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| Today's newsletter is sponsored by Kripke Institute JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. Give a tax-deductible donation Imagining our ancestors' Spotify 'Wrapped' lists, Hallmark releases its first movie entirely about Hanukkah, and antisemitic incidents in Chicago, Florida and Pennsylvania. OUR LEAD STORY Germany cut a reparations check to a Holocaust survivor. Then it demanded the money back.
For surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, Amira Gezow received 72.55 euros (roughly $80) per month from the German government. She got checks every three months until she died this year at the age of 92. Then the unthinkable happened.
Calculating the incalculable: Germany began paying reparations to living victims of the Nazis in 1951, but Gezow only began the complex paperwork to receive them in the 1980s. “Depending upon what country you were from, and how old you were, and what persecution you experienced,” one expert explained, “you might be entitled to a range of different pensions or one-time payments.”
After death: Ayelet Gezow was still mourning her mother when she opened a letter from the German government containing a ruthless calculation. Amira had died two months into her most recent three-month disbursement period, it said, so Germany wanted 72.55 euros back. Ayelet called the consulate to complain. “She was yelling at me, saying I was stealing money from Germany,” the daughter recalled in an interview. “You would think that with the history, there’d be some decorum, some sensitivity — something.”
Germany’s response: Asked to explain, the consulate’s Anton Klix told the Forward: “Pension payments are meant to compensate Holocaust survivors for their personal sufferings. Any amount that was intended for a period after the passing of a survivor could not serve this purpose.”
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD Why the story of cream cheese is the story of Jews in America:The world’s preeminent cream cheese expert is Rabbi Jeffrey Marx, a member of the Breakstone family. He has spent years poring over the legal records of 19th century dairy farmers and studying how Eastern European immigrants adapted to the new world. “Bagels and lox was not a call back to the Old World,” Marx said. “Instead, it was an announcement that American Jews had arrived.”Read the story >
But wait, there’s more… Karen Bass, a leading candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, talked with our Rob Eshman about Ilhan Omar, Jewish communal diversity and her daughter’s death. Opinion: Our Reform leaders sinned. Should we still sing songs they wrote? Thanks to the new movie “Licorice Pizza,” we can now glimpse the Haim family’s Shabbat dinners.
A message from our sponsor: Kripke Institute Hanukkah Homecoming is Nov 28 - Dec 5 Join a worldwide "open house" of Jewish communities inviting you to celebrate Hanukkah onsite and online together during Hanukkah Homecoming, November 28 - December 5, 2021.
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 🎶 Spotify sent users “Wrapped” lists this week highlighting their most listened-to songs of 2021. What if biblical characters were around today to stream music? We took a gander at the best-0f lists of Abraham, Sarah, Leah, Jacob and more. (Forward)
💉 “Sorcery” was the fastest-growing search term on a Bible website in 2021. Why? Some evangelical Christians who are skeptical about coronavirus vaccines are referring to the pharmaceutical industry as sorcerers. (Religion News Service)
🕍 Antisemitism blotter: Chicago police have launched a hate-crimes investigation after someone scrawled racist and antisemitic graffiti on a synagogue … Near Miami, officers are searching for a suspect who vandalized a Jewish community center … and in Carlisle, Penn., the authorities are trying to find out who’s responsible for placing Hitler stickers around the Jewish center at Dickinson College. (Chicago Sun-Times, WSVN, JNS)
🌳 Saplings from a tree that survived the Holocaust were planted on Thursday in Manhattan. “We want everybody in Battery Park City to be able to walk by and see a piece of history,” said Jack Kliger of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. “To not only remember but to understand what resilience means in the face of tremendous odds.” (JTA)
📚 Ten years after the Arab Spring, a suite of Egyptian novels newly translated into English look at how the revolution changed the act of storytelling. Our Talya Zax read them, and says they “reflect the ways in which those upheavals affected the imaginative lens through which people relate to themselves and each other.” (Literary Hub)
Mazel tov > To Roy Schwartz, a Forward contributor and author of “Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero,” for winning the humorous-but-very-real Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
What we’re watching > Hallmark’s holiday movie “Eight Gifts of Hanukkah” airs this weekend. It’s being billed as the channel’s first film entirely about the Jewish festival, and stars Israeli actress Inbar Lavi and Canadian Jake Epstein, who also appeared in the 2019 film “Mistletoe & Menorahs.” Seriously.
BEFORE WE BID FAREWELL TO HANUKKAH The colorful history of the U.S. Postal Service’s Hanukkah stamp:What began in 1996 with a humble, gum-activated 32-cent commemorative stamp with striking colors has evolved each year with new typography and art. The 2013 edition featured a menorah built by a Vermont blacksmith. But perhaps we should be looking to our friends from the north for inspiration. Canada, for the past three years, has rabbinic approval for its Hanukkah stamps, writes Irv Osterer, a philatelist.Read the story >
Our readers share a very merry mixed bag of feelings about the so-called holiday season: Jodi Rudoren, our editor-in-chief, recently went on something of a rant about the “ALL-idays” amalgam of Santas, sleighs, and Starbucks specialty flavors. Our inbox was flooded with reader responses, many of whom do not have a Christmas chip on their shoulder. We even heard from a cantorial soloist who moonlights in a church quartet. One woman reminded us of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. “That doesn’t mean you have to love Christmas,” she wrote. “But for me, it means working on empathy for those who have practices different from my own.”
ON THE CALENDAR Left to right: Anna Freud, Marie Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud and Prince Peter of Greece. (Getty Images) On this day in history: Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund and a psychoanalyst herself, was born on Dec. 3. 1895. She was a psychologist who established clinics and nurseries for children who were war victims or survivors of the Holocaust. She pioneered vocabulary that helped define the field, explaining concepts such as defense mechanisms, denial, projection and regression. After her death in 1982, according to her wishes, her London home was turned into the Freud Museum, dedicated to her father.
Last year on this day, we were kvelling over an entire category on “Jeopardy!” being devoted to Yiddish. The $800 answer: The opening to “Laverne & Shirley” used these two words, one meaning an oaf, the other, an unlucky person. (Question: What are schlemiel and schlemazel?)
YOUR WEEKEND READS Back by popular demand! We’re once again collecting our favorite Forward stories each Friday and producing a printable magazine for easy-reading over the weekend. In this week’s issue, you’ll find stories about Hanukkah, Mel Brooks, Stephen Sondheim and much more. Download it now >
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