Shabbat shalom! 

And a tip of the kipah this week to Jack Smith, who authored one of the more stunning bits of story telling that will likely take its place along side the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburgh Address as important historical documents. The story he laid out everyone knows by now, and would be the envy of any Hollywood writer as you literally cannot make this shit up: the orange turd created a huge lie about the 2020 election in order to appease his bruised loser ego, and together with a cadre of nincompoops, conspired to subvert the democratic transition of power by bullying his Vice President and ignoring the advice of his counselors who insisted it was a really shitty idea. After failing and ignoring all advice, he then incited an attack on the Capital and ignored pleas from friends and family to put a halt to it. As one wag put it, “That a malefactor could do all that (and that’s just one set of charges!) and stand a good chance of being elected again should concern anybody with a frontal lobe.”

My frontal lobe is about to explode. I’m not sure it, or the country for that matter, will be able to withstand another onslaught of debauchery perpetrated by a narcissistic a-hole who, barring dropping dead from choking on a Big Mac, is likely to clinch the Republican nomination, and according to the latest polls, is neck and neck with Joe Biden. Last night over family dinner we were trying to think of word beyond “narcissism” that would better describe the soul of the orange turd. We couldn’t think of one, but I think Andrew Sullivan summarized it well in his latest Weekly Dish:

“My own view has long been that Trump is beyond truth and lies: his ego is everything; there is nothing outside it; it is the only reality he knows. If he were to acknowledge any facet of a reality that does not flatter his ego, he would have a psychic break. So he doesn’t. He is beyond accountability because he only lives in the moment, and reinvents the past at will. He is a truly postmodern man: no truth exists apart from his; and any alternative reality has to be attacked mercilessly. Because his whims oscillate, so do the non-facts he invents to satisfy them. He is a spluttering, glowering fusillade of fantasies. He is, in Wolff’s words, “a man whose behavior defies and undermines the structures and logic of civic life.”

By now we have all figured out why the Republican Party cannot quit him, and why his primary rivals can’t seem to move the needle. We know that in the coming months, the turd’s congressional sycophants will be trying to distract the mainstream media and the Fox bubble-heads with an equivalency between the orange turd’s profound corruption and pathetic Hunter Biden. Our only hope, I believe, is that moderate R’s and people with half a brain might actually get sick and tired of the turd’s trashy show. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Meanwhile, the news for the Jews marches on. If you thought things might slow down a bit during the dog days of summer, think again: Israeli protests continued into their 30th week, the jury in the Tree of Life massacre trial voted unanimously for the death penalty, Nut-and-yahoo lies to American audiences, Musk gives Ye back his anti-semitic platform, a Saudi-Israeli peace deal is rumored to be close, and Trader Joe’s had to recall it’s falafel because they found rocks in it. Some of these items I will get to later, but I have to drill down now on Nut-and-yahoos interview with Wolf Blitzer. A bit of context: Israel’s Supreme Court will be hearing the case on September 12th of whether the recently passed judicial reforms are constitutional. With a straight face, and with his normal authoritative manor and American accent, he claimed in his interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that if the Supreme Court finds the reform unconstitutional, it would be the same as the US Supreme Court voting down a constitutional amendment because it was unconstitutional! But anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of civics knows that for that scenario to unfold here in the US, not only would the House, the Senate and the President all have to agree, but 38 of 50 states would also have to pass the amendment as well. In Israel, under the new reforms, it would only require a majority vote of the legislature. Bibi is a bold faced liar. 

Now, for the stuff you are waiting for, here is this week’s generous selection of Jewie journalistic gems, culled and carefully curated, and copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Boston, and other Jewish journals:

1. Opinion: The arrogance of leadership that is Bibi Nut-and-yahoo – To this day, despite hugely controversial legislation and over 30 weeks of major protests, Bibi has not granted a single interview to an Israeli journalist. Instead, he is trying to sell his judicial reform by selling himself. What a schmuck. “A traditional public relations response might see the leader focus attention on the merits of the judicial overhaul effort, highlighting what is to be gained by the change, or lost by taking no action at all. A traditional public relations plan would prioritize the domestic Israeli audience over outsiders. A traditional public relations approach might assume that earned media — media coverage that is not paid for, as it’s precipitated by breaking news — is the most credible messenger. But that’s not Netanyahu’s approach to leadership, to PR or to marketing his policy decisions. Seeking to sell his position on judicial overhaul, Netanyahu has doubled down on his favorite strategy: selling himself as an unassailable world leader. Love me, love my position. Oppose my position, oppose me. Many Israelis know the subtext: Oppose me at your political peril. Click here for more on this opinion piece in The Forward.
2. The Pittsburgh shooter got the death penalty. Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor does not believe the state should execute people – Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was sworn in on a Bible that was rescued from the synagogue attack, has remained mum on the punishment. His stance makes little practical difference; a governor cannot commute a federal sentence. That being said, Pennsylvania has not carried out any executions since 1999, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021 placed a moratorium on federal executions. Read the story ➤
3. Opinion | Should Jews leave Twitter after Elon Musk reinstated Kanye West? It depends – “For many, it feels like a morally compromising choice to stay somewhere that is essentially a hate site,” writes Elad Nehorai, a digital marketer whose work relies on social media. “For others, it has become a common refrain that they ‘shouldn’t cede ground’ to the bigots.” Read the essay ➤
4. On this day in history (1901): Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans. Armstrong grew up in poverty but was taken in by the Karnofskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews who gave him odd jobs and bought him his first instrument, a cornet. The jazz singer and trumpeter later wrote a memoir about his time with the Karnofskys and wore a Star of David for much of his life in their honor.  Click here for more

5. 🇮🇱  A Palestinian gunman shot and wounded five people at a hamburger restaurant in the Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday before an off-duty policeman getting a haircut at a nearby barbershop shot him dead. (JTA)
6. Biden pursing a big mid-east deal? Read the latest from Tom Friedman – “For the hundreds of thousands of Israeli democracy defenders who tried to block Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial coup on Monday, the stripping of the Israeli Supreme Court’s key powers to curb the executive branch surely feels like a stinging defeat. I get it, but don’t totally despair. Help may be on the way from talks between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” This could provide leverage to roll back and drop the judicial reform, but also bring back a two state solution that would require concessions around the west bank and other issues important to the Palestinians. Click here for more. 
7. Israeli circus troupe brings laughs — but no clothes — to NBC’s ‘America’s Got Talent’ – (JTA) — Anyone who has visited an Israeli beach is likely familiar with the popular beach paddle game known as matkot. For millions of TV viewers and a live audience of 1,400 at NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” a trio of Israeli performers who go by Bomba, or bomb in Hebrew, offered an intimate introduction to the sport on Tuesday’s episode. The circus trio emerged with only six wooden matkot paddles, one ball and … no clothing. Keeping the necessary parts covered, the three performers juggled, hit the ball to one another and cautiously walked back and forth across the stage. They performed to Quincy Jones’ famous jingle “Soul Bossa Nova.”

https://youtu.be/SVfCh4EsuaU

I hope you all have a great weekend! And remember, let’s continue to be careful out there, and don’t forget to bring your paddles!

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! 

A tip of the kipah and shiva call this week for Sinead O’connor, who died at the age of 56. When she released her memoir, “Rememberings” in 2021, most headlines and reviews focused on her horror story of the time Prince abused her and also of her appearance on Saturday Night Live when she ripped up a picture of the Pope. But more interesting to me was how one of the world’s most famous Catholic converts to Islam had a lifelong, abiding appreciation for Judaism and Jewish people. Specifically, three Jewish people: Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, both of whom she seemed to idolize and after whom she modeled herself, plus her imaginary, romantic ideal, a “much-fantasized-about” handsome rabbi who would steer her toward Judaism. Rest in peace Sinead.

I am ignoring most of the hideous headlines this week in the good old US of A, and going a bit deeper on Israel, given the historic week of news surrounding the Knesset vote on judicial reform that just occurred. Israel is teetering on the brink of civil war and is facing a constitutional crisis brought on by Nut-and-yahoo and his coalition of crazies who, despite a clear majority of Israelis opposing them, are driving the judicial reforms forward that could dismantle democracy.

The cartoon above appeared in yesterday’s edition of The Jewish Chronicle and captures, sadly, the current state of affairs in the Jewish state. My overly-simplistic take on the forces driving this crisis is that a minority of Orthodox want to use government to feel more empowered and create a more Jewish state, and the secular majority want to prevent government from doing so. Throw into that mangled mix a power hungry prime minister who wants to use the levers of power and government to stay out of jail on several bribery and corruption charges, and you end up with a level of distrust that is spiraling out of control and in the wrong direction. That distrust is what has been driving 29 straight weeks of protests by hundreds of thousands of patriotic Israelis, the refusal of thousands of volunteers in the IDF, including hundreds of fighter pilots, to perform their duties, setting a dangerous precedent by politicizing the military. Nut-and-yahoo recently gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos (he has still not granted a single interview to any Israeli journalist) claiming the new law changes very little and basically taunting the opposition. Meanwhile, his sycophants are busy trying to ram through more changes, including fining news networks that don’t provide favorable “balanced” views of the coalition, and channeling more funding to their version of Fox News, Channel 14, that is basically a propaganda mouthpiece for Nut-and-yahoo. They have also introduced a bill to remove the Prosecution role from the Attorney General, which could potentially neuter any ability to continue the bribery and corruption charges against Nut-and-yahoo. Far from putting things on hold and working toward a compromise, the law removing the “Reasonableness” clause from the powers of the Supreme Court has only ennobled the coalition to double down and aggressively push for more reforms that are unpopular with a majority of Israelis. It’s the “Shlock and Awe” strategy. 

How will this end? My personal take is that the Israelis are a tough, resilient bunch of Jews that will ultimately work something out. While it’s hard to imagine an existential threat to Israel coming from within, it is a fact that as the opposition grows stronger, the coalition seems to get more emboldened, which is not a great recipe for compromise. Maybe President Herzog will get the parties to the table to bang out something both sides can live with, but there is no clear path for that at the moment. Israeli philosopher and noted author, Dr. Micah Goodman has been performing a unique kind of reserve duty for the last six months: speaking with people from all sides of the judicial overhaul conflict, from teams of politicians during the negotiations at the President’s Residence — at the request of President Isaac Herzog — to squadrons of pilots who are on the brink of refusing service — again, at the request of the IDF. His view: “I think the cynics will determine what happens tomorrow and next week, but I think it’s the optimists who will determine what will happen next year and two years from now.” We shall see, and you will get the latest updates here on the Jew News Review. 

Weirdly, the crisis has came to a head during the holiday of Tisha B’Av, or what I refer to as the holiday of “bad juju for Jews”. Were it not for my Hebrew calendar, I would not know about this holiday, lapsed Jew that I am. But, according to Wikijudea, it commemorates the destruction of the Temple twice, first by the Babylonians, then by the Romans. Tisha B’Av marks the end of the three weeks between the two destructions and is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, and it is thus believed to be a day which is destined for tragedy. For example, on this day, in addition to the destruction of the two temples: Moses broke the Tablets of the Law when he saw the people worshipping the golden calf; the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and then Spain shortly before Tisha B’Av 1492; the outbreak of World War I shortly before Tisha B’Av 1914, which overturned many Jewish communities, and finally, the day in 1941 the Nazis signed off on the final solution. So, like I said, bad juju for Jews.

How about some good juju for Jews? Now you’re talking! Here then, finally, is your weekly buffet of baffling, beguiling, and better news for the Jews copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Kveller, Times of Israel, The Jewish Chronicle, JTA, and other reputable sources of all things Jewish-y. 

1. Opinion: The unrest in Israel is not over the judicial overhaul – it’s an identity crisis – Another point of view on this hot topic from Gedalia Guttentag, Editor of Mishpacha magazine  – Having passed the “reasonableness clause” amendment this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must decide whether to press ahead with the rest of the package of changes — as justice minister and architect of the controversial reforms, Yariv Levin, wants to do — or notch a victory and pivot to other concerns like the economy and security situation. But for a glimpse of their long-term future, Israelis should look beyond their own political system to a set of parallels overseas. The judicial overhaul crisis is the local version of Trumpism and Brexit — both tell us what happens when ideas go from the margins to the mainstream. Combined with a powerful animating personality, formerly marginal ideas can awaken a powerful new majority, and provoke a national identity crisis. Click here for more.
2. Israel’s Supreme Court will hear challenge to law limiting its power, potentially teeing up constitutional crisis – TEL AVIV (JTA) — The Israeli Supreme Court has announced that it will hear petitions challenging a new law that limits its ability to strike down government decisions. The challenges won’t have their day in court until September, but the announcement paves the way for a possible constitutional crisis in Israel. That’s a scenario that a range of scholars and officials have worried about for months, as Israel’s right-wing government has pursued an effort to sap the power and independence of the Supreme Court amid mass street protests and civil disobedience. Click here for more.
3. White House blasts Fox News host’s claim that ‘you had to be useful’ in death camps – F’ing Fox at it again. WASHINGTON (JTA) — In an extraordinary swipe at a popular Fox News Channel host, a White House official condemned Greg Gutfeld’s claim that “you had to be useful” to survive Nazi death camps.“What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday –- and has so far failed to condemn –- is an obscenity,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday in an unsolicited email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The comment came as Gutfeld berated a Jewish cohost who was critiquing a Florida Department of Education curriculum that recommends teaching that slaves acquired useful skills. “Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’?” Gutfeld said. “Vic Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills! You had to be useful! Utility! Utility kept you alive!” Oy.
4. On Culture: So, how did this 74-year-old Jewish guy with the goofy glasses wind up writing a Dolly Parton musical? Bruce Vilanch is a comedy writer, who spent a decade as head writer for the Academy Awards (earning six Emmys in the process) and also provided material for Bette Midler, Paul Reiser and Dolly Parton, among others.The Parton connection proved key in Vilanch’s third incarnation: playwright. Along with the husband-and-wife team of Gabriel Barre and Tricia Paoluccio, Vilanch has co-authored Here You Come Again, a musical comedy that features the songs of Dolly Parton.Bruce Vilanch at the 2023 Outfest in Los Angeles. Photo by Getty ImagesHere You Come Again tells the story of a die-hard Parton fan who just broke up with his boyfriend and now finds himself confined to his parents’ attic at the start of the pandemic. Who can help him? None other than an imaginary version of his idol, who miraculously appears and uses her wit and songs to lift his spirits and teach him about life.

5. New Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris says buying NFL team was ‘bashert’ – Another Jewish owner in the NFL? (JTA) — Josh Harris already owned parts of professional sports teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL and the English Premier League. But when the opportunity arose to purchase his hometown Washington Commanders, the Chevy Chase, Maryland, native said it was “bashert,” using the Yiddish word for fate. Harris, a co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which manages over $500 billion in assets globally, bought the Commanders earlier this year from embattled Jewish owner Daniel Snyder for $6.05 billion — a record for a North American sports franchise. The sale was approved by the NFL last week. Snyder, who is under multiple investigations over sexual harassment and toxic workplace culture allegations, was fined $60 million as part of the sale. 

Ok, enough already. Time to ward off any bad juju and stay cool. I hope you all have a great weekend, and remember, stay safe out there, and keep hydrated….it’s bloody hot!

Brad out. 

Shabbat shalom! Temperatures across the globe continue to set records. For the first time ever, The Acropolis was closed to the public due to the heat, the water temperature in Florida reached 90 degrees, and Bibi Nut-and-yahoo fainted from dehydration. So, keep cool and stay hydrated everyone!

A tip of the kipah this week to my niece Carrie, a special one of the 20 thousand or so members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) currently on strike. Some of you may be thinking “who cares about the privileged Hollywood people”, but most writers barely eek out a middle class salary and the issues faced by the writers are the same issues many of us face as AI and Large Language Models begin to disrupt many industries. Digital streaming (Netflix, eg) has led to a new business model and new rules will need to be written if the studios want to stay in business and maintain their very fat salaries. The key questions on the table are how those new rules will split the pie and how to deal with AI. As The Guardian recently noted: “What would be remarkable is if – when you realized that your once-good job was being made worse in order to satisfy the profit hunger of some faraway investment banker – you were able to actually do something about it. That, in our nation, would be news. That would be something for everyone to cheer for. The plain old workers standing up against enormous companies to stop the process that is turning their careers into execrable “gigs”. Is it a fairy tale? No, my friends. Welcome to the Great Writers Strike of 2023.” So keep walking the line Carrie, we need you on that wall!

Fran Drescher, who leads the striking Screen Actors Guild, said recently in an interview by Kara Swisher, that this strike will go on until someone from the greedy studios steps up and displays some “courage and character”. Until then, we will have to entertain ourselves with the clash of the mega-toy movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer, aka “Oppenharbie” or “Barbenheimer”. The plethora of promotions of these two films feels like inescapable fallout from an atomic movie bomb. The New York Times has already published at least 20 articles on Barbie alone! (American businesswoman Ruth Handler, a Jewish immigrant, is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration.) I have not yet seen either of these films, but my bet is on Barbie as the winner of this cinematic smackdown. After all, there are not many Oppenheimer action figures out there for kids to play with, but maybe there should be? One of my favorite thought pieces on the Barbie movie is from Kat Rosenfield, co-host of the Feminist Chaos podcast. The piece is titled, ”Barbie is Fight Club for Women”, and while I don’t agree with all her opinions, it is well-written and made me think, two attributes lacking in most social media these days.

And now, a rant from your local sponsor: Social media is the new “vast wasteland”.

Let’s take a short ride in the wayback machine. It’s May 9, 1961, and the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, is giving a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters. In the speech, Minow referred to American commercial television programming as a “vast wasteland” and advocated for programming “in the public interest”. Here is an excerpt from his speech:

When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland….True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few.

Now, back to the present and replace “TV” with “social media”. Try and think of something positive contributed to society by Facebook, Twitter, tiktok, Instagram, etc. Yes, there are a few things you might enjoy or find helpful, such as finding out about the death of friends, or maybe a good recipe, and a laugh now and then due to stupid pet trick videos, but on balance, it’s a shit show. And left unregulated, big tech has used the power of algorithms to promote postings that indulge hate speech and divisiveness and provided platforms that promote anti-semitism, as evidenced by the meteoric rise in those incidents over the last several years. And then of course there is the direct correlation between social media and the rise of teenage suicides and depression, particularly among teenage girls as documented clearly by Jonathan Haidt who demonstrates with hard evidence that social media has rewired childhood to become phone-based and rates of anxiety and depression are soaring (see Haidt’s Feb 8 post). “

And now, the latest craze on TikTok and now Twitter, is watching livestreams of people role-playing as “NPCs”, or non-playable characters in video games, a new genre of professional hot girl. Do these men want a living, breathing Barbie doll? These mostly young women (“content creators”) use face filters to appear as anime or infantilized characters on TikTok livestream, performing a constant stream of repetitive chatter while fans pay anywhere from a few cents to a dollar to send her virtual tokens. For those with a big following and the stamina to perform for hours on end, a single streaming session can net them thousands of dollars. The fact that the average NPC streamer’s fanbase is largely male has given rise to the theory that their performances satisfy a not necessarily sexual fetish for control. Yikes! This is the porn industry model brought to you by TikTok and Twitter! To paraphrase Minow, when social media is bad, nothing could be worse. It is indeed, the new frontier of a vast wasteland. Nuf said.

Meanwhile, in Israel, tens of thousands continue to protest Nut-and-Yahoo’s attempt to derail democracy with the judicial reforms being pushed by his coalition of crazies. For an amazing 28th straight week, protesters jammed the streets of Israel despite intense heat gripping the country. Without a clear leader or ambassador, this amazing grassroots campaign to save Democracy in Israel is now organizing a march on the Knesset in a last ditch effort to stall or stop the vote this week to remove the “reasonableness” clause that currently allows judicial review of legislative actions. There is a lot at stake here, including the US relationship with Israel, which is already on shaky grounds with many of the Dems, so stay tuned. 

Now, on with the Jewy stuff. Your standard smorgasbord of superbly selected semitic stuff from sources such as The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Nosher, Kveller, and Jewish Boston to name a few. Enjoy!

1. Over 1,000 Air Reservists Threaten to Stop Serving, as Israel’s Political Crisis Grows – More than a thousand pilots and other personnel in the Israeli Air Force reserve said on Friday that they would stop reporting for duty next week if the government pushes through a contentious plan to reduce judicial power without broader consensus. In a joint letter released Friday, 1,142 air force reservists — including 235 fighter pilots, 98 transport plane pilots, 89 helicopter pilots and 173 drone operators — said they would not serve if the government proceeded with its plan to reduce the ways in which the Supreme Court can overrule the government. “Legislation that allows the government to act in an extremely unreasonable manner will harm the security of the State of Israel, will cause a loss of trust and a violation of my consent to continue risking my life — and will lead, with deep sorrow and lack of choice, to the suspension of my volunteer service in the reserves,” the letter said.
2. Nut-and-yahoo doubles down on judicial reform – TEL AVIV (JTA) — In a primetime address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to press on with his government’s effort to weaken Israel’s judiciary, accusing some of the legislation’s opponents of “endangering democracy.” The nearly 10-minute televised speech came as Netanyahu’s coalition is pushing through a measure that will strip the Supreme Court of the power to strike down government decisions it deems “unreasonable.” In response, opponents of the judicial overhaul effort have held mass protests, blocked major streets and engaged in other forms of civil disobedience. The overhaul’s critics say sapping the Supreme Court of its power and independence would endanger Israeli democracy by removing a curb on the government’s power. While he bookended the address with calls for unity, Netanyahu defended legislation overhauling the “reasonableness” clause unequivocally, saying the current legislation is a scaled-back version of the original proposal. He blamed his political opposition for the failure of negotiations that had aimed to create a compromise proposal.
3. The Jewish story behind Oppenheimer – (JTA) — Friday is not just “Barbie” release day — moviegoers are also planning to fill theaters across the United States to see Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” biopic. Many hope it will answer a question that has long divided Americans and the country’s understanding of its history: Who exactly was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb? Oppenheimer’s name has become “a metaphor for mass death beneath a mushroom cloud,” in the words of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, whose 2005 book “American Prometheus” was adapted into Nolan’s film. But to fully understand the physicist, biographers have looked for clues in his belief system — an ethical code grounded in science and rationality, a fiery sense of justice and a lifelong ambivalence toward his own Jewish heritage.Here’s a primer on his Jewish story, the other Jewish characters he met while developing the Manhattan Project and how the movie portrays it all. Click here for the full story. 
4. Barbie is Jewish! – Four of the Forward‘s culture writers, intrigued by suggestions that the biggest, pinkest movie of the summer might be interestingly Hebraic, went to see it the day it opened in New York. Afterwards, over a staggering array of pink snacks (who knew you could buy decent pink cheese?) and cocktails made with sparkling rosé, we sat down to talk about how much of Barbie‘s promise — Jewish and otherwise — was fulfilled. We loved Rhea Perlman as Barbie’s Jewish inventor, Ruth Handler, “a five-foot-nothing grandma with a double mastectomy and tax evasion issues.” And we cackled at the film’s most obvious Jewish line, which comes courtesy of Will Ferrell’s bumbling Mattel CEO, who pleads his liberal credentials by saying “some of my closest friends are Jewish.” Click here for more. 
5. We need to talk about RFK Jr.’s antisemitic conspiracy mongering: The Forward’s language columnist, Aviya Kushner, argues that the Democratic presidential challenger’s comments represent a toxic blend of old and new hatreds – blood libels with a contemporary twist. “The idea that Jews are either responsible for disease or not dying quickly enough from disease is a throwback to the medieval era,” she says. And the framing of Ashkenazi Jews as a race plays into the modern-day great replacement theory, “which was behind the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s rage and was often amplified by Tucker Carlson.” Read the essay ➤
6. Left-wing Democrats are boycotting the Israeli president. What other heads-of-state speeches have Congress members skipped? When Israeli President Isaac Herzog delivered his address on Wednesday, a few seats in the House chamber were empty: At least five Democrats announced they would stay away to protest Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and other policies. Turns out there’s a long history of this kind of thing, targeting leaders from Iraq, India and even a pope. Here are some other examples. Read the story ➤
7. A Jewish guide to the Women’s World Cup – The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is underway in Australia and New Zealand, and there are no known Jewish players in the tournament. In fact, Jews in women’s pro soccer seem to be few and far between — a fact that disheartens Yael Averbuch West, the former star player who is now an executive in the National Women’s Soccer League. “I do think that representation is important,” Averbuch West told me. “And because of the lack of representation, I think that that affects up-and-coming Jewish players. I’ve had people say to me, ‘oh my gosh, you’re my favorite player, because we’re Jewish and we don’t see any Jewish players out there.’” Though there won’t be any Jews on the field, there are some notable ones off the field — from legendary broadcaster Andres Cantor to fans Doug Emhoff and Sue Bird, who will be there to cheer on the U.S. team.

That’s all for the week folks. Have a great weekend, stay cool, and shut off your social media accounts. Read a good book instead. 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! 

And a tip of the kipah this week to my new JNR staff member, Nox, who we are dog sitting for this weekend. Nox had a bone to pick with the editorial staff this week regarding their support of the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, so he decided to weigh in on the matter on behalf of all dogs with similar fur color, and of course his friends in the Asian canine community. 

And another tip of the kipah and joyeux Quatorze Juillet to all my French friends celebrating Bastille Day. Oui, oui! Viva la France! Soup de jour! Pie a la mode! Hopefully things are cooling off in the Paris outskirts, where there has been a week of unrest, looting and violence that erupted from the killing by police of a teenager during a routine traffic stop.

Meanwhile, here in the good old Jew S of A, the culture wars continue to get too much attention, the Supreme Court continues its assault on legal precedence and ethical norms, the orange turd is racking up indictments, and the Zucker-schmuck vs Musk-brain competition continues getting as hot as Phoenix in the shade. Which reminds me of a quick anecdote: once while on a business trip to Phoenix, the pilot on my plane announced that the temperature in Phoenix was currently 112 degrees. I groaned at that factoid, and the lady in the seat beside me, obviously a denizen desert dweller said, “Don’t worry dear, it’s a dry heat”. I’m thinking, dry heat my ass, that’s absurdly uncomfortable. My response: “Thanks for that. My toaster gives off dry heat, but I wouldn’t dare put my tongue on it”. Needless to say, the rest of the plane ride was a bit quiet.

I never thought I would write this, but I am rooting for the Zucker-schmuck and his Twitter killing app, “Threads” to kick Musk-brain’s anti-semitic ass. Any devout fan of this blog knows I am no fan of the Zuck, but in this case, I am all in. I even tried to download the app and get the JNR on it, but was unable to do so since I do not have an Instagram account, and have no intention of adding one since I still do not know what I would use it for. Regarding my support of the Zuck and Threads, I am gleefully hypocritical. Like many others, I am exhausted by the unformed, unfinished child named Elon, who may be a brilliant engineer, but his welding of the brutally managed service that brings random brain farts to the internet needs to end. 

One more rant before I get to the Jewie stuff: Moms for Liberty, or as the liberals call them, “Klanned Parenthood” or “Moms for the Third Reich”, need to disappear from the face of the planet. Their sudden rise to influence is weird and dangerous as demonstrated by five of the Republican Presidential contenders speaking at their recent conference in Philadelphia courting their support and riding their recent notoriety. But get this: the leader of their Hispanic group, Catalina Stubbe, believes that under the guise of sex education, Florida schools are teaching boys to masturbate, possibly the work of demonic forces she saw at work in her own child’s classroom. When her seven-year-old’s maths homework repeatedly featured the number 666 (interpreted by some to signal the devil) she knew there were leftists behind it. This and other conspiracies touted by the group led the Southern Poverty Law Center to label them an “anti-government extremist” group, but did not stop Nikki Haley, chasing a long-shot presidential nomination from tweeting, “If Moms for Liberty is a ‘hate group,’ add me to the list”. Nuf said.

Let’s talk Israel. It’s not looking good. Nut-and-Yahoo has decided on brinksmanship, kowtowing to his coalition and deploying what Jonathan Freedland calls, “the salami strategy”, whereby they sliced off one element of the judicial reform salami they thought would not generate as much protest. It’s called the “Reasonableness” clause, and essentially eliminates the courts ability to over-ride the Knesset and executive on appointments and other decisions. Its passing would essentially open the gates for all the other reform measures without any recourse to the courts. Thousands continue to protest, blocking highways and the airport, testing the patience and vigilance of popular support. The Israeli air force pilots and reservists have said they will not serve if the reform passes, which led Bibi to claim, behind closed doors, “We can do without a few squadrons, but not without a government”. Incredible to hear that from Bibi during a time when tensions with the Arab world are extremely high and after the Jenin raid and other terrorist activity have made security issues most critical. The reforms also continue to put a strain on US-Israeli relations which Tom Friedman has noted in his recent NYT editorial, will increasingly come under pressure for a fundamental shift and re-evaluation. 

Now, for the stuff you are waiting for, here is this week’s generous selection of Jewie journalistic gems, culled and carefully curated, and copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Boston, and other Jewish journals:

1. As Tree of Life trial enters final phase, 6 Jewish scholars on what text and tradition say about the death penalty –  The victims’ families want Robert Bowers to get the ultimate punishment. What does Jewish law say? Should Robert Bowers, the man convicted of murdering 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history, be executed for his crimes? Relatives of nine of his victims say yes, writing in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle last year that “there is a time for compassion” and “a time to stand up and say enough is enough.” In contrast, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, who leads a congregation that met in the same building and was there the day of the massacre, urged the U.S. Attorney General not to pursue the ultimate punishment against Bowers, saying of the pain he caused: “Let him live with it forever.”Broadly, according to a 2014 poll, American Jews are less supportive of capital punishment (33%) compared to all Americans who were surveyed (44%).  The forward asked six rabbis, cantors and scholars to share their interpretations of Jewish text and tradition regarding capital punishment, and to challenge each other’s. Click here for more.
2. Go Euro Jews! European Jewish student group sues Twitter over its handling of antisemitism and Holocaust denial – BERLIN (JTA) – Europe’s main Jewish student organization is fed up with the antisemitism, Holocaust denial and other hate speech burgeoning on Twitter — so they are taking the social media company to court. The Brussels-based European Union of Jewish Students and the Berlin-based HateAid non-profit group on Wednesday announced they have sued Twitter in Berlin District Court for failing to uphold its own pledge to remove hate speech from the platform. The action — which included the placement of a hashtag prop in front of the German parliament building, in an inversion of a symbol that Twitter itself popularized — was sponsored by the Berlin-based Alfred Landecker Foundation, as part of its Digital Justice Movement, started by HateAid. Click here for more.
3. Why I decided to give my dog a ‘bark mitzvah’: “The chairs were set up, the wine was chilling for the kiddush, and the homemade baked goods for the oneg ready to be served,” writes Linda Matchan, a Boston-based journalist. “Then came the guests. Bessie. Joy. Bella. Lyla. Carl. Miggy. Lui. Daisy. A dozen dogs, plus their humans.” Coco the mitzvah dog wore a yarmulke and tallit, and not one but two rabbis officiated. It’s a tradition, strangely, that has been adopted by many non-Jewish dog owners. And one that reminded me of our old departed friend Rico, who had his bark mitzvah back in 2020.  Read the essay ➤

4. Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir in a new film – The two are also (kind of) related. Helen Mirren, star of a Golda Meir biopic that arrives in theaters next month, discovered on Thursday that she is distantly related to the former Israeli prime minister. Genealogists also found that Mirren – who is not Jewish – has family connections to two Israeli presidents, Chaim and Ezer Weizmann. (Getty) Click here for more.

5. Elie Wiesel reviewed ‘Oppenheimer’ — and it made him shudder:  Combing through their archives for coverage of J. Robert Oppenheimer ahead of the much-anticipated July 21 release of a biopic about him, The Forward found a March 1969 article with a famous byline: Eliezer Wiesel. The article, written in Yiddish and translated by archivist Chana Pollack, is a rare piece of theater criticism from the Nobel laureate on a Broadway play about the physicist. Wiesel was moved by the contradictions of the father of the atom bomb — and by the  performance of actor Joseph Wiseman. The drama “ripped through me and made me hopeful once more about the individual’s struggle,” Wiesel wrote, “and the visions of artists and dreamers.” Read the story ➤
6. 🇮🇱  Israel news: U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, said “there is no way in hell” she’ll attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress next week … Israel’s former attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, warned that the country is on the “brink of dictatorship” after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to weaken the judiciary advanced in the Knesset … Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed on Wednesday that he invited Netanyahu to visit Kyiv, but that the Israeli leader turned down the offer. 
7. Jonah Hill controversy: Eulogy of a “nice Jewish boy”? – Over the weekend, the internet was aflame over Jonah Hill, the Jewish actor, and his ex-girlfriend, Sarah Brady, a professional surfer. The two broke up in 2022 and Brady shared screenshots of what she described as Hill being “emotionally abusive” in a series of text messages. The Forward deputy opinion editor, Nora Berman, and one of their culture writers, Mira Fox, each have a take: Opinion | This might be a case where ‘lashon hara’ is warranted: The Talmud warns against public humiliation, although it makes room for exceptions when the accuser is of a lesser social standing than the accused. Since the dawn of the #MeToo movement, Nora writes, many rabbis have weighed in on the intersection between lashon hara, negative gossip that is generally prohibited, and the fact that “abuse thrives in silence.” Read the essay ➤ Jonah Hill’s therapy-speak exposes the dark side of the Nice Jewish Boy: Hill is “a little neurotic, a little nebbish” Mira notes, “but funny, successful and self-aware, and working on himself in therapy to boot.” She notes that “Jews have long been in therapy and talked about being in therapy,” adding: “It’s one of the things that makes the Nice Jewish Boy, well, nice.” But in the texts that went viral, Mira says, Hill twists therapy terms like “boundaries” and “triggering” into “conversation-ending bludgeons.” Read the essay ➤

That’s enough already! I hope you are enjoying the dog days of summer! Please remember to stay safe out there!

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! 

The dog days of summer are upon us, and the world is literally and figuratively heating up. The earth recorded its highest average temperature EVER this week while a catastrophic cocktail of anger, frustration and hubris combined to cause violence, death and destruction across the globe. Here in the good old USA, as we sat on the lawn near the Marine Corp War Memorial in Washington DC on a humid holiday evening, the Grucci rockets red glare in the night sky and feted the throngs of wilting patriots with a dazzling display of cascading showers and exploding chrysanthemums. We could feel the booms resonate in our bodies from the mid-air explosions, while ironically, the nearby Raytheon tower’s logo seemed to cast an approving shadow over the Marine Memorial and gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. 

I love our country, despite all of its many flaws and self inflicted wounds, and boy, are we experiencing a lot of them lately. While much of the country was celebrating a long weekend of hot dogs, apple pie, and fireworks, violence erupted in cities and towns across the country leaving hundreds dead or wounded and a congress unwilling to do anything about the scourge of military weapons in the hands of the wrong citizens. In France, thousands of protesters, or bored citizens, depending on who you talk to, fueled by rage over the police killing of a teenager during a routine traffic stop in June, have been lashing out against alleged racial profiling and calling for greater police accountability. Sound familiar? Protesters have lit thousands of cars on fire, attacked schools, town halls, police stations, banks and businesses, and set nearly a thousand buildings ablaze. As a result, thousands of young people have been arrested since the rioting began in the days after 17-year-old Nahel M. was killed on June 27. According to France’s Interior Ministry, the average age of those arrested is 17. Macron blamed it mostly on social media and video games. Go figure.

And in Israel, the situation ain’t much better. The IDF completed the largest assault on the west bank in over 20 years in order to route out terrorists operating in the area supposedly controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but as we know from too much experience, the PA is pretty useless. Hence, the violence continues to spiral out of control leading to at least 27 Israeli deaths since January. Meanwhile, thousands of Israeli protesters are once again hitting the streets to pressure Nut-and-Yahoo into dropping the judicial reforms that will decimate the current and fragile balance of power. More on Israel later, but to give you an idea of the bias in the mainstream media against Israel, check out this BBC interview with opposition leader, Naftali Bennett, who is getting kudos from both sides of the political spectrum for his handling of this interviewer, who has since apologized for some of her stupid questions.

As most of you should know by now, I am a glass half full kind of guy. And even while the news cycle is a continuous feed of negativity, there are always glimmers of hope springing up hither and yon. For example, our capitalist system has produced tremendous wealth at home and abroad, leading a global economy that has reduced poverty in third world and developing nations significantly over the last several decades. And while there are certainly inequities in wealth distribution within western countries, we can take pride in the innovations of our tech sector that continues to lead the world in AI and other transformative and disruptive technologies. Just this week Apple passed the $3 trillion valuation point, an amazing accomplishment I am sure could not have happened without the hiring by Apple of my niece Natalie who is rocking it in Cupertino. Another notable bit of good news is that international opinion of the US has gone up significantly since the orange turd left the stage. The latest Pew Research on this topic shows that after all-time low ratings in many countries in 2020 and a sharp recovery in 2021, ratings of the U.S. remain high this year. A median of 61% across the 17 countries surveyed have a favorable view of the U.S., while only 35% have an unfavorable view.

So, put aside our country’s fixation with guns and put aside some awful self inflicted wounds (Iraq invasion, Dobbs decision, Trump election, etc) put aside the ever-haunting fact that a treasonous, narcissistic bullying a-hole is the leading candidate for the Republican party, and celebrate the big picture: The US of A is still the greatest nation on earth, the shining City on the hill that all other countries look to emulate. What makes it so? Is it diversity and opportunity? Freedom? Here is what Aaron Sorkin had to say on the topic in one of the greatest episodes from The Newsroom, probably a speech that saved Jeff Daniels career and made a convincing argument that just maybe we aren’t the greatest nation any more, but we sure use to be! And we still can be!

Happy birthday America!

But enough of this patriotic palabra! And give me some of that old time Jewie journalism! Bring on the carefully curated cornucopia of columns crafted for cranial consumption. Well, here you go! Enjoy these appetizing tidbits from the likes of The Forward, Times of Israel, JTA, Haaretz, and other respectable platforms of Jew news:

1. Explained: What’s happening in the Palestinian city of Jenin, and why is Israel targeting it? The Israel Defense Forces launched a major military operation in the northern West Bank city on Monday morning, with eight Palestinian militants killed and more than 50 reportedly wounded. While nightly raids have become commonplace in the West Bank in the past year, this was exceptional. For only the second time since the end of the second intifada in 2005 – and the second time in the last two weeks – the army carried out airstrikes before sending in ground troops. The operation lasted 48 hours, involving around 2,000 Israeli soldiers.An expanded attack on the West Bank is reminiscent of the dark days of the second intifada, but also augurs the potential start of a darker phase for the northern West Bank. Click here for more.
2. Did Religion win at the Supreme Court? Yes and no.  The justices ruled last week for religious plaintiffs in two blockbuster church-state cases, saying workers have the right not to work on the Sabbath, and to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings. Michael A. Helfand, a law professor and expert on religious liberty, described them as “relatively modest decisions,” where, “upon careful review, there was ultimately less there than originally meets the eye.” The JNR editorial board backed the decision, (a fairly nuanced one at that), with the qualifier that, “if you ask is it okay for a kosher caterer to say “I am not going to cater your wedding because this is an intermarriage between a non-Jew and a Jew”? And if the kosher caterer says, “I will do any other event that you want to do, but I will not do an interfaith wedding because that’s just not something that I approve of.” I’ve always thought of that as completely okay and plausible and within the free speech rights of the caterer.”  Read this essay ➤
3. Live free or die boycotting – 🇮🇱  New Hampshire on Thursday became the 37th state to prohibit state contracts or investments with companies that boycott Israel. Are such bans constitutional? Arno Rosenfeld of The Forward explored the question in 2021, when states threatened to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, after the ice cream maker refused to sell its products in the occupied West Bank. (Times of Israel)🍦 Speaking of Ben & Jerry’s, one of its co-founders, Ben Cohen, was arrested Thursday while blocking the entrance to the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., where he was protesting the prosecution of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. (Daily Beast)
4. Opinion | Rabbi Seth Winberg, the Hillel director at Brandeis University, argues that the school is a great place for Orthodox Jews, despite a recent ad by the school that seemed to mock them. (The university has apologized.) Brandeis was “the first university in the country to have strictly kosher dining,” Rabbi Winberg notes, has a Shabbat eruv, offers separate hours for women and men at its pool and hosts Torah study classes. Read the essay ➤
5. 👮  Protesters burned bonfires on a Tel Aviv highway after the city’s police chief, Ami Eshed, resigned on Wednesday. Eshed quit rather than accede to a demand from Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister in charge of national security, to be tougher on those protesting the government’s judicial overhaul. “With my head held high,” Eshed said, “I am paying an intolerably heavy personal price for my choice to avert a civil war.” (Haaretz, JTA) 
6. 💊  The Red Pill MAGA Republicans need to take – A former white supremacist says he no longer holds extremist beliefs after taking the drug MDMA as part of a research study. “In certain cases,” the author of a book about MDMA wrote, the drug can “help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.” (BBC)
7. 🍦 We have our limits, even when it comes to ice cream – Manischewitz has launched what some shoppers are calling “Frankenstein” foods: ice cream that tastes like gefilte fish or matzo balls. Asked why they chose those flavors rather than sweets like hamantaschen or babka, the company said: “Gefilte scored higher on the research.” (Jewish Chronicle)
8. ⚽  Soccer legend David Beckham opened up about his family’s Jewish background in a speech this week at a London synagogue. Beckham praised his bubbe’s matzo ball soup and, when quizzed, perfectly recited the hamotzi blessing over bread. (Jewish Chronicle, JTA)
9. The Borscht Belt in the Catskill mountains was once home to the best summertime resorts for American Jews. They “were largely barred from gentile-owned hotels, so they had to really create their own vacation world,” said Andrew Jacobs, who is helping build the Borscht Belt Museum in Ellenville, New York. While the museum is not set to open for two years, fans can trek to Ellenville for the first-ever Borscht Belt Fest on July 29.

That’s all folks! Stay cool and hydrate, and enjoy the weekend! And let’s stay safe out there. 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom!

The JNR will be taking the weekend off in order to celebrate the July 4th holiday with family in DC and Virginia. I wish you all the very best, and a big happy birthday to our beloved country! 

I will leave you all with this small bit of encouraging news from The Idler about napping: apparently it makes you more clever! And this science explains, perhaps, why my wife is so damn clever!

IT’S OFFICIAL: NAPS MAKE YOU CLEVERER

Tom Hodgkinson | 23 Jun 2023 | Letter from the Editor

Note to captains of industry: if you want your staff to be more productive, let them have afternoon siestas – it really works, writes Tom Hodgkinson

It’s always nice when the science catches up with us idlers. A new report says that the more you nap, the cleverer you are. The findings were published in a journal with the appealing title of Sleep Health (I must get a subscription).

“We found an association between habitual daytime napping and larger total brain volume, which could suggest that napping regularly provides some protection against neurodegeneration through compensating for poor sleep,” the researchers noted.

The report adds to a growing pile of evidence which suggests that, in the words of neuroscientist Prof Tara Spires-Jones, “sleep is important for brain health”.

Sleep expert Matthew Walker carried out a nap experiment a few years ago. He gave a test to two groups of people. One group had powered on through the afternoon with no nap. The other group enjoyed a long post-prandial doze. The nappers did far better.

“Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took at nap,” commented Walker.

So that’s all clear. But the question remains. How to nap? Where should you take your siesta? And how long should it be?

Speaking personally, I find that I can drop off almost anywhere.

Amen to that!

I will be back next week with another exciting edition, but until then, stay safe out there!

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! A tip of the kipah this week to Tel Aviv University officials who made the decision to remove the Sackler family name from their Medical School. The Sacklers, you may recall, were knowingly pushing Oxycontin via their company, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, in a “legalized” drug selling scheme that caused the deaths of thousands and helped create an opioid crisis in the country. A good decision TAU, to erase a bad name. And the harm of opioids hit close to home this week, as we were saddened by the loss of a dear friend of my nephew Sam, Zion, who died from an overdose of Fentanyl. He will be missed. 

Humans have in our DNA the need to explore and use ingenuity and tools to bring our planet to heel. We have extracted and exploited resources from almost every square mile on earth, and built tremendous rocket ships to explore the outer reaches of space. But despite all that we have accomplished, the earth refuses to bend to our will, and when nature shows its teeth, we realize its enormity and ability to devour us. This week, the world watched anxiously for any glimmer of hope that our ingenuity would win out and save five travelers who paid $250,000 each to get a glimpse of the Titanic from inside a 22-foot long submersible called, ironically, Titan. There was something compelling about this story that grabbed my attention as well as millions of others across the globe. Even more compelling than the 700 refugees from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt lost at sea this same week trying to escape to a better life.

Why the disparity in media coverage? What made the fate of multiple billionaires riding a trendy new wave of adventure tourism to the site of an iconic shipwreck that was doomed by hubris more compelling? For me, it was the above, plus the ticking clock, with just hours of air left for any survivors, and, the submersible company’s flouting of rules and pooh-poohing regulations that made for the best reality TV in quite some time. The drama and the personalities all felt like a parable about the excesses of our times. 

It was of course, a horrible ending. The hope of returning them from the abyss to their loved ones was dashed by an implosion detected moments after communications were lost. In the surface world, these men were highly accomplished and the failure of technology in this horrible incident demonstrates another example of human ingenuity shattered by nature and the power and enormity of the sea. May they all rest in peace.

It was another crazy week in the news here and in Israel. Today marks one year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade resulting in 25 million women residing in states with no access or severely restricted access to abortion. The orange turd continues to blab his way into deeper doo doo, this time in one of the most insane interviews ever where he actually defended his keeping top secret documents after being subpoena’d for them because he wanted to retrieve his golf shirts. He still commands a 20 point lead as the Republican front-runner. India President Modi visited the White House and was feted with a vegan dinner, MAGA whack job Lauren Boebert introduced a resolution to impeach Biden, only to be chastised and called a “little bitch” by the equally whacky Marjorie Taylor Green, and the GOP whack jobs in the House also voted to censure Adam Schiff for doing his job. Last but not least, you have the two technology titans, Zuckerschmuck and Elon Musk agreeing to a cage match. You really can’t make this shit up. 

The situation in Israel isn’t much better. Another terrorist incident in the West Bank left 4 dead in a shooting at a gas station, but even worse, that violence led to revenge attacks across the West Bank by Jewish settlers seeking “price tag” retaliation. These revenge attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians are becoming a standard response and demonstrates a bad trend, but also shows the weakening of the Palestinian Authority in the region, who can’t seem to keep the terrorism under control. 

Now, finally, to the good stuff. Your standard smorgasbord of superbly selected semitic stuff from sources such as The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Nosher, Kveller, and Jewish Boston to name a few. Enjoy.

1. 🇮🇱  Spike in violence: Israeli settlers took the law into their own hands Tuesday night, torching cars and crops and throwing stones at Palestinians in villages near the West Bank city of Nablus. Dozens were wounded in the riot, which followed a Palestinian terror attack that killed four Israeli Jews and wounded four others at a gas station outside the West Bank settlement of Eli. Hamas officials said that attack was a response to an Israel Defense Forces raid in Jenin a day earlier that killed seven Palestinians, including a teenaged girl who succumbed to her wounds early this morning. (Haaretz, JTA, Times of Israel)
2. 🤦  An Indiana chapter of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty on Thursday  apologized for quoting Adolf Hitler at the top of its first newsletter, saying: “We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history.” … Meanwhile, a new right-wing government was sworn into office in Finland this week, and one politician is already apologizing for remarks he made in March that were sympathetic to Hitler. (NBC News, Times of Israel)
3. 🏀  UCLA’s Amari Bailey became the NBA’s newest Jewish player Thursday night, drafted by the Charlotte Hornets in the second round, 41st pick overall. That brings the Hornets one step closer to hosting a minyan; Michael Jordan sold his majority ownership stake this month to two Jewish millionaires. (Sports Illustrated, JTA)
4. Swastika Lake to be renamed: The lake, located in a national forest in Wyoming, was named in the early 20th century, before the Nazi Party appropriated the symbol. But Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and the philanthropist behind the StopAntisemitism campaign, noted in his appeal to change the name that “it has unfortunately become synonymous with one of the greatest atrocities in human history.” A county commissioner had wanted to keep the name as a “teaching opportunity,” but was overruled in a 2-1 vote Tuesday to rename the lake in honor of Samuel Knight, a professor and dinosaur enthusiast who was known as Mr. Geology of Wyoming. Read the story ➤
5. 🖼️  The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian added to its collection this month a picture of Rabbi Sally Priesand, who became the first female rabbi in the United States when she was ordained in 1972. It will hang alongside portraits of Beyoncé and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Twitter, JTA) 
6. A pitch clock is shortening baseball games. What if synagogues did the same? Gary Rosenblatt, a Pulitzer finalist who has long covered the Jewish world, imagines installing a Sermon Clock in every sanctuary that would start to flash “The service continues on page 322” if rabbis exceeded their allotted time. Another idea? “More progressive congregations will now read from The Three-and-a-Half Books of Moses.” Read his essay ➤
7. 🎒  A Jewish middle school teacher in Massachusetts has resigned after facing antisemitic harassment by a student. The student, who is 12, was charged with criminal harassment after the teacher reported him making Nazi jokes and showing him drawings of Hitler standing over a dead person with the heading, “Sorry, Jew.” (Berkshire Eagle)

That’s all folks! Sorry for the late issue, but needed to catch up on a few things after a busy week! Enjoy the weekend everyone, and hey, let’s remember to be careful out there, and stay out of any submersibles. 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! A tip of the kipah this week to my granddaughter Abby Rose who we are honoring today at her official naming ceremony. Given her middle name is Rose, named for her maternal great grandmother, and her Yiddish name is Laika, named for Lillian Goverman, my Bubbie, it’s quite appropriate that Michael and Kalie have decided upon a garden party theme for the event. But probably an indoor garden party by the looks of the clouds gathering currently, and the high probability of rain in the forecast.

Given all that is going on around Sharon this weekend, including Abby’s naming, having my brother and mother in town, and Lauren and Ian moving into their new house in Sharon, I am taking a slightly different tack this week. Rather than starting with my usual rants on the news, and given that tomorrow is Father’s Day, I have decided to introduce the news this week with an assortment of lame Dad jokes (redundancy?). I can hear you all groaning already, but it begs the question: why are bad jokes more funny when we call them Dad jokes? And if you had to choose among these, which is your winning selection? And if none of these work for you, feel free to email me a few of your own favorites. 

• A guy walks into a bar, and there’s a horse serving drinks. The horse asks, “What are you staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a horse tending bar before?” The guy says, “It’s not that. I just never thought the parrot would sell the place.”
• How many narcissists does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. The narcissist holds the light bulb while the rest of the world revolves around him.
• I read that by law you must turn on your headlights when it’s raining in Sweden,but how am I supposed to know when it’s raining in Sweden?
• I was addicted to the hokey pokey…but I turned myself around.
• When I was a kid, my dad got fired from his job as a road worker for theft. I refused to believe he could do such a thing, but when I got home, the signs were all there.
• I had a happy childhood. My dad used to put me in tires and roll me down hills. Those were Goodyears.
• When does a joke become a “dad joke”? When it becomes apparent.

My apologies.

Now, what about some news for the Jews you ask? Where is that cornucopia of columns carefully curated for our cranial consumption? Well, your wait is finally over. Here, for your reading pleasure, is a roundup of jewy journalism cut and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Times of Israel, Jewish Boston, Kveller, JTA, and other notable sources of Hebrew headlines. 

1. Daniel Ellsberg dead at 92 – scorned by Nixon and many Jews as well – Nixon called him “an arrogant Jew”, but his name would become synonymous with telling truth to power. After the much-heralded Pentagon Papers publication, Ellsberg was scorned as a “disgrace to the Jewish people” by Bernard Barker, a future Watergate burglar and undercover operative of Jewish origin. A more astute observer, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, noted that governments lying were hardly anything new, nor did the Pentagon Papers really contain startling revelations, or evidence of sustained conspiracy by successive presidencies, despite Ellsberg’s claims. Even so, Ellsberg’s name retained a prestigious aura for his risking imprisonment for truth-telling. Click here for more.
2. Jury finds Pittsburgh synagogue shooter guilty on all counts – (JTA) — The gunman who committed the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history is guilty of all 63 charges he faced, according to the verdict delivered by a federal jury on Friday morning. The verdict includes the determination that Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, is guilty of all 22 capital charges he faced — two for each of his victims. The sentencing phase of the trial will begin next week, during which the jury of seven women and five men will consider whether to give the defendant the death penalty.
3. 🏫  Only in Florida? Supporters of a candidate to run the schools in Naples, Florida, accosted a local rabbi outside a school board meeting last month telling him that he’s “on the path to sin” and that Judaism is “not a real religion.” The rabbi said he had gone to the meeting to speak out against the candidate for superintendent, who had said during his job interview that “unchurched” Americans were causing its “moral decline.” (JTA)
4. 🇺🇸  But no invite for Bibi? Israeli news outlets are reporting that President Joe Biden has invited Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the White House in July.Herzog is also planning to address a joint session of Congress to mark the 75th anniversary since Israel’s founding. (Times of Israel)
5. 🎶  Not so fast Ed – Ed Sheeran’s Sunday concert drew 89,000 to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, which some said was its all-time attendance record. Turns out, that honor remains with the 2012 Siyum Hashas, when 93,000 Jews gathered to celebrate the completion of a seven-and-a-half year cycle of studying a page of Talmud each day known as Daf Yomi. (JTA)
6. 🎭  On Culture: Director Judd Apatow interviewed Mel Brooks in advance of Brooks’ 97th birthday later this month. The two discussed Brooks’ time serving in World War II, the rise in antisemitism and the essence of Jewish humor. (The Atlantic)
7. More On Culture: Inspired by Pfish and LSD, Matisyahu is on top of his game – Matisyahu’s personal and religious journey — from non-religious stoner teen to Hasidic reggae rocker to non-Orthodox Jewish performer — has been tracked closely by media world-wide. From 2001 to 2007, Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller) was associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement based in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 2011, he shaved the bushy beard that had become a signature part of his image. In his own words, “I wasn’t religious but I remember drinking mushroom tea and coming out wrapped in an Israeli flag with sage burning,” he said. “I decided: I love music, I love drugs, but I sort of need to make that next step. And being who I am, I did that in a drastic way and decided okay, I need to become something.” He sure did.

That’s all folks! Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there, and enjoy the weekend. And, hey, let’s be careful out there.

Brad out.

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:

1. 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 ➤
2. 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 ➤
3. 💻   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)
4. 🇺🇸  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)
5. 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:

6. 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 ➤
7. 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.

Shabbat shalom! And a tip of the kipah this week to President Biden. Uncle Joe may have tripped over a sandbag this week, but he was steady and on his game in avoiding an economic calamity brought to us courtesy of Republicans holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling debacle. I admonished Joe in an earlier post for doing what he said he would never do, negotiate with terrorists, but the reality was that in a split congress, compromise was necessary. While it’s crazy to think that this kind of catastrophic brinksmanship could become normalized, it’s an unfortunate sign of the times. And the fact that no-one on either side seems happy with the legislation is probably indicative of a good outcome, also reinforced by one of the best one day gains on Wall Street in many years (+701 DJIA). Speaker McCarthy (blech) also gets some credit here for keeping the whackos in line. Now, if only we can really do something about the size of the debt, that would be something! But, it looks as though we will continue to kick that can into the next generation. 

Or maybe we can turn to God for a solution? I have been doing more driving lately, actually going into our office for work this week, and have noticed a trend in “out of home” advertising, AKA Billboards. If you are on I95, or the Expressway, or anywhere on the Boston-New York corridor, you will invariably be assaulted by billboards either selling you cannabis, divorce and personal injury attorneys, Herb Chambers cars, Casinos, and now, Jesus. “Are you ready to meet God?”, “Are you going to Heaven or Hell?” are just a few I have noticed lately. You may also recall the “He gets us” Super Bowl ad campaign, launched by funding from Hobby Lobby and other evangelical groups as a way to combat decades of bad Catholic Church headlines and falling memberships. And this new billboard trend is not exclusive to the Catholic Church, as you may recall a few times I have mentioned the Anti-Semitism awareness billboards promoted by Jew Belong in the Northeast. And billboard religion is not new to the south, where for decades you could find anti-abortion billboards, many of them pretty gruesome and awful. Maybe it’s the continued trend toward streaming vs live TV, or the easy access and cheaper cost of billboards vs social media advertising, but it is clearly a thing. I am with Woody Allen on this one: “Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on Sundays!”

The news out of Israel this week includes some very intriguing developments on the political front and a story emerging out of Italy that is the stuff of a new season of Fauda. Regarding the former, Bibi continues to walk a tightrope in keeping his coalition together. While he was able to pass a budget a few weeks ago with some very rich handouts for his religious friends, there is another deadline approaching on June 15 that determines the make-up of the judicial selection committee in the Knesset. Amazingly, the current bill negates completely the original intent of the controversial judicial reforms and leaves the status quo in place! Twenty three weeks of protests by hundreds of thousands have forced Bibi to backtrack on at least one major piece of the reform legislation! And there have been a series of other proposed bills that have been pulled back for fear of backlash, or of the opposition calling for a vote of NO confidence. 

Even more intriguing is the story emerging out of northern Italy regarding the capsizing of a boat in rough lake waters that left at least four people dead. Turns out that 13 of the boaters on board were Israeli Mossad agents, and another 8 were Italian secret service. One of the dead was identified as Erez Shimoni, a fake name, who goes by the code name of the Hebrew letter “Mem”. More on this story later. But for now, lets get to the good stuff, my weekly collection of carefully curated Jewy news items, copy and pasted from the likes of JTA, The Forward, Kveller, Jewish Boston, Times of Israel and other Jewy journals. Here you go:

1. Can Massachusetts really be as anti-semitic as they say? Who is “they” anyway? Like many of you, I have always believed my home state was more progressive than most others. I know we have a bad history around racism, but I was surprised to see the current stats around anti-semitism here in Massachusetts, where according to the ADL we have the 4th highest Jewish population in the country, but we recently ranked second in the country when it comes to white supremacy – trailing only Texas — and we’re No. 6 when it comes to antisemitism, a 41% jump from 2021 to 2022.  Click here for more.
2. 👟  Adidas resumed selling Kanye West-branded sneakers this week – Months after Adidas cut ties with Kanye West, Yeezy shoes are back on sale, with a portion of the profits going to the Anti-Defamation League and other advocacy groups. The German shoe brand is trying to get rid of the inventory left after it ended its partnership with West amid his antisemitic tirades last fall. Next to Crocs, the Yeezy shoe has to be the ugliest things on the market. (AP)

3. TikTok star Montana Tucker follows Holocaust series by emceeing embassy event for Israel’s 75th anniversary – I have no idea who she is, but she is a TikTok star, whatever that means. So, for you younger folks who may follow her dance clips, it’s good to know she is branching out into more serious efforts, and recognizing her holocaust surviving grandparents as well. She has said that she was inspired in part to educate others about Holocaust history and antisemitism by Kanye West’s series of antisemitic rants last fall. She was also disturbed by a 2020 Claims Conference survey on millennial and Gen Z knowledge of the Holocaust that found that 63% of those demographics in the United States did not know 6 million Jews died during World War II. It’s a mitzvah! Click here for more.
4. ⚖️  The Tree of Life Synagogue trial of the accused shooter in that horrible massacre is shaping up as a seminar on American Jewish tradition, with witnesses offering an impromptu glossary of Jewish terms and ideas. But, it must be horrible for relatives and witnesses to have to relive the incident in a lengthy trial. A crowded courtroom heard one of the 911 calls made from the synagogue during the first day of the trial of the accused shooter. Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the massacre, took to the witness stand and cried as he described how he recited the Shema prayer thinking he was about to die. “I thought about the history of my people,” he said. “How we’ve been persecuted and hunted and slaughtered for centuries.”(JTA)
5. The Jewish inventors you never knew: Mr. Potato Head, the sewing machine, the TV remote control, shopping carts, Barbies, jeans, aspirin and a popular Easter candy – all were invented by members of the tribe. Dennis Eisenberg, an illustrator whose professional moniker is DenBerg, explores some of the items we employ on a daily basis. See the drawings ➤

6. Lake Maggiore deaths: why were Italian and Israeli secret service agents on a boat in northern Italy? It reads like a pitch for a thriller. A group of tourists board a boat on a beautiful lake at the foot of the Alps. The boat capsizes in a sudden storm. Four drown as others swim to safety. In the days that follow, as authorities struggle to trace hotel bookings for the passengers, it emerges all were affiliated with the Italian and Israeli secret services. Five days after Gooduria, a 16-metre houseboat, was swallowed up by Lake Maggiore, there is growing speculation over what its passengers were doing in this corner of northern Italy.One theory is that the agents were in Lake Maggiore to spy on Russian oligarchs, who have reportedly been buying villas and hotels in the area, circumventing the EU’s financial sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine by funnelling money into Italy from Swiss bank accounts. Another theory is that the Israeli agents were monitoring contacts between Iranian firms and Italian ones based in Lombardy’s industrial zone. Click her for more. 
7. Amazon aired the final episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel this weekend. While some critics say the series relied on shallow Jewish stereotypes, others claim it thrust a new type of heroine into the mainstream: “the anti-Jewish princess.” I thought this last season was one of the best, and really brought home one of the show’s over-arching themes about feminism during that period in our recent history. I will miss Midge, but will miss her agent even more. (JTA)

That’s all I have this week peeps! I hope you all have a great weekend, and remember, be careful out there! 

Brad out.