Swastika Lake to be renamed + Relative of Jewish Titanic couple aboard missing submersible

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 Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism, 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 ➤

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Related: Oregon last year changed the name of its Swastika Mountain

Stan Lee’s Disney+ documentary glosses over his Jewishness (he would have wanted it that way): A new film about the longtime chief of Marvel Comics forwards the narrative that Lee was the major creative force behind the brand’s iconic stable of characters. It also presents the notion that Lee’s biography should not to be taken as a Jewish story. Our PJ Grisar protests. “We needn’t think the Silver Surfer was a metallic Martin Buber to acknowledge that these creators, in an effort to assimilate or just pay the bills, birthed a new American medium rife with secret identities, patriotic zeal and honest-to-goodness golems,” he writes. Read the review ➤

Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Samuel Alito. (Getty)

Plus…

Conflict code: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. went on a luxury fishing trip with Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in business disputes, according to an investigation by ProPublica. Last month, we reported that Justice Elena Kagan refused a platter of bagels and lox from her high school friends because she worried about the ethics of receiving gifts.

Controversial candidate: The union representing 30,000 faculty and staff members at the City University of New York endorsed the reelection campaign of City Councilman Charles Barron, who has made comments the Anti-Defamation League deemed anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.

Not settled: Nearly two dozen current and former officials at local federations and community relations councils are calling on the Jewish Federations of North America to clarify its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the group sponsored a conference promoting Israeli settlements earlier this month. Our Arno Rosenfeld broke the story of JFNA’s role in the settlement conference.

Hoop dreams: Two Jews are part of tonight’s NBA Draft – one a star athlete at UCLA, the other an aspiring law school student pulling a prank.

Watch Fauda star Doron Ben-David in new TV series ‘The Lesson’, winner of Israel’s Best Drama Series Award 2023. The series traces a classroom argument between a high school civics teacher (Ben-David) and his student (Maya Landsman) which quickly spirals out of control and puts the two protagonists — and later the whole country — on a collision course.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Detroit-area synagogue with a distinctive look was featured in a Jeopardy! clue this week in a category about architecture. One of the contestants is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and lives 45 minutes away from the shul. Yet even after being told the name of the congregation, Shaarey Zedek, he incorrectly guessed, “What are mosques?” (Screenshot/Wikimedia)

?  Remember the Jewish couple we told you about in yesterday’s newsletter, Ida and Isidor Straus, who died aboard the Titanic and inspired a Yiddish song? Turns out, their great-great-grandaughter’s husband is the pilot aboard the submersible that is lost at sea near the Titanic. (New York Times)

?  The names of the three people who posted Rep. George Santos’ $500,000 bail will be revealed at noon today, per an order from a Long Island judge. Santos, who is facing federal fraud charges and who has lied about his family’s history in the Holocaust, previously said the guarantors were relatives. (CBS News)

??  An Israeli drone strike killed three Palestinian militants as they drove near Jenin Wednesday night. It was the Israeli military’s first targeted killings in the occupied West Bank since the end of the second intifada, nearly two decades ago. (Haaretz)

??  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who lost members of his family in the Holocaust, called Russian President Vladimir Putin “the second king of antisemitism after Hitler” on Wednesday. Zelenskyy was responding to Putin recently having called him “a disgrace to the Jewish people.” (JTA)

??  A Russian court on Thursday rejected an appeal to release Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested on espionage charges in March. He is expected to remain detained in a Moscow prison until at least Aug. 30. (WSJ)

?  A Missouri school board decided not to ban Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir about the Holocaust, after intense backlash. The book had been under consideration because it includes a drawing of a naked mouse. (JTA) 

?️  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) 

?  Harry Styles thanked his Orthodox Jewish friends for walking nearly six miles to his London concert on Saturday. The former One Direction singer used to live in their attic when he first moved to London. (JTA)

Shiva call ➤  Haim Roet, who came up with the idea of annually reading aloud the names of Holocaust victims — a practice that now occurs all over the world on Holocaust Remembrance Day — died at 90.

What else we’re reading ➤  Iranian table tennis coach pulls player from competing against Israeli at Special Olympics … Teens consider Jewish stake in abortion battle one year after Roe v Wade overturned … Smuggler nabbed at Israeli airport with dozens of parrots in suitcase.

ON THE CALENDAR

Martin Freeman portrayed Bilbo Baggins in ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy. (New Line Cinema)

On this day in history (1342): Bilbo Baggins, hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, returned to his home at Bag End, according to the novel’s timeline. Tolkien once likened the dwarves who populate his novels to Jews — “at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.” 

In honor of National Kissing Day, we ask: What’s up with all the Torah kissing at synagogue?

Today at noon ET: My colleague Laura E. Adkins and I will be chatting with Dr. Ruth about what she still hopes to accomplish at 95 and the best advice she ever gave. Watch it here ➤

VIDEO OF THE DAY

It’s officially summer or, as we say in Yiddish, der zumer. Our Rukhl Schaechter teaches you how to talk about the heat and humidity in this episode of Yiddish Word of the Day.

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Thanks to PJ Grisar, Beth Harpaz, Tani Levitt and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].