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Good morning! I'm Talya Zax, the Forward's innovation editor and No. 1 “Sesame Street” fan. Benyamin Cohen is taking a few days off, so I’m filling in on the Forwarding desk. As usual on Mondays, we'll start with a download from our politics guru, Jacob Kornbluh, who reports that the White House announced Sunday that President Biden plans to visit Israel later this year.
THE WEEK IN POLITICS EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Israel ambassador slams Democrats (and others) in new memoir: David Friedman's book, titled “Sledgehammer,” isn't officially being released until tomorrow, but I got an early look. It offers a window onto some of the more contentious episodes of his nearly four years in the job. Those years included the moving of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the signing of the Abraham Accords, but also tension with a majority of American Jews and investigations over Friedman's partisan activities.
A problematic prayer? Friedman writes that he was “flabbergasted” by an investigation over whether he violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty, when he asked a top Orthodox rabbi in Israel to pray for the president's re-election. He cites the Forward, which reported the meeting based on a recording featured in the Hebrew media. “At one point I asked how it possibly could be illegal for a government employee to ask anything of a priest, rabbi or minister in a private meeting,” Friedman recalls himself saying during the inquiry.
Partisan furor: Friedman also criticizes Reuven Rivlin, the former Israeli president, for inviting Nancy Pelosi to a 2020 Jerusalem ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz along with Vice President Mike Pence. “‘You beg me to bring Pence as the representative of your most important ally,” Friedman says he told Rivlin's aides in a tense phone call. “But you don’t have the decency to inform me that you’re going around my back to invite the person responsible for Trump’s impeachment!’” Read our takeaways from the book➤
A hearing at last: Deborah E. Lipstadt, whose nomination as antisemitism envoy has been held up for months, is slated to testify Tuesday in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She was told she could bring two guests and chose Anna Salton-Eisen, founding president of the Texas synagogue attacked last month, and Diane D’Costa, a former University of Virginia student who testified alongside Lipstadt at last summer’s trial of the far-right organizers of a deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The hearing will be broadcast live on the committee’s website; Lipstadt’s testimony is likely to begin around noon ET.
Also on Tuesday: Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, the rabbi taken hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, during Shabbat services, will testify in a virtual House hearing about security funding for synagogues and other nonprofits.
The Knesset is expected to vote Monday on a controversial bill that would bar Palestinians married to Israeli citizens from receiving permits to live in Israel. The coalition government failed to pass a six-month extension to an existing family-unification law in July.
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD An Orthodox Jew and a biker with a Nazi tattoo walk into a hardware store: This is not the start of some new joke making the rounds on social media. It’s a real-life encounter shared by David Feder, a 64-year-old ex-hippie and nutrition counselor-gearhead who recently moved to Austin, Texas, with his wife and 4-year-old son, who is already into tools and building things. And it has a happy ending. Read his essay ➤
In case you missed it: The most-read story on our website over the weekend was this OpEd by Rafael Medoff, a Holocaust historian, about watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics against the backdrop of the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs. “Was it 2022 in Beijing or 1936 in Berlin?” Medoff asked. “Sometimes, it was hard to tell.” Read his essay ➤ WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🏀 He's the nation's top college basketball scorer — and he wears a yarmulke. Ryan Turell has captured global attention as the star of Yeshiva University's record-breaking basketball squad, and is hoping to be drafted by the NBA. When he was deciding where to go to college, the 6-foot-6 Turell decided to honor his Jewish heritage rather than play in Division I, telling his parents “‘I want to be a Jewish hero.’” (New York Times)
🏫 Massachusetts school hit by antisemitic vandals — again. An elementary school in Marblehead, about an hour north of Boston, was vandalized with swastikas and slurs against Jews three times in January, including on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “It isn’t isolated to the kids,” said a local rabbi, David Meyer. “It’s a reflection of what’s going on in the world.” (Boston.com, Salem News) 🛐 Marking a new Jewish frontier in the metaverse. Chabad-Lubavitch has plans to open a virtual reality Jewish center, modeled on its iconic world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, in Decentraland — “a sprawling virtual world that went public in 2020 and is still mostly empty.” (Times of Israel) 😔 Chicago police are seeking a man who screamed “you should all be killed” at Jewish children in January. The incident occurred in the West Ridge neighborhood, where, last week, three local synagogues, a high school and a number of Jewish businesses were vandalized with swastikas. (Fox 32 Chicago, Block Club Chicago) 🕍 Germany’s ambassador to Indonesia opened that country's first Holocaust museum last month, saying “we must remember the horrendous atrocities that happened.” But a council of Islamic scholars has already called for its demolition. (Twitter, UCA News)
😟 Did a Tennessee teacher suggest “how to torture a Jew” to students? The mother of an eighth-grader in a public-school Bible-as-literature class has filed a complaint with the ADL saying the teacher wrote out an English translation of one of the Hebrew names of God that traditional Jews are forbidden from saying aloud and announced: “If you want to know how to torture a Jew, make them say this out loud.” (Associated Press)
🙄 Nominations are in for the Razzies. A day before the announcement of this year's Oscar nominees, this raucous alternative set of awards honoring the worst of film announced its 2022 slate. Among the contenders: Ben Platt, nominated for Worst Actor for “Dear Evan Hansen.” (USA Today)
🇫🇷 The French far-right is at war with itself. Eric Zemmour, the Jewish candidate for president of France our Robert Zaretsky has compared to Tucker Carlson, is challenging Marine Le Pen for the hearts and minds of the country’s hard-line conservatives. Who's surprised it's getting nasty? (Associated Press)
Shiva call ➤ Todd Gitlin, the Bronx-born writer, activist and academic whose books included “The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage,” died on Saturday at 79. (New York Times) Another shiva call ➤ Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, who founded the first synagogue for the deaf in 1973 in Skokie, Illinois, and officiated at the bat mitzvah of Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin, died last week at 76. His mantra was: “Be kind, be kind, be kind,” as showcased in a new short video about him by Tiffany Woolf and Noam Dromi. Read their appreciation ➤orWatch the video ➤ What else we’re reading ➤ What ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt learned from his friendship with a former white supremacist — who is also Jewish … The British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr is facing blowback for a seriously off-color Holocaust joke in a new Netflix special … 80 years after the Holocaust, two Polish Jewish sisters have finally been reunited ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Robert Smigel, a comedian who worked on both “Saturday Night Live” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” was born on Feb. 7, 1960. Perhaps his most famous creation is Triumph the Insult Comic dog, the Don Rickles of puppet pooches. Smigel “has spent a good deal of his professional life with his hand up a dog’s tukhes,” writes Curt Schleier. But he has a serious side as well: Smigel and his wife, Michelle, who have a son with autism, have for years helped lead nonprofits devoted to autism research and advocacy and run the Emmy Award winning “Night of Too Many Stars” benefit.
In honor of Charles Dickens’ birthday, we take a look back to a time in history when Jews adored him, with no less a figure than Sholem Aleichem writing: “It would be great foolishness to accuse such a good soul as Dickens of antisemitism.”
Last year on this day, Andrew Yang, who was running for mayor of New York City, said he would “respect religious freedom” and not interfere with yeshiva education.
Tonight at 7 p.m. ET: Join the Forward’s editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, in a conversation with Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, about his new book, “It Could Happen Here.” The event is virtual, free and hosted by our friends at Washington’s historic Sixth & I synagogue. Register now ➤ VIDEO OF THE DAY The Beatles landed in New York City 58 years ago today and changed American music forever. Henry Grossman, a photographer famous for his portraits of luminaries like John F. Kennedy and Barbra Streisand, spent much of the rest of the '60s in company with the Fab Four. Here, he shares some of his favorite photographs — and memories. Watch the video ➤
––– Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh and Jodi Rudoren for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
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