Mr. Bennett goes to Washington

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The eccentric Jews running for California governor, Arab Israeli wins gold at Paralympics, the song that helped heal Crown Heights, the secret Jewish history of Charlie Watts and more.

🇺🇸 OUR LEAD STORY 🇮🇱

How Biden and Bennett will push the restart button on U.S.-Israel relations

Despite their deep differences on major diplomatic questions, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett are hoping to set a new tone for U.S.-Israeli relations at the White House Thursday, their first meeting since each took office. Our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, spoke with experts and insiders for a preview of the visit.

Timing is everything: The current crises each leader is facing adds to the impetus for Biden and Bennett to generate positive headlines off this first meet-up. Biden is engulfed in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and a budget showdown with moderate House members. Bennett, who leads the right-wing Yamina party, is dealing with an outbreak of the Delta variant and rising tensions on the Gaza border.

Who won’t be there: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a rocky relationship with the past two Democratic presidents – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Experts like Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, expect this meeting to go more smoothly. “The fact that they will be able to talk to each other with mutual respect, in a civilized diplomatic tone based on friendship, is going to make a difference,” he said, “even if there still remains policy differences after the meeting.”

Also on the agenda: Bennett, who arrived in Washington Tuesday night, is slated to meet today with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

Read the story >

Related: In his first interview with an international news organization since taking office in June, Bennett took a hard line on Iran. Patrick Kingsley and Isabel Kershner of The New York Times, said he was “most engaged and passionate when talking about more technocratic topics,” including the coronavirus vaccine.

ALSO IN THE FORWARD 🎼

LEFT TO RIGHT: RONNIE WOOD, MICK JAGGER, CHARLIE WATTS AND KEITH RICHARDS. (GETTY IMAGES)

The secret Jewish history of Charlie Watts:A member of the Rolling Stones and one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, Watts died on Tuesday at 80. He helped create and refine classic rock. But did you know he got his start playing Jewish wedding receptions? Read the story >

How one powerful song helped heal ‘Crown Heights’:To mark the 30th anniversary of the riots that plagued the Brooklyn neighborhood, director Jeremy Kagan writes about the unifying power of the musical ending to the film he made about the community. We “created a gospel-sounding song performed by an African-American chorus and blended it with the chanting of Sim Shalom and the Shema by the famous Los Angeles cantor Chayim Frenkel,” explains Kagan, the son of a rabbi. The song won an Emmy Award. Read the essay >

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY👇

FROM LEFT: LEO ZACKY, RENEE GOLDBERG AND DAN KAPELOVITZ ARE RUNNING FOR CALIF. GOVERNOR.

🗳 Meet the eccentric Jews running for governor in California’s recall election: a lawyer, a poultry prince and a billboard queen. Ms. Billboard is Renee Goldberg, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, whose platform is both pro-bubble bath and pro-otter. Seriously. (JWeekly)

🥇 In a historic moment, Iyad Shalabi became the first Arab Israeli to win a medal at either the Paralympics or the Olympics. Shalabi, 34, grabbed gold in the 100-meter backstroke this morning at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Team Israel includes 33 athletes competing in 11 sports. (Ynet)

👋 Up a mountain in the West Bank, several hundred villagers are practicing an ancient Israelite religion while maintaining an ambiguous national identity. Meet the world’s last Samaritans. (NYT)

🚔 The NYPD promises extra security in Jewish neighborhoods for the High Holidays. “We will be doing everything possible to protect your right to hold services and pray in peace,” said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. “While there are no credible threats specific to New York City right now, we know that we must be vigilant.” (Hamodia)

💉 COVID-19 vaccines don’t harm pregnancies, and may even help babies, according to a new study conducted at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. (Times of Israel)

🍿 Netflix announced that it is releasing 42 (!!!) movies this fall, including the Gal Gadot-starring “Red Notice.” Filming on the action thriller – which also stars Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson – began in Atlanta shortly before the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, and resumed last fall under strict COVID protocols. “I can’t wait for you to see this one,” Gadot told her 60 million (!!!) Instagram followers. (Deadline)

He said it > “You know a movie that’s one of my favorite movies and has nothing cool about it? ‘A Serious Man.’ It’s one of the best movies ever made, and it’s literally about old Jews in Minnesota. Nothing ill about it. And it’s perfect, because they’re not chasing anything.” – Jonah Hill in GQ.

What else we’re reading > How Orthodox Jews became a streaming-TV hit … Meet a few of the younger Jews who got tattooed to never forget the Holocaust … The Yiddish cover of Jimmy Buffett you didn’t know you needed.

FROM OUR OPINION SECTION 🌍

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

The lesson we should learn from Afghanistan: “For millennia, Jews have been the ones trembling in terror at the collapse of regimes and what would rise in their place,” writes Forward columnist Ari Hoffman. “We were intimately familiar with the grim choreographies of checkpoints and paperwork, eternally delayed promises of assistance and the intensities of the worst and the cowardice of allies. On innumerable mornings throughout our history, Jews woke up to find themselves rendered strangers in the lands of their birth, much as many Afghans are now reckoning with a newly harsh reality.” The path forward, Hoffman argues, is to fight for incremental efforts to improve the world. Read the story >

Most user reports of antisemitism are ignored. Platforms should be held accountable:During six weeks this summer, the Center for Countering Digital Hate flagged and reported hundreds of egregious posts to social media platforms. Some 83% were ignored. “The results were chilling,” the group’s CEO, Imran Ahmed, writes in an OpEd. Read the story >

ON THE CALENDAR 🗓

PHOTO: ABC TELEVISION

📺 On this day in history: Monte Halparin – aka Monty Hall, the long-running host of “Let’s Make a Deal” – was born on Aug. 25, 1921, the Orthodox son of a kosher butcher. He died, at 96, in 2017, and in our obituary, Benjamin Ivry wrote that Hall’s “most enduring legacy may be service to Jewish charities.” He spent about 200 days a year doing this work, raising close to $1 billion.

🎤 Today would have been conductor Leonard Bernstein’s 103rd birthday. In his honor, we are revisiting this excerpt from his daughter Jamie’s memoir about the time her dad introduced her to The Beatles.

🏞 It’s National Park Service Founders Day. An effort is underway to establish the first national park site to honor a Jewish American, Julius Rosenwald. He was an owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company and a great philanthropist, who spearheaded a movement to construct thousands of schools for African-American children across the South. Andrew Feiler recently published a photo book about those schools, excerpted in the Forward.

PHOTO OF THE DAY 📸

PHOTO: COURTESY ISRAAID

Volunteers for IsraAid help with the recovery efforts after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake left more than 2,200 people dead in Haiti. The Tel Aviv-based humanitarian agency is distributing water and other relief items, and is providing first aid and mental-health care.

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