Today and Thursday are decision days at the Supreme Court, and one of the rulings expected is a Mississippi case likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized most abortions in 1973. We start this morning with the story of a 90-year-old rabbi who helped women obtain illegal abortions before Roe. |
A 'Legalize Abortion' demonstration in March 1968, in Times Square. (Getty) |
‘An act of rachmanis’: Rabbi recalls work in underground clergy network A clandestine group: Rabbi Harold Kudan, 90, was one of some 2,000 rabbis, ministers and even a few Catholic priests across 38 states that connected women with doctors willing to perform the banned procedure for six years. With the Supreme Court poised to reverse Roe, Kudan thinks it might be time to get the gang back together.
Rooted in social justice: Called the Clergy Consultation Service, the network was inspired by and drew many of its members from the civil rights movement. Kudan himself had marched in Selma with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Chicago chapter, of which Rabbi Kudan was a member, helped 10,000 women between 1969 and 1973.
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Rabbi Harold Kudan, 90, worked for years helping women access abortions. (Courtesy) |
Case files: Rabbi Max Ticktin, who ran the Hillel at the University of Chicago during those years, was arrested for setting up an abortion in Michigan — for an undercover cop. When the authorities came to search his home, they found a trove of files they hoped would lead them to other clergy in the network. But Ticktin had planned ahead: all the files were written in Hebrew. Learning from the past: Kudan himself says he was never worried about serving jail time. “Maybe I thought I had enough lawyers in my congregation to not have to feel scared.” And he still sees a glimmer of hope if Roe gets overturned. Asked why, he invoked a famous King quote – with an addendum. “The arc of history is long but bends towards justice,” Kudan said, “and yes, sometimes it even bends backwards.” Read the story ➤ |
Demonstrators gather in December 2021 in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Getty) |
Strength in numbers: An estimated 83% of American Jews said in a recent survey that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. More than 1,500 people turned out for a Jewish rally for abortion rights in Washington in May, after a draft of the opinion was leaked. ‘A win for religious fervor’: In a recent opinion column, our Rob Eshman, argues that “the anti-abortion views are rooted in a specific Christian belief that life begins at conception and that abortion, therefore, is murder. Jews don’t believe that,” he writes. “The state of Israel, which so many evangelical Christians support unreservedly, has had legalized abortion since 1977.” Read his column ➤ More abortion coverage from our archives… |
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with reporters on Monday. Is he the comeback kid? (Getty) |
The so-called “change” coalition led by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has collapsed, a year and a week after taking power. The pair announced Monday night they would dissolve the Knesset and head to early elections in September, the fifth in three years. Meanwhile, Lapid becomes interim prime minister and will host President Joe Biden when he visits Israel next month. Read the story ➤ Jacob Kornbluh, our senior political reporter, explores how Bennett lost control of his government, and what’s ahead for Lapid and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is already plotting a comeback strategy with American political advisers.Read Jacob’s analysis ➤ Abe Silberstein, a contributing opinion columnist, argues in a new essay that even though the Bennett-Lapid government failed, it was not a failure. He calls it “a watershed moment for Arab-Jewish political partnership in Israel,” and says: “The experience of the last year should inform future progressive strategies.” Read his essay ➤
Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster based in Tel Aviv, also praises the coalition as“industrious” on many issues, but saysit did harm by expanding Palestinian home demolitions and evictions. She blames the undoing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the leaders naively thought they could ignore. “The conflict,” she writes, “rips even a goodwill coalition apart.” Read her essay ➤
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
🇵🇸 A monthlong New York Times investigation found that the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was fired from the approximate location of an Israeli convoy. It did not find evidence that she was intentionally targeted, as Palestinians have suggested. But it said there were no armed Palestinians near where she was shot, contradicting Israeli claims that, if a soldier had mistakenly killed her, it was because he had been shooting at a gunman. (New York Times) 👮♂️ A Cleveland police officer is under investigation for allegedly sharing antisemitic posts on social media – including tweets complaining of “Zionist Jews” and praising “Hitler the great.” The tweets are from several years ago, and the officer is currently assigned to administrative duties with no contact with the public. (Fox8, Cleveland Jewish News) 🤔 Which European countries are best for Jews? A new, first-of-its-kind study offers unexpected answers. Italy and Hungary, where reports of antisemitism are relatively high, topped the chart. Belgium, Poland and France got the lowest marks. The European Jewish Association, which sponsored the survey, plans to make individual recommendations to each country surveyed. (JTA) 🇺🇦 Some Ukrainians who escaped bombardment in Mariupol are now fighting Israeli bureaucracy. Lengthy immigration red tape was removed in the foggy first months of the war, but that only deferred some newcomers’ problems. “I am the granddaughter of a Jewish woman with an identification number on her arm,” said one refugee. “Why did Israel greet me this way?” (Haaretz) 🇨🇴 The new president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, once compared Israel to the Nazis when criticizing its treatment of the Palestinians and accused the Israel Defense Forces of carrying out a “massacre.” Petro, a leftist rebel, was elected on Sunday, beating a candidate who had praised Hitler – and later said he meant to refer to Einstein. (Times of Israel) 🍖 New York’s hottest new restaurant, Laser Wolf, is named after the butcher from “Fiddler on the Roof.” It is the latest eatery from Israeli Chef Michael Solomonov of Philadelphia’s award-winning Zahav restaurant. (NY Post) Shiva call ➤ Lennie Rosenbluth, who led the University of North Carolina to its first national basketball title in 1957 in a triple overtime game, died at 89.
What else we’re reading ➤ How Pittsburgh’s congregations are working to include nonbinary Jews … A megadrought contributed to the fall of the Jewish kingdom in Arabia and the rise of Islam, a new study suggests … Everything to know about ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Season 5, which is now filming.
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On this day in history: Clara Immerwahr, the first woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry in Germany, was born on June 21, 1870. Born to Jewish parents, Immerwahr converted to Christianity four years before marrying fellow chemist and eventual Nobel Prize-winner Fritz Haber. Immerwahr’s own career was limited by Haber’s “oppressive way of putting himself first in our home and marriage,” she once wrote. During World War I, she spoke out against his work in chemical warfare, calling it “a perversion of the ideals of science” and a “sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights to life.” It is speculated that Immerwahr’s suicide in 1915 was in response to Haber’s overseeing of the use of chlorine gas during the Second Battle of Ypres, killing 67,000. Last year on this day, we reported that in the Netherlands, the newly vaccinated were gifted an Eastern European Jewish staple — herring. It’s officially the first day of summer, so here’s a secret Jewish history of the Beach Boys.
Tonight at 7 p.m. ET: Join us for a conversation about journalism in a time of antisemitism. Jodi Rudoren, the Forward’s editor-in-chief, will be talking to her sister, Debbi Wilgoren of The Washington Post, about the roles that their respective publications play in covering extremism — and about how they both got into the journalism racket in the first place. You can watch the livestream here ➤
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The actor Ben Stiller met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Monday after visiting several areas in the region to mark World Refugee Day. “You are my hero,” Stiller told Zelenskyy in the video above from Bloomberg News. “You quit a great acting career for this.” To which Zelenskyy jokingly replied: “Not so great as you.” ––– Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Rudy Malcom and Jodi Rudoren for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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