Loading...
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. ➤ Give a tax-deductible donation
Meet the mayoral candidate who got shot at, the Anne Frank play too Jewish for Broadway, cannabis is saving Israeli kibbutzim, and how you can stay in Mrs. Maisel's apartment.
OUR LEAD STORY It was the most successful Jewish ad campaign of all time – but who was the model?
The iconic advertisements, which ran from 1961 into the 1970s, feature non-Jewish New Yorkers of all ethnicities and ages happily feasting on bread. The slogan? “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye.” They became pre-internet memes, widely parodied and copied. Posters sold nationwide. They’re part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian.
It was a philosemitic era in which Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Bernard Malamud’s books became best-sellers and a shtetl musical was the biggest hit on Broadway. One branding expert said the Levy’s campaign helped set the stage for more inclusive marketing by sending the message, “It’s OK to be different.”
There were many variations, including a Japanese schoolboy, a frocked choir boy, even Buster Keaton. But most likely you’ve seen the one with the Native American model. So who was that guy?
Our contributing writer Andrew Silverstein never met a New York food story he didn’t want to dig into. (You may recall his December delicious deep dive into the small town upstate that was contributing to the national cream cheese shortage.) “I decided to take a stab at solving the mystery of the man in the photo,” Silverstein writes in this reporting tour-de-force. “His story deserves to be told and by telling it, maybe we could better understand what the ad means today.”
“I hoped he was actually Native American,” Andrew adds. And if the actor turned out to be Jewish, “that would be tragically funny.”
And so he went down a rabbit hole lined with rye bread, interviewing ad mavens, digging through genealogical records and sifting through obscure Internet forums for crumbs. Along the way, he discovered a connection to Thoreau and the game show “To Tell the Truth.” And, yes, he found the man.
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD He’s (literally) running for mayor of Louisville, and he survived an assassination attempt this week. Meet Craig Greenberg:The Monday shooting at a campaign event left five bullet holes in the wall and one in Greenberg’s sweater. “It’s surreal,” he told my colleague, Louis Keene. The incident has shined a national spotlight on Greenberg, a BBYO alum and former board member of the local JCC. An avid runner, he is jogging through the city’s 635 precincts as a campaign shtick. Greenberg has raised more than the half dozen other declared Democrats in the primary for the open seat (the current mayor is term-limited) and has the endorsement of several city council members. The 21-year-old activist who shot him, meanwhile, has been released on bail. Read the story ➤
The Anne Frank play that was too dark, honest and Jewish for Broadway: Meyer Levin, a Jewish journalist, initially secured the blessing of Anne’s father to adapt the diary for the theater. But Broadway found Levin’s script, in the words of one producer, “too faithful” to Anne’s words, and a more “gentle” version of the story was produced instead. The story of Levin’s script, and its rejection by the New York theater world, is now the subject of a new play, which is being performed at Washington’s Theater J and streaming through the weekend on its website). In it, Anne is played by a marionette. Perhaps an “Anne, pulled by strings, becomes an apt metaphor in a play about people fighting to control her legacy,” writes our Lauren Markoe. Read the story ➤
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY A police car outside Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on the Shabbat of the standoff. (Getty Images) 🔫 Malik Faisal Akram tried to buy meth and a machine gun before taking a synagogue hostage in Texas last month. These and other details about the attack came during a court hearing on Wednesday for Henry Williams, who is accused of selling Akram a stolen pistol. The four hostages – including the congregation’s rabbi – escaped and Akram died in the aftermath. (AP)
📗 The leading German dictionary has changed its definition of “Jew” after an uproar. The Duden dictionary had recently added a note to its online editions saying that “occasionally, the term ‘Jew’ is perceived as discriminatory,” especially given the historic use by the Nazis, and suggested terms like “Jewish people” and “Jewish faith” be used instead in those instances. Joseph Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany was one of many who took umbrage. The “editors are certainly well-meaning in pointing out this context,” he said, but “everything should be done to avoid solidifying the term as discriminatory.” The publisher reversed course on Monday. (AP)
🇵🇸 For more than a year, Israel has jailed a Palestinian teenager with a rare autoimmune disease. The military says he was arrested twice for “suspicion of involvement in terrorist activity.” But there is no trial in sight and human rights groups’ requests for his release have been rejected. He turns 18 this week and recently contracted COVID-19 in prison. (Haaretz)
🚃 A replica of a cattle car that transported Jews to concentration camps was on display in front of Florida’s State Capitol earlier this month. Inside, visitors were given a 21-minute virtual experience. Among them was Gov. DeSantis, who crowded into the boxcar with about 40 people. “Florida will continue to be a leader in Holocaust education and in fighting antisemitism,” DeSantis posted to Twitter afterwards. “We will never forget.” (Capitol News Service)
🪴 Israeli kibbutzim have discovered a lucrative new crop: cannabis. Dozens have started growing medical marijuana, which the government subsidizes or pays for in full for approved patients. Cannabis has become even more of a financial boon since 2020, when Israel made it legal to export it to other countries. (Washington Post)
🎙️ Want to spend the night in a replica of the 1960s apartment featured in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”? Head to Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, which has converted one of its suites to look like the home of our favorite mid-century fictitious Jewish comic. Prices start at $1,675 a night … so you may want to go to a comedy club and put out a tip jar before heading to the hotel. (Bloomberg)
Shiva call ➤ Seymour Wishman, a producer and distributor of independent movies, died at 79. “I learned so much from him,” said his longtime colleague, Marc Mauceri. “Not only about film distribution, but also about his various and wide-ranging passions, from Shakespeare to horse racing, from politics to the Talmud. And always, most interestingly, what it was to grow up in a Jewish family in Newark in the mid-1900s.” (Hollywood Reporter)
FROM OUR ARCHIVES With Purim exactly one month away (Mar. 17), we dug up this photo from a 1930 edition of our newspaper. It features Yitschok Burman of Tel Aviv dressed up as king for a day. “What a fully fleshed out costume,” said Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist. “He looks like an extra from the Tudors.” ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Otto Stern, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was born on Feb, 17, 1888. Prompted by what he called a “spirit or adventure,” Stern worked with Albert Einstein and their time together had a deep influence on him. Like Einstein, Stern left Germany as the Nazis rose to power. He relocated to Pittsburgh, where he became a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Stern received 82 nominations for the Nobel over many years before eventually winning in 1943.
Also, happy birthday to the actor Joseph-Gordon-Levitt, who turns 41 today.
In honor of National Cabbage Day, check out this recipe for stuffed cabbage, the ultimate Shabbat comfort food.
VIDEO OF THE DAY In his new show, “Just for Us,” comedian Alex Edelman explores his Jewish roots and tells the story of the evening he attended a meeting of white supremacists in Queens, New York. In the video above, PBS spoke with Edelman about his show and about how he navigates the world as both a white man and a member of a minority group. Want more? Read our interview with Edelman ➤
––– Thanks to Louis Keene, Lauren Markoe, Chana Pollack, Andrew Silverstein and Jake Wasserman for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
Support Independent Jewish Journalism The Forward is a non-profit 501(c)3 so our journalism depends on support from readers like you. You can support our work today by donating or subscribing. All donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of US law.
"America’s most prominent Jewish newspaper" — The New York Times, 2021 Copyright © 2021, The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. The Forward Association, Inc., 125 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 Click here to unsubscribe from this newsletter. To stop receiving all emails from the Forward click here. |
Loading...
Loading...