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New anti-Israel campaign at Tufts University, books by Iranian Jewish women honor the Persian New Year, and the Broadway vocal coach who taught cantorial students.
WAR IN UKRAINE Russian bombs struck the western Ukrainian city of Lviv Friday morning, the start of the war's fourth week. Lviv, near the Polish border, had not seen active hostilities until now; some 200,000 refugees have flocked to the city to escape conflict in other parts of the country.
In Ukraine, much of the world’s matzah supply is under fire:Prior to the war, Dnipro boasted the largest Jewish community in Ukraine. It is home to the Menorah Center, an enormous building shaped in seven towers after the eponymous candelabra, the largest Chabad center in the world. The city also produces nearly all of the handmade matzah for the former Soviet world, and also exports more than 70 tons to Western Europe, the United States and other places. Now with the city under attack, and Passover a month away, the fate of the matzah is uncertain. Read the story ➤
One woman’s quick and quixotic Ukraine relief effort: Barbara Cook was watching the horror in Ukraine unfold on the news and feeling helpless when she stood up, turned off the television, and started packing her bags. Fifty-six bags, to be precise. A few days later, she was at a synagogue in Poland, distributing much-needed clothing to people who are starting life from scratch. En route, the chief baggage handler at the Warsaw airport told Cook the only people who arrived with so much luggage were oligarchs and movie stars. Read the story ➤
Ukraine and the Holocaust 'When I start thinking about Russia and Ukraine, my soul is torn apart,' said Roza Nemirovskaya. Why some Holocaust survivors mourn Ukraine, while others support Putin: A Moscow-born journalist living in Los Angeles spoke to several survivors who are also from the former Soviet Union. One remembered being forced to flee her hometown in western Ukraine before hundreds of Jews were slaughtered and buried in a mass grave – she never imagined another war would devastate her homeland in her lifetime. But two other survivors echoed disinformation campaigns emanating from the Kremlin and its state-sponsored media. “It’s my understanding Putin didn’t want this war,” said one. The other said, “The Ukrainian government is a group of nationalists. We need to destroy them.”Read the story ➤
Quote of the day ➤ “Every year politicians repeat the words ‘never again’ and now we see that these words are simply worth nothing,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in a speech to the German parliament.
And a bit more about Ukraine Christians are helping hundreds of Ukrainian Jews escape the war to Israel. “It’s God’s work, not humanitarian work,” said one.Babyn Yar was his backyard. Now this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor has escaped Ukraine after a harrowing ordeal. Three Israeli rescue organizations banded together to pay for a charter jet to rescue 13 Holocaust survivors from the region. Yuli Edelstein was born in Ukraine and spent three years in a Soviet prison. Now he’s a member of the Israeli Knesset. The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museumhas a Volodymyr Zelenskyy bobblehead in production. Some of the proceeds will go to help Ukrainian relief efforts.ALSO FROM THE FORWARD Barbra Streisand wields a fork as she sits beside Peter Bogdanovich. (Getty) Peter Bogdanovich’s best film may be his messiest: Bogdanovich, who began his career curating for MoMA, is now the subject of his own retrospective at the museum. But while many flock to see “Paper Moon” or “The Last Picture Show,” Forward critic Jackson Arn thinks you should check out 1981’s “They All Laughed.” It’s best-remembered for starring Bogdanovich’s girlfriend Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered before the film’s release. “Every actor nails their performance, an astonishing thing given that they’re all working in such different registers,” Arn writes of the messy masterpiece, “a delightful hodgepodge of styles promiscuously rubbing against one another, making weird music.” Read the story ➤
Celebrate Nowruz with books by Iranian Jewish women:Nowruz, Persian New Year, is Sunday. Lauren Hakimi, one of our interns, has curated a reading list of memoirs and novels that dig into Iranian Jewish identity, whether in the city Mashhad, where Jews were compelled to live outwardly as Muslims from the mid-19th century on, or in contemporary Los Angeles. As you read, Hakimi suggests, “try not to think too hard about how Iranian American Jews have thrice as many new years as their mono-calendrical counterparts.” See the list ➤ WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🏫 Students at Tufts University have started a campaign urging peers not to join groups or programs “that normalize or benefit” Israel — including the campus branch of J Street, which advocates for a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict. Some say it’s a new and troubling tactic in the broader move to boycott Israel. (JTA)
📈 More than half of Jews reported religious discrimination in the workplace in a new survey of 11,000 people. Most were talking about micro-aggressions and stereotyping: a Jewish woman in Indiana, for example, said her colleagues described her as “good at bookkeeping and keeping track of money.” (Religion News Service)
🚓 Following the death of George Floyd, two executives at the Anti-Defamation League proposed that the group stop sponsoring trips for American police officers to receive training from Israeli forces. In a newly-revealed memo, they suggested the ADL would “eliminate a program with limited impact and high controversy,” warning of lost donor revenue. Instead, the group updated the program’s curriculum. (The Guardian)
🇮🇱 Passover, Easter and Ramadan all overlap in the same week this year, a calendrical occurrence that happens about once a decade. This has Tom Nides, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, concerned about potential violence in Jerusalem. Nides sent a cable weeks ago warning the State Department: “I wrote, ‘Wake up everybody, this is really a problem,’” he said. The Biden administration, he added, “is fixated now on what could be a really serious issue.” (Axios)
🇳🇱 In February 1941, Nazis in Amsterdam rounded up around 400 Jewish men – the first of more than 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands to be murdered during the Holocaust. Nobody knew what happened to that first group of victims – until now. A Dutch historian made it her mission to track down their stories, and has accounted for 390 of the men. Her work is now part of an exhibition at Amsterdam’s city archive. (New York Times)
🎵 The 87-year-old Broadway vocal coach who died after being shoved to the ground on a Manhattan street was mourned by cantorial students she had taught at various Jewish seminaries. “Everyone fell in love with her,” Jeff Warschaeur, a cantor in New Jersey, said of Barbara Maier Gustern, who was not Jewish. “She seemed timeless.” (NY Jewish Week)
ON THE CALENDAR Left to right: Ben Cohen, Jimmy Fallon and Jerry Greenfield unveiling a new ice cream flavor in 2011. (Getty) On this day in history: Ben Cohen – not me, but the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream – was born on March 18, 1951, on Long Island. Other famous Ben Cohens include a sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal; a world championship rugby player; and a British journalist who was once sued by Apple and ran a porn empire. Again, just to be clear, I am none of these people. However, I am friends with a Canadian Binyamin Cohen.
Also on this day: In 1940, Hitler and Mussolini met in the Alps to discuss strategy.
Last year on this day, we were huddled around our TVs watching the highly anticipated third season of “Shtisel.” Read our review ➤
YOUR WEEKEND READS Each week we curate some of our favorite articles into a printable magazine. In this edition, you’ll find our interview with Barry Manilow about his new Jewish musical; the story of a group of women who are forming a choir at the Western Wall; and every Jewish thing there is to know about Batman (including that one time he confronted the Golem of Gotham). Plus, articles about Putin, petroleum, and Purim. Download your copy here ➤
––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)
Thanks to Nora Berman, Rob Eshman, PJ Grisar, Rudy Malcom, Eliya Smith and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
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