WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Senior Hamas leader killed in Lebanon, Orthodox passengers booted off JetBlue flight, rabbi told to stop distracting player during NBA game, shocking new theory about the Lindbergh kidnapping, and Alanis Morissette opens up about her Jewish grandparents.

OUR LEAD STORY

Claudine Gay faced weeks of criticism and pressure from Jewish groups. (Getty)

The president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, resigned on Tuesday in the wake of plagiarism allegations and monthslong criticism of her response to antisemitism at the school.

Context: Criticism of Gay mounted following a Dec. 5 congressional hearing, where she, University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth said that calls for the genocide of Jews may not necessarily violate their schools’ codes of conduct. Magill resigned on Dec. 9.

We’ve got two opinion essays on the news…

Claudine Gay’s resignation from Harvard was necessary but insufficient: “The situation, like much of life, is more complex than the loudest voices online make it seem,” writes Peter Fox, decrying opportunists who seized on the situation to advance their own political agendas. But ultimately, he writes, “when a university president fails morally and academically, even by mistake, it’s expected that there will be an outcry. That’s not bigoted. That’s simply life.” Read his essay ➤

How culture warriors weaponized Jewish grief and forced Harvard’s president to resign: Gay’s plagiarism scandal was a serious enough offense for her to resign. But in a few years, argues Rabbi Jay Michaelson, nobody will recall that. “All we’ll remember is that that she angered some rich pro-Israel donors, activists and politicians, and they got her fired. That should be chilling.” He adds: “We have been swept up in a moral panic.” Read his essay ➤

From the archive: Back in October, President Gay spoke about antisemitism at a Shabbat dinner at the Harvard Hillel, saying she was “committed to tackling this pernicious hatred.” Read her speech ➤

ISRAEL AT WAR

Sgt. Amichai Oster was killed in battle on Monday in northern Gaza. (Courtesy IDF)

• Israeli soldier Amichai Oster, a 24-year-old reservist who rushed back to Israel from the United States after Oct. 7, was killed in Gaza.

  
  

• A senior leader of Hamas and two other members of the armed group were killed in an explosion in Beirut. It sparked fears of a wider war in the region, as Hezbollah said it would seek revenge for any Hamas killings in Lebanon.

  
  

• The Biden administration condemned calls by two Israeli government ministers for Palestinians to be removed from the Gaza Strip.

  
  

• Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont, asked Congress on Tuesday to withhold more than $10 billion in military funding for Israel, calling the war in Gaza “grossly disproportionate” and “immoral.”

  
  

• Is Alan Dershowitz going to represent Israel next week at the Hague’s International Court of Justice? Maybe.

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

(Getty)

• Three Orthodox passengers were ordered off a New Year’s Eve red-eye flight from California to New York after they changed seats for “religious purposes.”

  
  

• A rocket attack on a synagogue in northeast India Monday killed seven members of the Jewish community. But the attack was not considered antisemitic. Here’s why.

  
  

• Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, is switching districts. What does this mean for her former Democratic rival, Jewish businessman Adam Frisch?

  
  

• You’re not religious, and you’re in mourning. Here’s how to make Jewish rituals work for you.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Elie Wiesel on November 3, 1980, in New York. (Getty)

📚  A federal judge in Iowa blocked what he called a “staggeringly broad” law that would have prevented public schools from stocking “non-fiction history books about the Holocaust.” He pointed specifically to Elie Wiesel’s Night as an example of a book that could have been banned. (JTA)

🛬  Argentinian police arrested three Syrian and Lebanese nationals arriving at the airport in Buenos Aires Tuesday for possible links to a terror plot. The Pan American Maccabi games, a large Jewish sporting event, is currently taking place in Buenos Aires. (Times of Israel)

🏀  A rabbi sitting courtside at a basketball game featuring Kyrie Irving, who was embroiled in an antisemitism scandal in 2022, was asked to put down a sign which read “I’m a Jew and I’m proud” after team officials said it was causing a distraction. (Salt Lake Tribune)

🍔  An Israel boycott movement in Malaysia shared several social media posts allegedly linking fast-food restaurants to Israel’s “genocidal war.” McDonald’s Malaysia is now suing for defamation. (Reuters)

😲  A growing number of scholars and activists believe that Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh killed his baby in a eugenics experiment and then lied that the child had been murdered by a kidnapper. (San Francisco Chronicle)

🎶  Alanis Morissette, the Grammy-winning singer who was raised Catholic, revealed that her grandparents were Holocaust survivors who hid their Jewishness for many years after the war. “I think there was a terror that is in their bones,” Morissette said, “and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism.” (JTA)

What else we’re reading ➤  This Israeli sculptor’s work was ignored for 33 years. Then she got a new roommate … How Philadelphia’s faith communities held together as Oct. 7 attack tested ties … Nonprofit tracks online antisemitism with AI tools.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

The USC Shoah Foundation is conducting interviews with survivors of the Hamas terrorist attacks. In this video, Millet Ben Haim shares what she witnessed at the Nova music festival in southern Israel. Watch all of the interviews here.

Thanks to Arno Rosenfeld for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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