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Editor’s note: In the original version of this newsletter, we incorrectly stated that experts were recommending synagogues stop livestreaming services. The version below has been updated.
Campaign of false bomb threats targets shuls across the country
The Anti-Defamation League this week identified at least 26 recent incidents of “swatting,” a phenomenon in which someone calls police with a false report of trouble hoping to stoke fear or engender a dangerous emergency response like a SWAT team. Similar problems have plagued Black churches and Sikh temples. Our Louis Keene and Arno Rosenfeld spoke with security experts and synagogue leaders about the situation. Wide problem: It’s happened across 12 states since July 20. There were three incidents just this past Shabbat: Police interrupted services at two shuls in California, while law enforcement in Texas got a false report of a shooting at a bar mitzvah. In an earlier case, a caller told a suicide hotline that someone inside a synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, was threatening self-harm. Seeking publicity: The perpetrators appear to be targeting synagogues that livestream services online. “These trolls are weaponizing online tools to harass the Jewish community,” said Oren Segal, who runs the ADL center on extremism. “They want to watch these services get disrupted by law enforcement.”
What now? For now, there are no clear rules for how synagogues should protect themselves from bomb threats or swatting calls. Experts said they were not encouraging congregations to stop livestreaming services. |
Golda Meir at a 1973 radio address after the Yom Kippur War. (Getty) |
Deborah Lipstadt’s new biography of Golda Meir aims to paint a fuller portrait: While a new, Helen Mirren-led movie is set to tell the story of Israel’s only female prime minister during the turbulent weeks of the Yom Kippur War, a new biography by Lipstadt, the U.S. antisemitism envoy, hopes to demystify Meir’s divisive legacy. “It neither neglects nor erases Meir’s shortcomings,” our PJ Grisar writes in his review, “but finds in them the same worldview that fostered her many successes.” Read the story ➤ Opinion | I fought for Israel as a lone soldier. Now I fight for it as a protester: “I have given too much of myself to this country to just let it crumble in front of my eyes,” writes Josh Drill, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy protest movement in Israel. While at demonstrations, Drill says, he reminds himself “to stay aligned with the Israel with which he fell in love, and to continue to pour himself into keeping Israel safe, both at its borders, and in its very soul.” Read the essay ➤ The secret Jewish history of an Egyptian superstar: Layla Murad, born to a middle-class Jewish family in 1918, lived the life of a movie star — or a movie subject. She married and divorced the same man three times, became a figurehead in political battles across the Arab world, and was forced out of the public eye after having a son with a government official who was married to someone else. Read the story ➤
Pardon me: Is interrupting rude — or Jewish? Our Bintel Brief advice column weighs in. |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Women in Jerusalem board the back of the bus in this 2010 photo. There are growing concerns that Netanyahu’s government is trying to increase gender separation in public spaces. (Getty)
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? A group of teenage girls in tank tops and jeans were told to move to the back of a public bus in Israel. This comes after an incident last month when a wall of Haredi men blocked a mother of two from boarding a train. There are growing concerns in Israel that the right-wing government is emboldening the Orthodox to push for gender segregation in public spaces. (Haaretz, New York Times) ✈️ Relatedly: An Israeli journalist on a United Airlines flight from Israel to Newark on Tuesday said Haredi men asked her to change seats and flight attendants told her she’d be blamed for delays if she resisted. (Haaretz) ? Israel’s judicial overhaul will harm the health of its citizens, according to a new medical journal article, by limiting the court’s power to overturn government policies. One example cited was a tax on sweet drinks that was canceled by the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich. (Haaretz) ?️ Among those indicted with former President Trump this week was an Illinois pastor and former police chaplain who was charged in connection with efforts to intimidate Georgia election workers. (Religion News Service) ? The Jewishness of Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein plays an integral role in this summer’s movie about the birth of the atomic bomb. But when the film was screened in the Arab world, the subtitles were changed from “Jew” and “Jewish” to “strangers” or “foreigners.” (Messenger) ? You could own the Long Island home where Groucho Marx lived. It’s on the market for $2.3 million. (Wall Street Journal)
What else we’re reading ➤ This Jewish mom accidentally sent her kid to a Christian camp, and doesn’t regret it … Rupert Murdoch, 92, is reportedly dating a 42-year-old Jewish molecular biologist … The only Jew in remote Greenland sometimes feels like the last person on earth. |
On this day in history (1923): Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was born in Poland. Originally named Szymon Perski, Peres was mentored by Israel’s founding leader, David Ben-Gurion. He was elected to the Knesset in 1959 and served 48 years in a variety of ministerial posts before assuming the presidency in 2007. In the Forward’s 2016 obituary, J.J. Goldberg wrote that Peres would be remembered as a dreamer, a lauded spokesman, an advocate for peace and a “bookish intellectual in a country that valued toughness.” |
Netflix released the first trailer for Maestro, which stars Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, the famed Jewish composer. Cooper also directed the biopic, which stars Sarah Silverman as Bernstein’s sister, Shirley, and Carey Mulligan as his wife, Felicia. Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are producers of the film, which premieres Sept. 2 in Venice, hits theaters on Nov. 22 and streams Dec. 20. — Thanks to PJ Grisar, Beth Harpaz, Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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