This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Remembering the victims: Our resident illustrator, Dennis Eisenberg, drew portraits of the 11 victims. Among them are two brothers who were synagogue mainstays, a doctor who treated HIV patients, and a couple who were gunned down in the same shul they got married in 62 years earlier. “When future historians write of the American Jewish experience, their narrative will be divided in two parts,” our Nora Berman wrote in an introduction. “Everything leading up to the Tree of Life massacre, and everything that came after.” View the portraits ➤ Palpable relief: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the shooting, said it was no coincidence that Wednesday was Tu B’Av, the Jewish festival of love. “Because,” he said, “today we received an immense embrace from the halls of justice.” Here’s how the other survivors and families of the victims reacted to the trial’s end. Plus… |
The ‘Barbie’ movie is bringing renewed attention to the doll’s Jewish creator – Ruth Handler. (Warner Bros.) |
Long before the blockbuster movie, Barbie taught me how to embrace Judaism: “My last year of Hebrew school began like all the others: with an assembly in my Long Island synagogue’s social hall,” writes Sophie Brett-Chin. The teachers screened a 2005 documentary, The Tribe, which shows how “Barbie represents a diverse cross-section of women — not just because her creator was a Jew trying to make it in midcentury America, but because she encouraged girls to take on flexible and evolving identities.” For Brett-Chin, who is mixed race, it was a “spiritual awakening.” Read the story ➤ Comparing his indictment to Nazi Germany, Donald Trump is right for extremely wrong reasons: “Coincidentally, this year marks an important anniversary that captures the nature of this connection,” writes Robert Zaretsky, a history professor and culture columnist. “Ninety years ago in Cologne, Carl Schmitt joined hundreds of fellow Germans waiting in line to receive their membership cards for the Nazi Party.” An influential philosopher, Schmitt’s embrace of Hitler offers cautionary lessons for today. Read the story ➤ Related: Why this rabbi isn’t celebrating (or dismissing) the latest Trump indictment Opinion | Can the Israeli economy survive the judicial overhaul? Since Netanyahu returned to power in November, Israel’s currency has tanked. Its stock market plummeted. And the flow of foreign funds to its high-tech sector has run dry. “The success of Israel’s tech scene relies on two pillars: talent and a sound institutional environment,” write two economists, Dany Bahar and Yannay Spitzer. “The judicial overhaul risks both.” Read their essay ➤
And one more: A retired rabbi recalls an embarrassing moment in a Yiddish-speaking men’s clothing store. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
The Yeshiva University campus in New York City. (Getty) |
✝️ Yeshiva University is recruiting Christian students for a new master’s degree program specifically geared towards teaching more about Judaism to those of different faiths. (Religion News Service) ?? A man in England who called for the extermination of the Jewish people was jailed for three years. His home was found adorned with Nazi flags, fridge magnets and a portrait of Adolf Hitler. (Jewish Chronicle) ? After a fast food restaurant in Argentina sparked outrage for serving an “Anne Frank burger” and “Adolf fries,” it renamed the burger after Anne Boleyn and scrapped the fries. (NY Post) ? A memorial to the 146 victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, many of whom were young immigrant Jewish women, has been in the works for a decade. It’s now scheduled to open in October. (New York Times) ? Museums and libraries across the globe are “racing to record and digitize the oral histories of the last generation of Holocaust survivors,” Axios reports. Organizations are also training the children and grandchildren of survivors to tell the stories of their ancestors. (Axios) ? Do you believe in angels? About 7 in 10 U.S. adults do, according to a new poll. (AP) What else we’re reading ➤ Why chefs swear by Diamond Crystal kosher salt … Why some middle-aged Americans are avoiding congregational life … Meet the actress telling the story of Israel’s creation – on Netflix. |
Allan Sherman belting out one of his musical parodies during a 1962 recording session. (Courtesy) |
On this day in history (1963): Warner Bros. Records released a single of Jewish musician and parodist Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp).” The novelty song, in which a boy recounts a series of unpleasant developments at sleepaway camp, spent three weeks in the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list. With his “Yiddish-accented English,” Mark Cohen wrote for the Forward in 2010, Sherman’s mainstream popularity was unprecedented — and his ability to “make us laugh at what wasn’t fine” endured for decades.
In honor of National Watermelon Day, check out this recipe for a perfect-for-summer Middle Eastern watermelon salad. |
Rare video footage of Holocaust survivors’ moment of liberation on a train that had departed from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was recently found in the U.S. National Archives. The three-minute montage, which you can watch above, was filmed by American soldiers in April 1945. Read the behind-the scenes story of the video from our partners at Haaretz.
Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox. — Thanks to Lauren Markoe, Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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