This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Three years on, this sprawling family is still Zooming Shabbat dinner
The U.S. ended its COVID public health emergency last week. But this clan is still getting together virtually each Friday, more than 50 people across four generations and three time zones, to say kiddush and catch up. The weekly ritual kept them connected through lockdown and far beyond, through the ups and downs of everyday life — and a tragic loss.
A big clan, tight knit: Some family members join from cars, some from couches; once, vacationing relatives dialed in from a hotel balcony in Costa Rica. Alex Gross, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, leads the blessing over the wine, and his sister, also a survivor, entertains with Yiddish songs. |
Uncle Alex and Aunt Roz at their Passover Seder last month. (Courtesy Erica Zurkow) |
‘Family is home’: The weekly ritual proved particularly important last July, when a 23-year-old member of the family died of fentanyl poisoning. The next Shabbat, after services, the young man’s parents, Erica and Peter Zurkow, logged in. “It was so hard,” Erica told our Rebecca Salzhauer. “But there was the family doing the same thing the family does every Friday night, and that was reassuring to all of us.”
No stopping: Though they can gather now again in person for holidays, they don’t plan to stop the weekly call. “The whole thing about the call is that it’s not really, to me, about the call,” said Ben Zurkow, 29. “It’s about keeping a line of communication open.” |
Jews marched Thursday in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. (Getty) |
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Elon Musk came under attack this week for invoking antisemitic stereotypes in a series of tweets. (Getty) |
? The Israeli minister in charge of fighting antisemitism says Elon Musk is “an amazing entrepreneur and a role model.” The comments come amid widespread criticism of Musk’s tweets about George Soros as antisemitic. (JTA) ? A mayor in Missouri apologized for saying at a public hearing this week that a local trash company “was not trying to Jew anybody” in a financial arrangement. The mayor wrote on Facebook that the remark was “not in keeping with the beliefs and values” of the town, Odessa, which has 5,500 residents. The publisher of the local paper said he has never met a Jewish person. (JTA, KMBC) ? Meanwhile, a city council meeting in Sacramento, California, erupted in chaos when a man made antisemitic remarks during the public comment period. “We don’t want to hear any more from you,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg shouted back. “I showed a little emotion last night,” Steinberg said the following day. “I don’t apologize for it.” (CBS News) ? A Tel Aviv rabbi barred a man and his autistic son from their synagogue, saying the son’s behavior was disruptive. A nonprofit group that supports kids with autism sent a letter to the rabbi, warning that preventing the boy’s entry violated laws against discrimination. (Times of Israel) ? The authorities arrested a 42-year-old man on suspicion of setting a fire at a St. Paul mosque on Wednesday, the sixth attack on Muslim houses of worship in Minnesota in 2023. (AP) ? A four-and-a-half-hour Holocaust documentary nearly put some at the Cannes Film Festival to sleep. The film by Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen, Occupied City, recounts the story of Nazis invading Amsterdam through present-day interviews, with no archival footage. Variety’s review said it’s “like listening to 150 encyclopedia entries in a row.” (AFP, Variety) Mazel Tov ➤ To Jay Michaelson, a Forward contributor, who last night won the Deadline Club’s award in Opinion for his Rolling Stone article, “There Are Lots of Jews in Hollywood. Let a Rabbi Explain Why.” Our own Mira Fox was a Deadline finalist in Arts Reporting for her in-depth narrative on an all-Mormon production of Fiddler on the Roof, and Molly Boigon, a former Forward reporter, was part of an NBC News team that won for an investigation of abusive behavior by contractors on overseas military bases. Shiva call ➤ Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate developer and newspaper tycoon, died at 81.
Long weekend reads ➤ They survived a ‘pogrom.’ Now Palestinians in Hawara fear life will only get worse … A single absentee mohel in Israel is thwarting dozens of converts at the very end of their journey … A giant musical about Jesus opened Thursday. We traveled to Dallas to check it out. |
In this weekend’s edition of our print magazine: Jenny Singer does a deep dive on Exodus, the Leon Uris novel that sold millions of copies and shaped the way a generation of Jews viewed Israel. But does anybody still read it? And in other books’ coverage, our Irene Katz Connelly explores what lessons can be learned from a set of memoirs written by the descendants of Nazis. Plus: Stories about refugees in Germany, book bans in Florida and staircases in New York. Download your copy now ➤ |
Nora Ephron attends the premiere of ‘Julie & Julia’ in 2009 in New York City. (Getty) |
On this day in history (1941): Writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron was born. Best known for her romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, Ephron also wrote a column for Esquire and the semi-autobiographical novel Heartburn. Forward contributor Abigail Pogrebin, who interviewed Ephron for her book Stars of David, wrote: “For all her Jewish disconnection, she felt utterly Jewish to me.” Ephron died, at 71, in 2012. |
Jury selection is expected to end next week for the trial of the man accused of killing 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. A documentary about the 2018 event, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, is streaming now on HBO Max. Watch the trailer above. — Thanks to Beth Harpaz, Matthew Litman, Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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