This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Is it time to mourn the passengers aboard the submersible near the Titanic? As rescuers continue to search for the lost vessel, our Mira Fox looked to Jewish texts for precedent. The Talmud debates what a woman should do if her spouse is lost at sea. The Shulchan Aruch, a codification of Jewish law, has all sorts of guidelines for how to prove whether people in various situations are indeed dead and when, if ever, to start sitting shiva without a body. “The prevailing rule,” she writes, “is that the missing person is alive until proven dead. In other words: Maintain hope.” Read the story ➤
Related: Many Jewish people died aboard the Titanic. One couple, Ida and Isidor Straus, inspired a legend – and Yiddish music.
Major Jewish groups ditch coalition after video slams ‘woke antisemitism’: The Jewish Council of Public Affairs and Jewish Federations of North America, two of the largest members of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, left the partnership after our Arno Rosenfeld posted the video to Twitter highlighting its accusations against leftist politics and “woke ideology.” Amy Spitalnick, head of the JCPA, called the video “deeply disturbing and concerning” because it suggested that “progressivism, and certain progressive communities, are inherently antisemitic.” Combat Antisemitism took the video down Sunday; JFNA said it would consider rejoining the coalition if it is permanently removed. Read more and watch the video ➤ |
A pitch clock is shortening baseball games. What if synagogues did the same? Gary Rosenblatt, a Pulitzer finalist who has long covered the Jewish world, imagines installing a Sermon Clock in every sanctuary that would start to flash “The service continues on page 322” if rabbis exceeded their allotted time. Another idea? “More progressive congregations will now read from The Three-and-a-Half Books of Moses.” Read his essay ➤ Why the filmmaker who launched 1,000 mushroom trips is trying to create a gratitude movement: Louie Schwartzberg, who set off a psychedelic renaissance with his Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi, is now inviting viewers to take a different kind of trip: one rooted in gratefulness. In his new film, Gratitude Revealed, Schwartzberg — the son of Holocaust survivors — highlights small moments of connection: an impromptu barbecue in New Orleans; a klezmer clarinetist paying homage to his ancestors at Eldridge Street Synagogue; an Appalachian weaver realizing she and her tractor-riding neighbor both work in rows. Read the story ➤
Swastika stumper: What to do when someone asks for help dumping their family’s Nazi memorabilia? Our Bintel Brief column advises a reader who feels burdened by this request from a non-Jewish friend. |
Watch Fauda star Doron Ben-David in new TV series ‘The Lesson’, winner of Israel’s Best Drama Series Award 2023. The series traces a classroom argument between a high school civics teacher (Ben-David) and his student (Maya Landsman) which quickly spirals out of control and puts the two protagonists — and later the whole country — on a collision course. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, visited Yad Vashem on Tuesday in Jerusalem. She also toured Israeli hospitals and trauma centers with her counterpart Michal Herzog, wife of Israel’s president. She has previously visited Washington, London, Seoul, Paris and other capitals to push for humanitarian aid for Ukrainians, especially children. (Courtesy) |
?? Spike in violence: Israeli settlers took the law into their own hands Tuesday night, torching cars and crops and throwing stones at Palestinians in villages near the West Bank city of Nablus. Dozens were wounded in the riot, which followed a Palestinian terror attack that killed four Israeli Jews and wounded four others at a gas station outside the West Bank settlement of Eli. Hamas officials said that attack was a response to an Israel Defense Forces raid in Jenin a day earlier that killed seven Palestinians, including a teenaged girl who succumbed to her wounds early this morning. (Haaretz, JTA, Times of Israel) ⚖️ The sentencing phase for the man convicted of killing 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history is set to begin on Monday. Psychiatric evaluations will be a focal point as the defense tries to keep the shooter off death row. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) ? Tel Aviv University’s medical school will remove the Sackler name it has carried for 50 years to distance itself from the family whose pharmaceutical company played a significant role in the opioid epidemic. Oxford University and the Guggenheim and Metropolitan museums in New York had already removed the Sackler name from their buildings. Tel Aviv University said it was doing so after years of pressure, and with the family’s consent, in order to enable fundraising from new donors. (Haaretz) ? A Utah district voted Tuesday night to return the bible to libraries at its middle and elementary schools. The holy book had been banned last month after a parent complained that its content was not age-appropriate. (Politico) ? Imagine what daily life is like for Israel’s top envoy to the United Arab Emirates. Now imagine that as a workplace comedy, and you’ll have some idea what to expect from The Embassy, a new series on Israeli TV whose creator compares it to The Office. The series stars Itzhik Cohen, who plays Captain Ayoub on Fauda. (Jewish Insider) Shiva call ➤ The Guinness World Records named a trio of Jewish siblings the oldest living mixed-sex triplets in 2020. Betty Woolf, the last to survive, died this month at 96. At her funeral Monday in San Diego, where she helped launch a nondenominational synagogue, family members showed up wearing items of Betty’s jewelry and clothing that she had given them. “Everywhere we looked,” one of her eight grandchildren said, “there she was.”
What else we’re reading ➤ Ohio prison system bans Java computer manual but allows Hitler’s Mein Kampf … Summer solstice brings druids, pagans and thousands of curious people to Stonehenge … A new kosher restaurant in Manhattan will sell a $175 gold-plated burger. |
Pope Paul VI during his 1964 trip to Israel. (Getty) |
On this day in history (1963): The papacy of Paul VI began. Six months later, he became the first reigning pope to fly on an airplane, visiting Jordan, Israel and Lebanon — although he did not say the word “Israel” during his trip. A year later, he introduced the Nostra Aetate, a document that rejected the claim that Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death; condemned antisemitism; and recommended “mutual understanding and respect” between Catholics and Jews.
It’s also the birthday of Al Hirschfeld, who was known for his caricatures of Broadway stars and died in 2003 at 99. |
In honor of International Day of Yoga, learn how to do some warm-up poses from Reyna Schaechter, a Yiddish yoga instructor and niece of our Yiddish editor, Rukhl. — Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Tani Levitt, Arno Rosenfeld and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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