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Good morning! I’m Talya Zax, the Forward’s innovation editor, filling in this week on the Forwarding desk. Today: Buffalo Jews help neighborhood around supermarket, a 101-year-old goes on trial for alleged Nazi crimes, and a Jewish photographer’s masterpiece sells for millions.

OUR LEAD STORY

Yossi Reit, 16, spent two months in intensive care after the Mount Meron disaster. (Courtesy Michal and Yechiel Reit)

On Israel’s Mount Meron, the site of an annual Lag B’Omer festival, last year’s celebration turned quickly from joy to horror. Forty-five people were killed in a stampede as the crowd of 100,000 tried to exit.

As Lag B’Omer begins tonight at sundown, all eyes will be on Meron to see if stringent new security measures succeed.

But before the holiday begins, we’re taking this morning to focus on the stories of two people — and their families — profoundly affected by last year’s disaster.

Yossi Reit, now 16, was a typical teenager: A fan of loud music, not a fan of chores. He survived the disaster, but remains barely conscious in a pediatric hospital in Jerusalem. When his parents arrived at the hospital hours after the disaster, they could see shoe prints pressed into Yossi’s body, and, seeing his bare head, worried he might die while not wearing a kippah.

But Yossi recently started breathing on his own, and is expected to come home next month. “We hope that God will be kind to us,” said his father, Yechiel. Read the story ➤

Dov Maisel, a paramedic with United Hatzolah, was stationed at a clinic on Mount Meron when the stampede began. Hours later, with the patients he’d treated on the scene all declared dead or transported to the hospital, he began to realize that his fight had just begun.

He found himself suffering from intense symptoms of trauma, including flashbacks to the bombings of the second intifada. His wife, he writes, “described it as trying to sleep next to someone dreaming that they were in a warzone.” Read his essay ➤

Historical context: Last year was not the first tragedy on Mount Meron; 11 people died when a roof collapsed during the Lag B’Omer celebration in 1911. And there have been at least six other deadly stampedes during religious events in modern times. See our timeline ➤

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Amanda Herring, 32, and her 1-year-old, Abraham, who live in Washington, D.C. (Eric Lee for the Forward)

‘Whose religious freedom?’: Scenes from a Jewish rally for abortion rights. With the Supreme Court expected to soon overturn Roe v. Wade, hundreds of Jews gathered in Washington on Tuesday in protest. Their signs emphasized the Torah’s allowance for abortion, and attendees were grateful for an opportunity to stand up for their values in a specifically Jewish setting. “I figured that here I can express my opinion with this group and there wasn’t going to be any antisemitism,” one said. Meet some of the protestors ➤

What the Buffalo shooter’s screed says about Jews:Saturday’s supermarket massacre targeted Black people, and 11 of the 13 people shot were Black. But the 180-page diatribe the 18-year-old suspect posted online spends more space demonizing Jews, mentioning the word more than 100 times and emphasizing his antisemitism with bold, capitalized letters and exclamation points. Read the story ➤

‘Our hearts are broken’: Buffalo Jews respond to mass shooting. The Tops supermarket where a gunman killed 10 on Saturday is one of the few grocery stores on Buffalo’s East Side. With it closed indefinitely, local residents have even fewer options than before to find fresh food. So the local Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council have asked members to donate food, baby formula, diapers and money to local groups working on food insecurity. They also attended a prayer vigil. Read our interview with the Federation chief ➤

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Pittsburgh-area race that drew national attention from pro-Israel groups was too close to call. (Bloomberg/Getty)

Five states held primaries yesterday. We'll start with some highlights from their results:

🗳️ A top proponent of President Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election won Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist who used part of his victory speech to mock Rachel Levine, President Biden’s transgender and Jewish assistant secretary of health, will face the Attorney General Josh Shapiro in November. In Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, the Republican primary was headed for a recount while Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who recently had a stroke, handily won on the Democratic side. (CNN)

😲 In a Pittsburgh-area Congressional race, Summer Lee, a progressive state legislator, was 600 votes ahead of Steve Irwin, who was backed by $2.7 million in funds from AIPAC. Lee has criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; Irwin, who received substantial support from the Democratic Majority for Israel as well as AIPAC, has yet to concede. (Haaretz)

🎉 The Jewish mayoral candidate in Louisville who survived a February shooting won the Democratic primary. Days after the shooting, which deliberately targeted him and his campaign, the candidate, Craig Greenberg, told the Forward his political beliefs are “guided by tikkun olam.” (PBS NewsHour)

👀 Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a Trump favorite who once tried to convert Jews to Christianity, lost his North Carolina primary after a coordinated GOP effort to unseat him. (CNN)

⚖️ A 101-year-old German man faces five years in prison on charges related to his alleged time as a Nazi SS guard. Prosecutors say the man is implicated in the murders of 3,518 people between 1942 and 1945 at a concentration camp close to Berlin. (Times Union)

🎉 For the first time in half a century, the African nation of Chad has accepted an Israeli ambassador. Chad cut ties with Israel in the 1970s; the two countries reestablished relations in 2019. (Algemeiner)

🙄 A GOP candidate for Minnesota secretary of state depicted her Jewish opponent as a puppet — literally — of George Soros. In a new promotional video, Kim Crockett tapped into widespread antisemitic canards about Soros, showing him controlling the incumbent, Steve Simon, as well as the well-known elections lawyer Marc Elias, like marionettes. (JTA)

🎊 France’s new prime minister is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Élisabeth Borne, who was sworn in yesterday and is the second woman to hold the job, is a longtime ally of President Emmanuel Macron whose father fought in the French resistance and survived Auschwitz. (Forward)

🖼️ A photograph by the surrealist artist Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky, sold for the highest price ever paid for a photo at auction. The famous image of Ray’s muse, Kiki de Montparnasse, went for a cool $12.4 million. (ARTnews)

What else we’re reading ➤ Time to ask the tough questions: Do Jews really tend to kvetch more? … The secret Jewish history of Old Bay seasoning … In Israel, a convicted murderer’s tech industry rehabilitation raises questions.

ON THE CALENDAR

Left to right: Charles Percy, Jacob Javits, Henry Kissinger and George Aiken in 1973. (Getty)

On this day in history: Jacob Javits, the New York politician best known for his work on foreign affairs, was born on May 18, 1904. Growing up in a Lower East Side tenement, Javits helped his mother sell clothes from a pushcart. Later, as a liberal Republican congressman and senator, Javits supported civil rights, labor unions and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. He also opposed the Vietnam War and helped facilitate the 1978 Camp David Accords. “My personal commitment is rooted in my boyhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and it has lived with me all these years,” he once wrote, according to the Washington Post. “That commitment and my belief in a world rule of law to replace the rule of force were my reasons for being in public life.”

Last year on this day, we reported on the death at 86 of Charles Grodin, a beloved comedic actor and curmudgeon. “In everything he did,” wrote our PJ Grisar in an appreciation, “Grodin drew from a well of intensity.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Headlines like today’s about elderly people going on trial for alleged Nazi crimes crop up relatively frequently. But how, exactly, does one go about finding a 101-year-old possible former Nazi — the case we covered earlier in this newsletter? In 2013, decades after the end of the Holocaust, the Forward took a deep dive into the art of Nazi hunting. It may sound like an occupation out of a James Bond film, but it turns out, the reality is far more mundane: paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.

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

Thanks to Lauren Hakimi for contributing to today's newsletter.

You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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