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| INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. SINCE 1897. Give a tax-deductible donation An antisemitic blogger at the State Department, Gotham's newest superhero is a Jewish teen, judge orders Nazi sympathizer to read 'Pride and Prejudice' and more. OUR LEAD STORY🤰 1,000 rabbis are working for abortion rights. Their fight just got tougher.
As the Supreme Court let the nation’s strictest abortion law, a new Texas ban on the procedure in most cases after six weeks of pregnancy, we took a look at the new Jewish abortion-rights advocacy group, “Rabbis for Repro.”
The politics of faith: “So much of the discourse out there pits people who are pro-choice with people of faith – that’s a false dichotomy,” Houston’s Rabbi Joshua Fixler said in an interview. “We have the opportunity as Jews to show that our support for reproductive justice is rooted in our Jewish values and our Jewish texts and I have found that elected officials find that surprising and motivating.”
Making it personal: Rabbi Mara Nathan of San Antonio has long planned to talk about the topic in her Rosh Hashanah sermon. “It’s not a law that affects my personal life, but I have an 11-year-old daughter,” she told our news editor, Lauren Markoe. “I think of all the women I know who are of reproductive age or will be of reproductive age and how it will affect their autonomy.”
Future implications: The Supreme Court’s refusal to block the law, in a 5-4 vote just before midnight Wednesday, could be a harbinger of a much broader shift on abortion after the justices hear a Mississippi case this fall that could overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Quotable: Jews teaching Jews about the importance of protecting reproductive rights, “may feel like preaching to the choir,” said Fixler, “but it’s time for the choir to get up and sing.”
And in Opinion: Last Rosh Hashanah, we lost RBG. This year, her legacy is in jeopardy. “In the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, we are witnessing the Supreme Court sit idly by as the most restrictive abortion ban any state has ever imposed goes into law,” writes National Council of Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz, urging Jews to “fight back in Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”
From our archives: Silent no more: Forward readers share their abortion stories ‘My dark secret’: Orthodox women, too, terminate pregnancies
ALSO IN THE FORWARD 🦸 She’s 16. She’s Jewish. She’s Gotham’s newest superhero:It’s not too often that a DC Comics character mulls the meaning of mitzvot or gains superpowers outside a synagogue. Whistle is the company’s first new Jewish superhero in decades, and a new graphic novel about her offers a deep connection to the previously untapped Yiddishkeit of Batman’s Gotham. Our PJ Grisar spoke with creator, E. Lockhart. Read the story >
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY👇 THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IDA ON A STREET IN JEAN LAFITTE, LOUISIANA. (GETTY IMAGES) 🌧 Most of the synagogues in Louisiana survived Hurricane Ida with little damage, but it could be weeks before their electricity is restored. Local rabbis are again redrawing High Holiday plans. Jewish communities in Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama have all extended offers of hospitality. … Meanwhile, the storm shifted to the northeast, causing severe flash flooding and damage in New York and New Jersey, where both states declared a state of emergency Wednesday night. (Southern Jewish Life, JTA)
🇺🇸 State Department employees are urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to fire a colleague who operates an antisemitic blog, calling his presence at the office “threatening.” The Forward has obtained Blinken’s response to the letter, which says the department takes such allegations “with utmost seriousness.” (Forward)
📚 A Nazi sympathizer in England who downloaded bomb-making instructions has been sentenced to read classic novels including “Pride and Prejudice” and Shakespeare plays. Ben John, 21, will avoid prison but have to return to court every four months to be tested on his reading. He’ll probably love parts of “The Merchant of Venice.” (ITV)
😷 The American Jewish journalist Danny Fenster, imprisoned for more than 100 days under Myanmar’s military regime, is exhibiting signs of COVID-19, according to his family. “Our family, like many, share a history of hardships,” said Bryan Fenster, Danny’s brother. “Our 95-year-old grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. We are confident Danny will persevere in his current circumstances, and come home soon.” (Forward)
💰 More than 160 rabbis and other Jewish leaders from New York are sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Schumer today asking him to prioritize immigration reform in the $3.5 trillion budget winding its way through Congress. (T’ruah)
🕯Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C. on Wednesday, speaking about his family’s tragic experience in the Holocaust, and the responsibility to learn from history. (Twitter)
💊 A federal bankruptcy judge ordered the dissolution of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, and ordered its owners, members of the Sackler family, to pay $4.5 billion to help settle a mountain of lawsuits. If approved, the agreement bars future opioid-related suits against the Sacklers. (NPR)
📰 If you like Jewish journalism (ahem), check out the just-relaunched Canadian Jewish News. The 61-year-old publication shuttered amidst the pandemic last year, but we’re happy to report it restarted this week as an all-digital publication. They’ve even launched a daily podcast. (JTA)
🍿 Netflix announced Wednesday that all 180 episodes of “Seinfeld” will be arriving on the streaming service on Oct. 1. To quote the show’s co-founder, Larry David: That sounds pretty, pretty, pretty good. (Rolling Stone)
NEW EPISODE ALERT 🎧 On our Jewish advice podcast, the hosts contemplate a letter from “Frustrated and Sad,” a Jewish mother peeved she doesn’t hear more from her adult children. “They appear to believe that unless I’m sick or if their step-dad is ill, there’s no need to call,” she writes. Bintel hosts Ginna and Lynn, both Jewish mothers, get extra help with this question from – who else? – the hosts of Kveller’s podcast, “Call Your Mother.” Listen now >
FROM OUR ARCHIVES 🐟 Take a look at this 1961 Rosh Hashanah ad for Rokeach (bottled!) gefilte fish. It featured either Yiddish celeb Molly Picon (soon to be seen as Yentl in the forthcoming “Fiddler” movie) or a really good look-a-like telling readers that “cookbooks are for amateurs.” The tagline was actually this, in the mameloshen: recipe shmecipe.
ON THE CALENDAR 🗓 On this day in history: Arnold Greenberg, the founder of Snapple, was born on Sept. 2, 1932. He began his career selling herring and lox at his parents’ appetizing store in Manhattan’s East Village. When he and his partners introduced Snapple (an amalgam of “snappy” and “apple”) in 1972, they discovered a small Texas company already owned the copyright. They bought the name for $500. Monikers were very important to Greenberg who, according to his 2012 obituary in The New York Times, once considered naming a new flavor Guava Nagila.
Also born on this day: Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
And one more: Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl, a biologist and inventor, created the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. Weigl worked during the Holocaust to save the lives of countless Jews by developing the vaccine and providing shelter to protect those suffering under the Nazis in occupied Poland. Google is honoring him on their homepage today.
At 1:45 p.m. ET President Biden will meet virtually with rabbis to mark the High Holidays.
PHOTO OF THE DAY 📸 Four Democratic Senators – Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jon Ossoff, the Georgia freshman – are visiting Lebanon and Israel this week. While in Jerusalem, they plan on meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
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