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Chag sameach! I’m Talya Zax, the Forward’s innovation editor, filling in this morning on the Forwarding desk. Because it’s Shavuot, we’re sending a slimmer version of Forwarding the News. So you have room for cheesecake. Here’s a few stories to savor whether you’re observing or not.

✡️ With Roe expected to be overturned, this 90-year-old rabbi vividly recalls his work in an underground abortion network.Before the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Rabbi Harold Kudan was one of some 2,000 clergy members across 38 states who helped women connect to doctors willing to risk arrest ending their pregnancies. Now, he imagines a new generation of rabbis may have to do something similar. “It’s an act of rachmanis,” Kudan said in an interview with Larry Cohler Esses, who in 2016 retraced his own story of helping a friend obtain an illegal abortion in 1969. Read the story ➤

📚 At this Lower East Side bookstore, customers exchange tchotchkes for pickles. Think a book reads best when accompanied by a perfect half-sour? Sweet Pickle Books, decorated with Hanukkah candles, bat mitzvah photos and a handwritten sign extolling the charms of Timothée Chalamet, may be the spot for you. Read the story ➤

Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg via Getty Images

🏳️‍🌈 Opinion | I’m a Jewish gay man who resisted apartheid. LGBTQ rights in the U.S. are slipping away. It’s Pride Month, a time for celebrating LGBTQ identity. But Robert Bank, head of American Jewish World Service, says that after years in which “it seemed that the U.S. was making meaningful progress on the road to ‘lasting justice’ and ‘genuine equality,’” the “nation is backsliding, and our hard-fought gains are in peril.” Read the story ➤

⚾ These Jews were among baseball’s all-time greats — but do they count as Jewish baseball players? Jews have a storied baseball history. But can Jews also claim the baseball accomplishments of Jews by choice — who converted after their retirement from the sport? Read the story ➤

💡 Opinion | Here’s how to replace the great replacement theory. The conspiracy theory behind the Buffalo shooting is too pernicious to be easily argued against with facts, writes our senior contributing editor, Rob Eshman. Is there a more efficient way to battle it? Read the story ➤

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

📺 ‘Tehran’ gained Glenn Close but lost its Persian flavor. The hit Israeli drama, now in its second season on Apple TV+ , features Close speaking Farsi — a serious coup. But our critic isn’t sure how much that added star power helps. Read the story ➤

🎥 In a stunning new film, a portrait of what it means to be Israeli today. Yael Reuveny’s returns to Israel to interview her classmates from 1988, when they were 8 years old, in the documentary “Promised Lands.” The result, writes our critic, “is at once poignant and oddly elusive.” Read the story ➤

ON THE CALENDAR

Bruce Glikas/Getty Images

On this day in history: Harvey Fierstein, the Tony Award-winning writer and performer, was born on June 6, 1952. Best known for creating such Broadway shows as “Torch Song Trilogy” and “La Cage Aux Folles,” Fierstein was one of the country’s first openly gay celebrities, and championed unapologetic depictions of queer life. The son of Conservative Jews, Fierstein identifies as atheist. “Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith,” he told the Forward in 2013. “Strangers sit in a room together and believe together. It’s a leap of faith.”

It’s Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks — and cheesecake — that marks the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai. But did you know about shavuoslech, the tradition of hanging handmade papercuts in the home? Read the story ➤

Thanks to Rudy Malcom for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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