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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. |
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WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION |
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Good morning. Today: A Nova survivor on protests of a Manhattan exhibit on the massacre; support for Hamas growing in Palestinian territories; and Israel extends ban on Al Jazeera. |
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Mexico’s first female and first Jewish president, Claudia Sheinbaum. (Illustration by Odeya Rosenband. Photos by Luis Antonio Rojas/Bloomberg via Getty Images and the Jewish Documentation and Research Center of Mexico.) |
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Exclusive: Claudia Sheinbaum’s family didn’t flee the Holocaust, documents show. They survived it. Sheinbaum, Mexico’s newly-elected president, spent her campaign fighting allegations that she wasn’t fully Mexican. One of her retorts to critics whose claims about her heritage sometimes recalled the birtherism movement that targeted former U.S. President Barack Obama: She was “proudly the daughter of Mexican parents.”
Except Forward reporting now reveals that her mother was born in Bulgaria, only immigrating to Mexico with her family when she was 6 years old.
The revelation does not affect Sheinbaum’s eligibility to become Mexico’s political leader; the country requires its presidents to be Mexican-born and have one Mexican-born parent, which Sheinbaum’s father is. And it’s not clear if Sheinbaum or her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, are aware of the true facts of this history. When reporter Andrew Silverstein spoke to Annie, she insisted that she had been born in Mexico, despite ample documentation showing otherwise.
But the story Andrew found isn’t just about the truth of Sheinbaum’s much-scrutinized family. “The documents I discovered detail a fascinating backstory of a small and little-known community of Holocaust survivors and refugees in Mexico,” he writes. “It shows the extraordinary steps, sometimes illegal, that Holocaust refugees there and around the world had to take to start new chapters in their new homes.” |
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Palestinian women walk past a graffiti of the Star of David under an inverted “red triangle” in the West Bank. (Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images) |
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Vandals painted a red triangle on the home of a Jewish museum director. What does it mean?As New York City officials have called the vandalism of Brooklyn Museum director Anne Paternak’s home an antisemitic hate crime, a red triangle daubed on a window in blood-red paint has attracted particular attention online. While some described it as a symbol used by terrorists, the triangle has long been used to signal peaceful support for Palestinian liberation, in reference to the red triangle on the Palestinian flag. Yet “it’s a lot harder to say that it wasn’t intended as a way of identifying a target” in context of the attack on Pasternak’s home, one scholar said. Read the story ➤
Latest on the war… Northern Israel underwent the most intense Hezbollah barrage to date during the war, with the terror group launching 30 drones and 100 rockets in a coordinated Thursday attack.
A new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that support for Hamas is growing in the Palestinian territories, with a 6% increase from a poll conducted earlier this year.
The Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, has begun. Some 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims will be given special honors, including 1,000 “from the families of martyrs and the wounded from the Gaza Strip,” Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said.
The Biden administration said that there is no clear timeline for reaching a deal in ongoing ceasefire talks, with Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, saying some of Hamas’ latest demands are “not consistent” with the plan Biden laid out two weeks ago.
Israel extended its ban on the news outlet Al Jazeera operating in the country for another 45 days.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at Cal State Los Angeles barricaded a building with administrators inside for hours on Wednesday; university officials said the group also wrecked offices and stole property.
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A screen displays info about the Nova festival at The Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7th 06:29 AM, The Moment Music Stood Still. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images for The Nova Music Festival Exhibition) |
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READERS LIKE YOU SHAPE EVERY PART OF OUR WORK |
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Reporting on the ground from Israel and campus takes resources. Support the news that matters to you with a monthly donation. |
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Paula Goldstein, who died this week at 101, worked as a USO hostess in WWII. (Laurie Gwen Shapiro) |
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Ninety-nine years ago, she was born on the Lower East Side (and she still remembers everything). Paula Goldstein, the subject of this 2022 story, died this week at 101 — the end of a life in which she grew up watching election results projected on a screen outside the old Forward building, had a 1930s Eleanor Roosevelt run-in at a Lower East Side park, and “served as a USO hostess at the ritzy Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue during the war.” So we’re sharing it once more in her honor, and in honor of the remarkable Jewish century that shaped her life. |
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Why a museum on prewar Jewish life in Europe was envisioned for New York, but never built. A noble goal informed plans for the Museum of the Homes of the Past, to “depict ordinary life before the war in Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe and offer a way for American Jews to connect with their heritage.” But that goal was never realized; while the museum project was announced in 1944, it never came to fruition. “What does it mean when you lose a museum — even a museum you never visited?” asked Jeffrey Shandler, author of a new book on the abandoned museum, in an interview with our Beth Harpaz. |
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
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Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin. (Amir Cohen / Pool / AFP) |
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⚖️ Israel’s High Court ordered Justice Minister Yariv Levin to explain why he has refused to bring the appointment of two new justices to a vote, in a petition that called his actions “motivated by extraneous considerations and lack of good faith.” (Times of Israel)
🌳 A sapling from a tree that grew outside Anne Frank’s window was planted in White Plains, New York. Frank referenced the tree multiple times in her diary; the tree was planted just a day before what would have been her 95th birthday. (News 12 Westchester)
👀 Human rights organizations are asking the International Olympic Committee to overturn a ban on hijabs at this summer’s Paris Olympics. (BBC)
🧐 No, European Union president Ursula Von der Leyen’s grandmother did not appear in a picture with Adolf Hitler — despite the claims of a viral post on X. (Reuters)
Shiva calls ➤ Political reporter Howard Fineman, author of a 2022 Forward story about a run-in with the KGB in Ukraine, died at 75. Morrie Markoff, believed to be the oldest man in the U.S., died at 110. Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, who helped expand the Chabad movement internationally, died at 74.
What else we’re reading ➤ “A railway museum in Zambia offers a clue to the African country’s rich Jewish history” … “What Jewish life looks like for teens from Iceland to Beijing, where the Jewish communities are small and antisemitism is high” … “An unexpected turn in the Evangelical culture wars.”
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Sheryl Sanderg spoke with Bari Weiss on The Free Press’s podcast Honestly, discussing how Oct. 7 prompted her to a new consideration of the seriousness of antisemitism in the U.S. |
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Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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Support Independent Jewish Journalism |
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Reporting from the ground in Israel and campuses takes resources. Support the news that matters to you with a monthly donation. |
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