes to make history by running 100 miles around Central Park – that’s more than 16 laps – in an effort to raise money for Ukrainian children. “I’m trying to find a way to help these people,” said Pearlman, himself the father of three young children and the grandson of four Holocaust survivors. Read the story ➤

Plus: Check out a century’s worth of Jewish sports announcers, see our rankings of the best and worst Jewish team owners, and read the incredible story of Major League Baseball’s first Jewish pitcher: he left the field after one game and became a lawyer.

ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Idit Silman in the Knesset in Jerusalem in November. (Dani Shem Tov)

Explainer: Why is Israel’s government falling apart?Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition could collapse after Idit Silman, a member of his own party, defected to Benjamin Netanyahu’s side – over a spat regarding Passover food in hospitals. Some critics say Bennett turned a blind eye to what was happening in his backyard while he established himself as a global leader on Ukraine. Jacob Kornbluh, our senior political reporter, breaks it down: Who is Silman? Will there be another election this summer? Could Netanyahu regain power? Read the story ➤

Blue and yellow macaroons? Jews find ways to add Ukraine to their Seders: Rabbis and other leaders are encouraging people to incorporate readings, symbolic foods, and charitable gifts relating to the war into their holiday observance. One person has created name cards in the shape of sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine. Another has bought kosher wines from Moldova, one of the border countries welcoming thousands of refugees. The Krakow JCC is hosting a Seder for displaced Ukrainians. “Doing nothing is not an option,” said a Jewish activist. Read the story ➤

Opinion | Want more rabbis? Stop turning away Jews in interfaith relationships: There’s been a precipitous decline of enrollment at Reform and Conservative seminaries over the last several years. Edmund Case argues in a new essay that this problem can be easily rectified: if the Reform movement would grant admission to applicants in interfaith relationships. Studies show that LGBTQ Jews and Jews of color are primarily from interfaith families, and banning them from becoming Reform rabbis deprives the community of needed voices. “It’s highly inconsistent of a movement that prides itself on being welcoming and inclusive of interfaith families,” Case writes. Read his essay ➤

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Alexander Tolkach and Tatiana Gvinyashvili at their war-time wedding in Ukraine. (Courtesy)

💕 About 25 people attended the first known Jewish wedding in Ukraine since the outbreak of war. The event was held at the sprawling Menorah Center complex in Dnipro. “We are happy to build our own home out of the surrounding ruins,” said the groom Alexander Tolkach. “The main thing is that we have each other.” (Jerusalem Post)

👏 And one more hopeful story from the warfront: The actress who played the famous girl in the red coat in “Schindler’s List” is now all grown up and working as a volunteer helping Ukrainian refugees in Poland. (Newsweek)

🗳️ Students at Princeton University will vote next week on a referendum connected to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The referendum calls on the university to stop using Caterpillar construction equipment on campus “given the violent role that Caterpillar machinery has played in the mass demolition of Palestinian homes.” Some Jewish students are concerned that campaigning around the referendum could lead to an uptick in antisemitism on campus. (Jewish Insider)

⚖️ A 93-year-old German woman known as the “Nazi Grandma” was sentenced to a year in jail for denying the Holocaust, a criminal offense in that country. She has been jailed multiple times before in separate cases on similar charges. The presiding judge said the woman, Ursula Haverbeck, was continuing to spread “poison, not knowledge.” (JTA)

🤗 Two Jews who were prisoners together during the Holocaust reunited for the first time since 1943. Jack Raksal and Sam Ron, who are 97, both happened to attend a gala for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. When Raksal saw Ron on stage, “he jumped out from his seat and came running over to me,” Ron said. “He started hugging me and said, ‘You are my brother!’” (Washington Post)

What else we’re reading ➤ Our Robin Washington was among the people The New York Times interviewed about how Passover holds special resonance for Black Jews … A fourth COVID shot triples protection from serious illness, new Israeli data shows … How a new generation of Jewish delis and bagel shops is sharing trade secrets.

SHIVA CALLS

Barbra Streisand and Nehemiah Persoff in 'Yentl'; Gerda Weissmann Klein receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died at 97. Her memoir, “All But My Life,” first written in 1948, was turned into a 1995 documentary that won both an Emmy and an Academy Award. “I wish to thank you for honoring their memory,” Klein said of Holocaust victims and survivors when she accepted the Oscar. “You cannot do it in any better way than when you return to your homes tonight to realize that each of you who know the joy of freedom are winners.” Read an appreciation of Klein by a producer of the movie ➤

Nehemiah Persoff, a Jerusalem-born character actor who appeared in hundreds of TV shows and dozens of films, died at 102. For nearly two decades, Persoff appeared as Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish writer, in a one-man show. He was perhaps most known for three iconic roles: a Jewish refugee escaping the Nazis in “Voyage of the Damned,” the father of Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl,” and the voice of the father of Fievel Mousekewitz, the Russian Jewish mouse in “An American Tail.” Read his obituary ➤

ON THE CALENDAR

This monument in Chicago honors George Washington and the two main financers of the American Revolution, Robert Morris and Haym Salomon, on the right. (iStockPhoto)

On this day in history: Haym Salomon, the Polish-born financier who largely bankrolled the American Revolution and co-founded Philadelphia’s first synagogue, Mikveh Israel, was born on April 7, 1740. A revolutionary by nature, Salomon left his native Poland in 1772, likely fleeing repercussions over his advocacy for Polish independence. His rebellious instincts found fulfillment in his adopted country, where he served as the financial agent of France during the revolution, in addition to loaning the American military, government and founding fathers an estimated $600,000 of his own money — the equivalent of billions of dollars today. He died at the age of 45, without a dollar to his name; the loans were never repaid.

Last year on this day, we reported that Yale would begin to teach Yiddish to fulfill students’ language requirements.

On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 6th of Nisan, the yahrtzeit of Marc Chagall, the famous French Jewish artist.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Ezra Furman, an indie rock star and rabbinical student, says her new song, “Book of Names,” is inspired by her experience “as a Jew and as a trans woman.” She added: “This song is about what it feels like to live together under an empire that doesn’t value your lives.”

Watch the music video above ➤

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Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)

Thanks to Nora Berman, Louis Keene, Jacob Kornbluh and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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