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INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. SINCE 1897. Give a tax-deductible donation The perilous escape of Afghanistan's last Jew, the transgender rock star who's going to rabbinical school, the scientists studying Netflix's 'My Unorthodox Life' and more. OUR LEAD STORY 🕯 PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Shana tova. The vagaries of the calendar this year catapult us directly from our celebration of Rosh Hashanah into preparation for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. So we start the year 5782 by looking back at that fateful day.
We asked for your 9/11 stories. With grief, hope and faith, you responded.
In ways big and small, 9/11 changed all our lives. We asked readers to share memories of that fateful day, and were awed by the profound, deeply personal reflections about what it felt like.
“My mother was frightened,” wrote one reader, the child of immigrants from the Soviet Union. “I think it was likely the first time there was some sort of breaking of this American ideal she had as a refugee here. Suddenly the safety and promise of the West was gone, and the area she’d worked in was in ruins.”
Another reader, David Shulman, said he added a new prayer to his personal liturgy when Rosh Hashanah arrived the week after the 2001 attack: “Aveinu Malkeinu — grant me the strength to be a good husband and a good father.”
“I figure if I got that right that would pretty much keep me from going too far astray,” Shulman wrote. “I learned you can’t hug your loved ones too much and you can’t say ‘I love you’ too much.”
Theirs are among two dozen curated reader meditations on safety, nationality, religion and more. Read the story >
The sound of thunder on a beautiful, cloudless day — a reporter’s notebook
Jacob Margolies works in the New York Bureau of Japan’s largest newspaper. After the second tower was hit, he had only a few hours until his noon deadline. “These personal memories,” he writes, “have helped me understand the shades of darkness and light that descended on us from the firmament.” Read the essay >
From the Forverts: We asked Yiddish singer Lucette van den Berg to perform the stirring song, “The Ballad of September 11,” which was composed by the late poet and songwriter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman several days after the attacks. Watch the music video >
ALSO IN THE FORWARD 👋 For Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s yahrzeit, her rabbi wrote personally about the loss.“We carry on Justice Ginsburg’s legacy in the private acts of promoting dignity in our personal relationships,” said Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, “and when we collectively fight for reproductive rights, even when we are up against enormous barriers. Read the essay >
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY👇 ZEBULON SIMANTOV WAS THE LAST JEW IN AFGHANISTAN. (GETTY IMAGES) 🌎 Afghanistan’s last Jew has finally fled the country. Zebulon Simantov, 62, initially refused to leave because he feared the Israeli government might punish him for refusing to grant a divorce to his estranged wife, who lives in the Jewish state with their children. Moti Kahana not only helped Simantov escape but convinced him to sign the divorce paperwork. “That was two weeks of being a shrink, a psychiatrist, talking to him like 10 times a day, and his neighbor at the same time to translate,” Kahana said. (AP, Times of Israel)
📺 Two social scientists looked at the effect Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life” had on Orthodox women. “Instead of just discussing it privately and informally,” they found, “many women participated, for the first time, in a public social-media campaign to tell their own stories.” (The Conversation)
✋ The Supreme Court blocked the execution of a Texas death-row inmate who claimed the state was violating his religious freedom by not letting his pastor lay hands on him at the time of his lethal injection. The case was the latest in a series of last-minute disputes over religious rights of condemned inmates. (Wall Street Journal)
🕯 An Israeli father of 10 was killed in a car accident in Ukraine while returning from the annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to Uman, to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman, the founder of the Breslov hasidic movement. (Times of Israel)
🎸 Ezra Furman is a 34-year-old indie rocker, observant Jew, transgender woman and mother. Now she’s going to rabbinical school. “What becoming an adult has meant is that I get to make the life I want,” she said, “and others’ idea that these things are incommensurate with each other, doesn’t actually prevent me from doing anything.” (JTA)
Shiva call > Lynn Ruth Miller, known as one of the world’s oldest performing standup comedians, died at 87. She began her career as a comic at 70 and made appearances on both “America’s Got Talent” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” According to her website, she was also a cabaret dancer who won both nights of the Texas Burlesque Festival without taking off anything that matters.
NEW EPISODE ALERT 🎧 On our Jewish advice podcast, the hosts contemplate a letter from “Qualified Applicant,” a listener feeling hurt because a mentor’s negative reference likely cost them a job. “Should I reach out to her to seek clarification or try to move on?” the listener asks. “How do I avoid using her as a reference in the future?” Bintel hosts Ginna and Lynn are joined by Morra Aarons-Mele, host of “The Anxious Achiever” podcast. Listen now >
FROM OUR ARCHIVES 🥧 It’s that time of year again. The Pumpkin Spice Latte has returned to Starbucks. Walk through the grocery store and it seems there’s pumpkin-spice something in every aisle. (Did anyone really ask for Pumpkin Spice Pringles?!?) Turns out, it’s not a new phenomenon. In an ad for condensed milk that appeared in our Nov. 17, 1947, issue, alongside a recipe for coconut pumpkin chiffon pie, the text reads, “If you like pumpkin spice flavored pie…” How do you say “yum” in Yiddish?
ON THE CALENDAR 🗓 PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES On this day in history: Elvis Presley appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time on Sept. 9, 1956. While Presley was not a member of the tribe, our contributor Seth Rogovoy found that the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll had plenty of Jewish connections. As a teenager, for example, he lived downstairs from an Orthodox Jewish family for whom he would switch on lights on Shabbat. Find out more in our secret Jewish history of Elvis.
It’s a good thing we ate a lot over Rosh Hashanah because today is Tzom Gedaliah, one of six fast days on the Hebrew calendar. It commemorates the assassination of the governor of the province of Yehud, as described in the 41st chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. As one of the year’s four sunrise-to-sundown fasts, it’s a good warmup for Yom Kippur.
Wednesday marked the 100th anniversary of the Miss America pageant. It’s an opportune time to recall Bess Myerson, the only Jewish woman ever to win the title, back in 1945. “In the Jewish community, she was the most famous pretty girl since Queen Esther,” historian Susan Dworkin wrote.
PHOTO OF THE DAY 📸 REBECCA AND ELIAS GOLDEN, ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF AGUDAS ACHIM. (COURTESY: BRAD KOLODNY) Brad Kolodny, president of the Jewish Historical Society of Long Island, sent us this photo of Elias and Rebecca Golden, original congregants of Agudas Achim, which celebrated its 125th birthday this week. The milestone is a bit of a miracle. The Setauket synagogue almost folded a few years after its dedication in 1896.
It had been built to serve the few dozen Jews who moved to Setauket to work in a rubber factory. But the factory closed two years after Agudas Achim opened, and many of the early congregants left town.
The synagogue struggled, and then lay dormant for three decades until a new congregation – North Shore Jewish Center – formed in 1947, and refurbished the building. The congregation soon outgrew it, and sold the structure to a Methodist Church. It’s now a thrift store that, as of Sunday, has a historic marker explaining its Jewish history.
“With all the growth and change that has taken place on Long Island over the last 125 years it’s amazing this historic building still stands,” Kolodny said.
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