 JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.  Jewish philanthropist to return $70 million in plundered artifacts, Bob Dole's fight for Soviet Jewry, Drake withdraws from Grammys, and baking the world's best rugelach. FROM THE FORWARD  Mike Bloomberg: Partisanship blinds too many Jews to antisemitism within their own parties:“Today is the last day of Hanukkah – a holiday that marks a miracle,” Bloomberg said at an event hosted by the United Jewish Appeal Monday night. “But it began with a civil conflict among Jews, torn apart by the pressure of living under Greek rule.” He asked American Jews to quit engaging in what he called “a perverse form of what-about-ism” in which they say “in effect, ‘the antisemites in your party are far worse than the ones in mine.’” Our Jacob Kornbluh has the details. Read the story >
Opinion | The Nazis used America during the 1936 Olympics. We cannot fall for the same propaganda tactics:The Biden administration said Monday that they would not send government officials to next year’s Winter Games in China to protest what the State Department has described as its “ongoing genocide” against the Uyghurs. (U.S. athletes will still compete.) Rafael Medoff, a Holocaust scholar, argues that the Olympics will give China a prime public-relations opportunity – and sees echoes of 1936, when Hitler’s hosting of the Games strengthened his image abroad. Read the OpEd >
An absolutely jaw-dropping Israeli documentary – but is all of it true? The film “Speer Goes to Hollywood” won the Israeli Oscar and tells the story of Nazi architect Albert Speer based on conversations between Speer and screenwriter Andrew Birkin recorded in the 1970s. But the film takes many liberties with the tapes, which the Forward also reviewed, and in some cases appears to invent dialogue. “Collectively,” Birkin said, “it makes it sound like I was a collaborator.” Read the story >
Bob Dole fought for Soviet Jews:The late senator worked for years on the cause – including, in 1982, donning a yarmulke and presiding over a Jewish long-distance wedding between a dissident in D.C. and a woman seeking to escape from the Soviet Union. “I will not rest, and you will not rest, America will not rest, until they are all free,” Dole said at a 1987 rally on behalf of 400,000 Jewish refuseniks. Photographer Robert A. Cumins was there and shared images from the event, which also featured Natan Sharansky. Read the story and see the photos >
Looking for chill Jewish conversation online? Try this Reddit group: The social media platform is known for being at turns chaotic, toxic, random or serendipitous, but its biggest Jewish channel is a pretty happy place where participants crack jokes about the weekly Torah portion, show off their menorah setups and solicit guidance on religious matters. Our Louis Keene spoke to the forum’s moderators about how they keep hate out of this popular online Jewish space. Read the story >
Netflix’s glass-blowing special seemed a little too Christmas-y for its Jewish contestants: “Blown Away” is a delightful, serotonin- and innuendo-filled bit of reality television in which artists impressively mold molten glass they’ve pulled out of 2,000-degree furnaces. This season, one of the challenges asked contestants to make pieces evoking personal Christmas memories….which many did not have. “How do you evoke a powerful memory of Christmas morning joy when you didn’t grow up with stockings or gifts?” wondered our digital culture critic, Mira Fox. Read the story >
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY  🕍 The state of Pennsylvania has given Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue $6.6 million to transform the site of the 2018 shooting, the nation’s deadliest attack on Jews. Architect Daniel Libeskind is working on the design, which will include a memorial; worship and education spaces; and a wing for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. (JTA)
🌎 Michael Steinhardt, the mega-donor to Jewish causes, has agreed to surrender 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million to their rightful homelands and to never again collect ancient artifacts. Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance said Steinhardt “displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts” without concern for the “grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe.” (JTA)
🙏 For the first time since 2006, seminaries have seen a rise in enrollment. “The pandemic has really sparked something in terms of feeling a sense of urgency around questions of faith, particularly when life is sort of shifting in ways that we haven’t seen before,” said the dean of New York Theological Seminary. (Washington Post)
🇮🇱 Shira Isakov was stabbed 20 times by her husband. Now she’s become a national figure in Israel, working to combat violence against women. “I didn’t choose what happened to me,” she said. “But I have chosen my path forward in life. (New York Times)
🎤 Drake, the superstar Jewish rapper, has removed himself from competition at the 2022 Grammy Awards, where he had two nominations. He has long been a critic of the awards. “This is a business where sometimes it’s up to a bunch of people that might not understand what a mixed-race kid from Canada has to say or a fly Spanish girl from New York, or a brother from Houston,” Drake said at the 2019 Grammys before his microphone was cut. (Variety)
Shiva call > Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, died at 66 of cardiac arrest. He joined the paper in 1981 as a reporter and later moved up to become co-bureau chief of Tokyo and Moscow with his wife, Margaret Shapiro. He had been running the editorial page since 2000, using the powerful platform to champion human rights, caution against a Trump presidency and condemn the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for the paper. (New York Times, Washington Post)
FROM OUR KITCHEN  How to bake Jewish desserts like a pro: When our food columnist Liza Schoenfein sat down to interview Dorie Greenspan, the author of a delightful new cookbook, she had a confession: “I’d never made either babka or rugelach,” Schoenfein said. “I always thought, ‘Why bother?’ I live near Zabar’s.” But Greenspan, who is pictured above and who has won five James Beard awards, convinced her to try. Find out what happened next, and check out Greenspan’s recipe for cheese-swirl babka buns and rugelach with four fillings.
But wait, there’s more…
ON THE CALENDAR  On this day in history: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The event caused Hank Greenberg, the Jewish baseball slugger at the height of his career, to announce that he would enlist in the Army Air Corps. He spent 47 months in military service, the longest of any player during the war. When he returned, he more or less picked up where he left off: hitting a home run in his next big-league game.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the third of Tevet. On this date in 1791, Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the false Messiah Shabbetai Zvi, died.
In honor of Illinois Day, check out these 12 Jewish facts about the Prairie State – including that the inventor of the cell phone was the Chicago-born Martin Cooper. (Read our recent interview with him.)
Tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET: Join a screening of the documentary, “Shared Legacies,” which explores Black-Jewish cooperation during the civil rights movement. Afterward, Jodi Rudoren, our editor-in-chief, will moderate a panel with the film’s director, Shari Rogers, Prof. Bruce Haynes of the University of California, Pastor Harriet Johnson of Park United Methodist Church in Bloomfield, N.J., and Rabbi Marc Katz of Temple Ner Tamid, which is also in Bloomfield and is hosting the hybrid event. Register now >
PHOTO OF THE DAY  We kind of always assumed that Billy Crystal’s character in “Monsters, Inc.” was Jewish, but now we have some proof. It comes courtesy of this image from Pixar’s Instagram account. “Nothing compares to the moment of sitting around as a family,” Jake Kaplan, a production coordinator, wrote alongside of the image he drew. “Lighting the menorah, and feeling the warm glow of the dancing lights grow night after night – pushing away all the darkness.”
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