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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

President Biden reassures Jewish Americans in Yom Hashoah speech, two congressional hearings on antisemitism today, rapper’s music video vilifying Israel racks up millions of views, how the Forward helped rescue Sen. Jon Ossoff’s relative after the Holocaust, and meet the man atop a multimillion dollar bagel empire.

ISRAEL AT WAR

(Getty)

The U.S. paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs that it feared Israel might use in Rafah, officials confirmed on Tuesday night.

Opinion | U.S. pause on weapons to Israel is just a signal. So is Israel’s Rafah incursion: “Biden’s grand diplomatic design requires of Israel things that Netanyahu has agreed to in the past and are clearly in Israel’s interest. Now, he is rejecting them because they would cause the far-right to bring down his coalition,” writes Dan Perry. Read his essay ➤

Plus…

• Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are urging the Biden administration to reverse course on any delayed congressionally approved weapons transfers to Israel.

  
  

• Israel promised to limit its Rafah operation and to grant control of the border crossing with Egypt to a private U.S. firm.

  
  

• Lior Rudaeff, who for the past seven months was presumed to be a hostage, was confirmed killed on Oct. 7, with his body taken into Gaza.

  
  

• Delegations from Israel and Hamas arrived in Cairo to resume talks about a possible hostage deal and ceasefire. The CIA chief is in Israel today to meet with Netanyahu.

CONFLICT ON CAMPUS

There are two congressional hearings today about antisemitism at schools across the nation. (Getty)

The latest…

• There’s a congressional hearing today looking into the actions of the D.C. police, which refused to break up a pro-Palestinian protest at George Washington University. The House representative leading the committee has himself been accused of antisemitism. Related: Overnight, the D.C. police began clearing the encampment at GWU.

  
  

• At a separate congressional hearing today, House Republicans will grill public school leaders — from New York City, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Berkeley, California — about how they’re addressing antisemitism at K-12 schools in their districts.

  
  

• Students retook an encampment at MIT. Protests at the science and engineering school have taken on a mathematical spin.

  
  

• The president of Emerson College offered to pay bail for pro-Palestinian protesters.

  
  

• Protesters at the Rhode Island School of Design have barricaded themselves inside a building since Monday night.

  
  

• A Republican congressman backtracked on his praise for a conflict at the University of Mississippi that included a man who made monkey noises and gestures at a Black student who was protesting the war.

Plus…

• The rapper Macklemore released a new song that defends pro-Palestinian college protests and condemns Israel. The music video has garnered tens of millions of views.

  
  

• A 30-second ad decrying antisemitism amid the recent wave of campus pro-Palestinian encampments will air during NBA playoff games this week.

  
  

• More young voters are concerned about the economy and housing than the war in Gaza, according to new polling.

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ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Sen Jon Ossoff’s distant cousin survived the Holocaust and reconnected with family in the U.S. thanks to the Forward’s “Seeking Relatives” column. (Getty)

The untold story of how Jon Ossoff’s cousin survived the Holocaust and got to the U.S.

Nathan Krugman escaped a death march, foraged for food in the forest and, from a displaced persons camp, placed an ad in the Forward seeking a long-lost aunt. The ad appears on the bottom of Page 3 of the Feb. 13, 1946 edition, a single sentence in Yiddish among a hundred similar ones that day alone.

Annie Ossoff, Nathan’s cousin, saw the ad and sponsored his visa to the U.S.

Nathan’s cousin and Annie’s great-grandson, Sen. Jon Ossoff, recounted the story this week in a speech for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Nathan and Annie were among thousands of Jews who reconnected through “Seeking Relatives,” a column of classified ads that ran in the Forward for decades that saved and changed lives.

He started baking bagels during the pandemic. Now he rules a multimillion dollar bagel empire: “Adam Goldberg has a lot of controversial rules about bagels,” reports our Beth Harpaz. His bagel shops have minimum purchases and come with a mandatory tub of cream cheese or butter. And customers have to do their own slicing. But with $8 million in venture capital funding, a seventh store that opened Sunday, and bagels selling out daily, he must be doing something right.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is a frequent target of assassination attempts. (Getty)

🇺🇦 🇷🇺  Ukraine officials said they foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In related news, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated for a fifth term as president on Tuesday. (AP, New York Times)

😲  A Republican member of the House Oversight Committee seemed to defend the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory in a closed-door briefing on Tuesday. (X)

Shiva call ➤  Lesley Hazleton, a Jewish psychologist who wrote biographies of Muhammad and Mary and later embarked on a career as a car columnist, died at 78.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

President Joe Biden, at a speech Tuesday on Capitol Hill, pledged to keep alive the memory of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacres in the face of anti-Israel rhetoric and rising antisemitism. “We will not forget,” he told the audience of Holocaust survivors, Jewish lawmakers, students and officials.

Biden’s concern echoed that of Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, his envoy for combating international antisemitism. “The reach, the speed of the rewriting of history — or of current, contemporary events, is awesome in the worst kind of way,” Lipstadt told our Arno Rosenfeld and other reporters back in November. “If history can be rewritten so quickly nothing is safe.”  

Arno was a guest on CNN to discuss the Biden speech. Watch his segment above.

Related: Sign up for Arno’s weekly antisemitism newsletter.

Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Chana Pollack, Arno Rosenfeld, Jodi Rudoren, Andrew Silverstein and Jake Wasserman for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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