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New developments in case of rabbi caught in sex sting, California ruling may impact Jewish divorce cases, and a review of the Holocaust-themed new season of 'Russian Doll' on Netflix.
OUR LEAD STORY The railway tracks leading to the Auschwitz II - Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. (Getty) This year’s March of the Living may be the final one with Holocaust survivors in attendance. Our Nora Berman is heading to Poland to walk alongside them on the historic route from Auschwitz to Birkenau and document their stories. She previews her trip here ➤
A smaller crowd: The annual Holocaust Remembrance Day trek through Poland’s most infamous concentration camp last took place in 2019 and had 10,000 participants, including 70 survivors. This year, after a pandemic-induced hiatus and with war raging in neighboring Ukraine, organizers expect 2,000 people, and only eight survivors.
The last survivors: “With a heavy heart,” said one of those eight, 91-year-old Eve Kugler, “I pass responsibility for the remembrance of the Holocaust to members of the third generation.” An estimated 50,000 survivors remain in the United States, half of them over age 85 – and none planning to attend this year’s march.
Denial and distortion: Nora, our deputy opinion editor, is deeply concerned about recent surveys showing Holocaust ignorance among her peers. One poll showed 11% of Millennials and members of Gen Z thought Jews were responsible for the Holocaust and nearly half had seen false information about it on social media. “How can we fulfill the mission of never forgetting the six million,” she asks, “without the testimony of living survivors?”
Read Nora’s preview of her trip here ➤
CLEVELAND RABBI SEX STING Cleveland rabbi suspended by synagogue after arrest in sex sting: Leaders of the Conservative movement and the Cleveland Jewish community are reeling after the arrest and suspension of Rabbi Stephen Weiss, 60, after the authorities said he solicited an undercover cop posing as a 15-year-old boy. The arrest comes amid a spate of rabbinic misconduct allegations in Ohio and a broad reckoning around sexual harassment and abuse across major American Jewish institutions. Here’s what you need to know about the case…
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD In Netflix’s ‘Russian doll,’ inherited Holocaust trauma spills through generations — via time travel:The “Groundhog Day”-like show returned this week for its second season. Instead of the main character reliving a single day over and over again, she goes back in time to visit her grandmother, who survived World War II; much of the series takes place in a renovated yeshiva. Mira Fox, our digital-culture reporter, writes that the show demonstrates the “convoluted ways in which the Holocaust impacts the psyche of third-generation descendants, no matter how distanced they are from the event itself.” Read her review ➤
Judge deems refusal to grant a Jewish divorce a form of domestic violence: The unprecedented ruling comes out of a new California law that expanded the definition of domestic violence to include coercive control, and could improve the legal position of agunot – religious women who are stuck in failed marriages by husbands who refuse to sign a get, or Jewish divorce decree. The number of agunot is unknown, but one advocate said at least a dozen women in similar situations could benefit from the ruling, which granted the woman full custody of the couple’s children. Read the story ➤
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY Israel's Iron Dome intercepted rockets from Gaza on Thursday. (Getty Images) 🇮🇱 Israeli aircraft attacked the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning after intercepting a series of rockets fired by Palestinians there. The Israeli military said it had hit several Hamas targets, including one near an underground complex housing raw materials for rockets. Officials said that Palestinians fired four rockets early Thursday and one late Wednesday that were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses. “We are still at beginning of the battle,” Hamas threatened. (Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Haaretz)
⚖️ A New Jersey man was charged with federal hate crimes for a series of violent attacks on Orthodox Jews in and around the city of Lakewood. Dion Marsh, 27, is accused of striking three men with a car and stabbing one in the chest with a knife on April 8. If convicted, he could face life behind bars. (NBC News)
😮 A Fresno State University task force has found that the man the school library is named for was a rabid antisemite. Combing through the papers of Henry Miller Madden, a historian who served as the university’s librarian for 30 years, the group found that he wrote about wanting to drag barefoot Jews into a remote area and that “target practice will be permitted twice weekly, with explosive bullets to be used on Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Purim, etc.” A history professor who worked on the project, aimed at helping officials decide whether to rename the library, said: “I think all of us were surprised by the extent, the virulence.” (J. The Jewish News of Northern California)
🚀 The Israeli astronaut who spent the beginning of Passover aboard the International Space Station was supposed to return on Tuesday, but weather delayed the landing. He now expects to arrive back on Earth on Saturday. Here’s hoping he brought enough matzah and macaroons. (Space.com)
📺 Coming soon to a streaming service near you: A true-crime series called “Murder of a Jewish American Princess.” It’s based on the 1981 killing of Elana Steinberg, and the unsuccessful prosecution of her husband, Steven. (Deadline)
🥚 A Twitter account went viral for explaining Easter using Jewish jargon. It described morning Mass, for example, as “Christian shacharit services,” and said: “Some Christian shuls hold a special egg hunt activity for children.” The tweet was shared thousands of times. (JTA)
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: The musician Prince was found dead of an accidental drug overdose in his suburban Minneapolis home on April 21, 2016. Prince grew up not far from the heavily Jewish neighborhood of St. Louis Park; one of his best childhood friend was Jewish, and his band, The Revolution, consisted in large part of Jewish members. There was drummer Bobby Z (Robert Rivkin); keyboardist “Doctor” Matthew Fink and violinist Novi Novog. Prince’s late music career coincided with a turn to religion — and an interest in Jewish themes. Read more in our secret Jewish history of Prince ➤
VIDEO OF THE DAY After Ruth Katcher’s mother died, she was cleaning out the cellar and found a dusty 8mm reel of film. “Instead of a metal storage canister,” she said, “it had been wrapped in wax paper and aluminum foil, like a sandwich.” She unspooled a few feet and saw the words: Passover Feast 1932. She had it digitized and finally sat down recently to watch.
There was her great-grandfather, in an old-fashioned kippah at the head of a long table, leading the Seder on April 21, 1932 – exactly 90 years ago today. He was a Ukrainian immigrant who had resettled in Philadelphia, living out his American dream despite the Great Depression.
“To me,” writes Ruth, “this brief film underscores a vital center of Judaism, making the connection between past and present, of pulling up stakes and fleeing from oppression into the unknown, of leaving home and coming home, of family ties preserved and honored. And of the imperative of stories, to tell and retell, for ourselves and for the future.”
––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)
Thanks to Kayla Cohen, Louis Keene and Jodi Rudoren for contributing to today's newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
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