Why Israelis are flushing Coke down the toilet, Trump hosts Orthodox leaders at golf club, newspapers nixing sports sections impacts observant Jews, and Barbie's Jewish history explained. |
Jonah Hill at a 2019 film festival in Berlin. (Getty) |
Over the weekend, the internet was aflame over Jonah Hill, the Jewish actor, and his ex-girlfriend, Sarah Brady, a professional surfer. The two broke up in 2022 and Brady shared screenshots of what she described as Hill being “emotionally abusive” in a series of text messages. Our deputy opinion editor, Nora Berman, and one of our culture writers, Mira Fox, each have a take: Opinion | This might be a case where ‘lashon hara’ is warranted: The Talmud warns against public humiliation, although it makes room for exceptions when the accuser is of a lesser social standing than the accused. Since the dawn of the #MeToo movement, Nora writes, many rabbis have weighed in on the intersection between lashon hara, negative gossip that is generally prohibited, and the fact that “abuse thrives in silence.” Read the essay ➤
Jonah Hill’s therapy-speak exposes the dark side of the Nice Jewish Boy:Hill is “a little neurotic, a little nebbish” Mira notes, “but funny, successful and self-aware, and working on himself in therapy to boot.” She notes that “Jews have long been in therapy and talked about being in therapy,” adding: “It’s one of the things that makes the Nice Jewish Boy, well, nice.” But in the texts that went viral, Mira says, Hill twists therapy terms like “boundaries” and “triggering” into “conversation-ending bludgeons.” Read the essay ➤
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The Dodgers beat the Angels 11-4 this past Friday. Orthodox fans will soon be left in the dark for such games. (Getty)
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Newspapers nixing sports sections have Orthodox fans feeling boxed out: For some print subscribers, reading the Saturday paper’s scores and recaps were a Shabbat ritual. But major changes announced this week at both the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times will leave observant fans in the dark about the results of Friday night’s games. It was a formative experience for Ari Cohen, who is Modern Orthodox and now works in Jewish youth sports, and he worries about kids breaking Shabbat to get clued in. “With a phone at your fingertips,” he said, “that’s a thing I could absolutely imagine happening.” Read the story ➤ Opinion | To fix Wikipedia’s Holocaust denial, we must start by naming names:“The Nazis sent 200,000 non-Jewish Poles to a gas chamber in Warsaw” is not a true statement, notes our editor-at-large, Robin Washington, but it did appear on Wikipedia, a site anyone can edit anonymously. Robin experienced the downsides of the digital encyclopedia firsthand when a couple of Wikipedia entries he created deteriorated into falsehoods. To restore credibility, Robin suggests, the site should require all involved “to use their real names, period.” Read the essay ➤ Plus.. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Members of Israel's mounted police move to disperse a protest Tuesday morning in Tel Aviv. (Getty) |
🇮🇱 The Knesset advanced a bill early Tuesday morning that would strip Israel’s Supreme Court of some of its power. Police have already begun to clash with a mass wave of protests across the nation, some blocking highways, in what those who oppose the government’s proposed judicial overhaul have dubbed a “day of disruption.” (JTA) 🥤 Some Israeli supporters of the government are flushing Coke products down the toilet after the CEO of Coca-Cola Israel shared a Tweet supporting the protest movement. The Tweet had a picture of an Israeli flag and a T-shirt saying “democracy or rebellion” in Hebrew. The chairman of the Knesset finance committee said he “informed his wife not to buy Coca-Cola.” (Haaretz) ⚖️ An expert testified Monday at the Tree of Life trial in Pittsburgh that the shooter, Robert Bowers, was not delusional but was inspired by white supremacist ideology. Closing arguments for this phase of the trial, which focuses on whether Bowers is mentally fit to be eligible for the death penalty, may come this week. If the jury agrees unanimously that he is, there would be another phase expected to last several weeks. (JTA) 🏎️ At a racetrack in Minnesota, Thomas Poretsky’s car has two flags emblazoned on it: an Israeli one because his dad is Jewish, and a flag of the Quechan Nation, the Native American tribe his mother belongs to. Oh, and Thomas doesn’t have a driver’s license; he’s only 10 years old. (TC Jewfolk) 🎭 Transparent, the musical based on the TV series about a Jewish family with a trans parent, is headed to Broadway after a successful stint in Los Angeles. We spoke with the show’s creator back in May. (JTA) Mazel tov ➤ To Carol Ann Schwartz on becoming the new president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Shiva call ➤ Lawrence Turman, a movie producer who optioned a little-known novel called The Graduate and turned it into the biggest film of 1967, died at 96.
What else we’re reading ➤ Blues legend Buddy Guy cancels Israel concerts, citing “military operations” … Is religion good for your health? … The complex Jewish history of the Barbie doll explained.
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In honor of 7-Eleven Day (get it, 7/11), check out our secret Jewish history of the iconic convenience store. On this day in history (1930): Harold Bloom, one of the most famous literary critics in the English-speaking world, was born. Bloom, a Yale professor, “playfully projected the aura of a musty, Falstaffian ancient,” the Forward’s Chana Pollack and PJ Grisar wrote upon his death in 2019. “But, before he became an expert on the English canon, his first language was Yiddish.”
Tonight at 7 p.m. ET: Join the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for a one-night performance about the birth of Yiddish theater. This is an in-person event in Manhattan. More info ➤
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Behold, a cross between a Doritos commercial and an adventure comedy for kids. This video filled with Hasidic actors features a porets (a Polish landlord) as a villain searching for ways to harass his Jewish subjects. Oh, and it’s all in Yiddish. Find out how the video came together. --- Thanks to Nora Berman, Mira Fox, Rukhl Schaechter, Gall Sigler and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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