Shabbat shalom! And what a week! First, a quick tip of the kipah to the Israeli Football club that made it to the semi-finals in the Under 20 World Cup by defeating Brazil! Alas, they were defeated by Uruguay just this morning, ending their miracle run for the World Cup, but a great and notable effort in an otherwise calamitous week in the news.
Honestly, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t need 49 pages from Jack Smith’s stunning and brutal indictment of the world’s most reprehensible orange turd to remind me that the disgraced former President is a megalomaniac, but we now have convincing evidence that he is also a danger to our country and it’s security. I think I may have overdosed on MSNBC coverage yesterday, as last night I dreamt that while the orange turd was having dinner with Woody Allen in a smoke-filled New York McDonalds, he started choking on a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and Woody Allen decided not to apply his Heimlich expertise, and instead, let him choke to death. That outcome would truly save most of the country from the potentially horrifying years ahead if the schmuck decides to stay in the public domain instead of doing what most honorable humans in his position would do – resign and stay home. But as we all know too well, the orange turd has no shame and refuses to be flushed. And unless and until he does a perp walk, gets shackled and dressed in an orange jump suit and put behind bars, we will all suffer more of his monstrous madness. This is just the beginning, so fasten your seat belts, and while we should all be pissed off that we still need to deal with this a-hole, I hope the clip below may bring some levity and laughter to an otherwise dreadful topic.
Anyone who is still clinging to the “what about Biden and Pence” argument comparing their handling of secret documents to the turds, think again. It’s the old saying, that “the cover up is worse than the crime”. The turd’s greatest legal jeopardy comes from his alleged scheming and lying to federal officials, not for simply possessing the documents. None of the others – the Clintons, Biden, or Pence – went to the turd’s lengths to avoid turning in the documents. Recall there is an ongoing special counsel investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents. And the DOJ will not charge former VP Pence for retaining classified documents.
A closing note for you history buffs: A federal indictment and/or guilty verdict does NOT preclude the orange turd from becoming President again. While this is a historical first in that no-one else has ever run for President while under federal indictment, we have had two examples of candidates that ran for President while in federal prison – Eugene V. Debs in the 1920s and Lyndon LaRouche in the 1990s. Neither was a former president. Nuf said.
Probably the biggest Jewy story of the week came out of Los Angeles where The Forward helped break the story that is now rocking the legal world. Two prominent attorneys who recently led a mass exodus from a top Los Angeles-based law firm engaged in racist, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic language about their clients and colleagues at the company, according to a review of internal emails released Monday morning. They resigned later in the day at the firm’s request.
John Barber and Jeff Ranen, two longtime members of the Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith management committee, made offensive remarks about Jews and Judaism in emails, which their former firm shared exclusively with the Forward. The firm released a larger tranche of inflammatory correspondence from the attorneys targeting other groups, as they are apparently equal opportunity bigots. Here are a few of their anti-semitic comments:
In a Sept. 13, 2012 email, Ranen wrote to Barber, “I forgot to write that we will not hire Jews,” after the latter recommended a person for a litigation contract. In a June 2012 email thread that begins with discussing a new hire, Ranen referred to Barber as a “Jew” for owing him money. The pair also singled out observant Jews. In a January 2014 email, Ranen boasted to Barber that he deliberately emails a Jewish opposing counsel on Shabbat after the person requested that he not be sent material related to a deposition on Saturdays. “This Jew is cracking me up,” Ranen wrote. “I almost ONLY write to him on Saturday mornings.” Barber responded, “Jew hater.” In a July 2014 email, Barber called Ranen a “Jew cunt” after he said he brought some bagels and cream cheese from Sam’s Bagels to the office. Ranen also used “Jew” as a verb when he suggested to colleagues that he could get a lower price for a hotel room or office space. “I might be able to Jew them down,” he wrote in a May 2016 email. He also complained about society not allowing people to ridicule Jews. “Since when can we not make Jew jokes?” Ranen wrote.
Why would these two top lawyers, who attracted over 125 other lawyers to join them in building a firm based on “empathy, collaboration and compassion” say these awful things? Their horse shit apology: “We are ashamed of the words we wrote,” the two attorneys said in a statement, “and we are deeply sorry.” The emails, they said, were “not reflections, in any way, of the contents of our hearts or of our true values.” Really? So the things we do and say in private don’t more accurately reflect what we really feel and believe? Stupid anti-semitic a-holes.
Ok, let’s get to the good stuff, those carefully curated columns of Jewy journalism copied and pasted from The Forward, Kveller, Times of Israel, JTA, The Nosh, and other delectable dispensaries of news for the Jews. Here you go:
- The secret Jewish history of the Belmont Stakes: The final leg of the Triple Crown, this Saturday on Long Island, is run on land that was farmed by Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews dating back to the 17th century. And the race was named after a Jewish immigrant: August Belmont (né Aaron Schonburg), whose political career – chair of the Democratic National Committee, broker of international trade deals, U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands – transcended the racetrack. Read the story ➤
- Is Elon Musk the most dangerous antisemite in America? I recommend that Jews across the country boycott Tesla. No reason we should be supporting someone who very clearly broadcasts his own overt anti-semitism as well as provides a platform for others who spread hate. And don’t fall for his 1st amendment bullshit. Twitter is a private company and has no obligations to guaranteed 1st Amendment rights, but he does have a responsibility to the greater commonwealth to broadcast responsibly. It’s not just that Musk has reinstated the accounts of notorious antisemites, or that he links George Soros “to the Rothschilds or implies a shadowy elite are controlling the world,” it’s that he taps into existing prejudices and fears, giving his 140 million followers a convenient scapegoat for complex societal problems. Read this essay ➤
- 💻 An Israeli nonprofit is working on training artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to be less antisemitic. “It is one of the best forms of hate speech to start training generative AI on, because it’s so nuanced,” the group’s CEO said. (Axios)
- 🇺🇸 The Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., opens tomorrow — 147 years to the day after Ulysses Grant became the first U.S. president to attend synagogue services. It includes exhibits about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Eugenia Levy Phillips, a Confederate spy. (JTA)
- Culture Tip: All the Light We Cannot See coming to Netflix in November – Netflix is turning All the Light We Cannot See, the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2014 novel by Anthony Doerr, into a four-part series. It stars Mark Ruffalo as a dad who flees Nazi-occupied Paris with his blind daughter, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a teenager working in Hitler’s regime. It debuts in the fall, watch the trailer below:
- Taylor Swift fans have amnesia. The Talmud may be able to explain why: Swifties, as the pop star’s devoted fans are known, are reporting being so overwhelmed by attending her Eras Tour that they can’t actually recall the event afterwards. It’s similar to what happened to me after several drug-induced rock concerts, or to the Jews after receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, explains the Forward’s culture reporter, Mira Fox. In the aftermath of the holy event, Jews lost pieces of knowledge. When they asked a prophet to repeat the missing info, they were told it was now in the hands of the people, part of a Jewish oral tradition. Read the story ➤
- Are Ukrainian bagels better? Bublik looks a lot like a bagel, sounds a little like a bagel, but is not quite a bagel. Bublik (pronounced boob-leek) or bubliki (plural), is the Ukrainian version of a yeasted, boiled and rounded bread that dates back to 18th century Odessa. Just like New York or Montreal-style bagels, bubliki came to Ukraine by way of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Poland and Eastern Europe, later becoming popular throughout the former Soviet Union. While bread shaped into rings dates back to the 13th century, written records of the beygl (Yiddish for bagel), date back to 1610 in Krakow, Poland, where bagels were mentioned in Jewish community ordinances. The word bublik comes from the proto-Slavic word boubl, which means swelling or bubble. These delicious rings of bread are also affectionately called bublichki, and there is even a famous Yiddish-Ukrainain song from the 1920’s with this diminutive name.
Well, it’s been quite the week, but enough already! Enjoy the weekend everyone! And stay safe out there!
Brad out.
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