This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Fraud, betrayal and spy gear: Inside the messy battle for Chabad of Poway
The Southern California synagogue that survived a 2019 mass shooting has had its share of wild turns. There was a fake million-dollar Torah donation, the use of “challah” and “tefillin” as codewords for illicit cash, and a rabbi who faced a federal fraud conviction. The latest twist in the tale? A spy pen. Our Louis Keene obtained a copy of an internal letter with the details… The setup: The fight for control of Chabad of Poway began in 2020, when it was revealed that its founder, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, used the synagogue to engineer a multimillion-dollar tax and grant fraud scheme. Many congregants — and eventually, local Chabad leadership — questioned whether his son, Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, was the right person to lead the synagogue going forward. The sitdown: That dispute landed Mendel Goldstein and the rabbis trying to depose him on July 31 in the office of Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, who has headed Chabad’s West Coast operations since 1965.
The tape: But a seven-hour hearing to decide the Goldstein family’s future role in the shul and a related charity was derailed when Cunin discovered a fountain pen strategically placed on a table by the family’s lawyer, according to the letter Cunin wrote summarizing the events. Inside the fountain pen, instead of ink, was a hidden recording device. |
Opinion | As we approach the High Holidays, I’m making amends for my smartphone addiction: “WhatsApp messages, new emails, and Twitter notifications constantly entice me,” writes Sruli Fruchter, a rabbinical student at Yeshiva University. “My instinct is to fault my smartphone; its ease, accessibility and that gripping, blue light are the ones to blame.” Alas, Fruchter admits the blame actually lies with him. Read the essay ➤
Finally, her quest for restitution from Germany succeeded — but at what psychological cost? Joanne Intrator, a psychiatrist, spent years working for compensation in exchange for a building looted by the Nazis. In her memoir, Summons to Berlin, Intrator weaves personal history and her own work imaging the brains of psychopaths into her retelling of her complicated legal efforts at restitution. “Psychopathy might be a useful diagnosis for some of Hitler’s henchmen,” Julia M. Klein, writes in her review, “it doesn’t do much to explain the legal morass in which Intrator found herself.” Read the story ➤ |
Chana Raskin is the leader of Raza, a women’s ensemble. (Tzipora Lifchitz) |
Plus… - At an unusual recent concert, women performed Hasidic songs. The ensemble, writes our contributor Dan Friedman, brought “an intensity and polish to wordless chants that are usually informal, often pervasive earworms, and almost exclusively male.”
- Twitter’s rules state that users cannot post Holocaust denials. But when the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum complained about a few recent posts, the social media platform refused to do anything.
- A reader who’s retired and doesn’t drive is wondering how to fill and face the days ahead. Our Bintel Brief advice column came up with a list of 18 great ideas for creating new routines, getting out into the world, and tackling some big projects around the house.
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
An Israeli checkpoint Tuesday at the entrance of Hebron, near where a settler was killed the day before. (Getty)
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?? Israeli forces arrested two Palestinians early Tuesday on suspicion of carrying out a deadly terror attack on three Israelis as they drove near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. (Haaretz, Times of Israel) ? Batsheva Nigri, the 42-year-old mother of three killed in that attack, was buried Monday night. Her 12-year-old daughter, Shirel, who was in the car, spoke at the funeral: “Mom,” she said, “I want to give you a hug one last time.” (Times of Israel) ? An Orthodox synagogue in West Hartford, Connecticut, closed down in 2018. The building may now be turned into affordable housing, with the shul’s iconic stained glass facade staying in place. (JTA) ? To prevent the house where Hitler was born from becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis, Austrian authorities are turning it into a police station. (AFP) ? PBS aired on Monday night a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish,” his third and final symphony. If you missed it, it’s available to stream on the PBS site and app. (WSJ) Shiva call ➤ Claire Golomb, a Holocaust survivor and longtime psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, died at 95.
What else we’re reading ➤ Five Jewish facts about Guatemala’s new Hebrew-speaking president … Against the odds, a lawyer runs to be Jerusalem’s first Arab mayor … Bella Abzug documentary aims to restore the Jewish congresswoman’s trailblazing legacy. |
On this day in history (1973): Henry Kissinger became the first Jewish Secretary of State of the U.S. (Judah P. Benjamin was the Confederate Secretary of State from 1862 to 1865). Kissinger, who recently turned 100, has a complicated legacy — he was accused of war crimes in Vietnam and opposed the idea of a United States Holocaust Museum on the National Mall. He also had a complicated relationship to Judaism, once reportedly saying: “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic.”
Sunday, Aug. 27 at 6 p.m. PT: Arno Rosenfeld, our enterprise reporter, discusses the contested definition of antisemitism and how different elements of the Jewish community are seeking to address it. Attend in-person at the Tucson Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center in Arizona, or tune into the livestream on Zoom. Register here ➤ |
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday unveiled a carving of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the State Capitol’s Great Western Staircase. Other notables on the staircase, built in 1884, include Susan B. Anthony, the suffragist leader, and Clara Barton, the Civil War nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Watch a behind-the-scenes video of the installation of the Ginsburg bust in the video above. — Thanks to PJ Grisar, Beth Harpaz, Louis Keene, Jacob Kornbluh, Jodi Rudoren, Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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