This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. What you and I are repenting for this Yom Kippur: Yom Kippur begins Sunday evening. Today, we’ve collected some of our best advice about how to approach the holiday, practically and philosophically.
Last year, we asked our readers to weigh in on the vices and blind spots they were reconsidering in the lead up to the day of atonement. Their responses are their own form of advice — a guidebook for how to approach the most consequential day in the Jewish calendar. One reader asked forgiveness for “ranting too much about what isn’t, instead of rejoicing more often about what is”; another, for “mistrusting non-Jews owing to my parents’ Holocaust experiences.” Read the story ➤ “A natural time to reach out to old friends”: In a 2020 letter to the Bintel Brief, the Forward’s legendary advice column, a reader wrote in wondering how to apologize to a friend after forgetting to make a condolence call when that friend’s mother died earlier in the year. “Don’t make your guilt the focus point of the conversation,” Bintel advised. Read the story ➤ “I think it would be dishonest”: Also in 2020, a Jewish college student asked Bintel if they were allowed to skip class on Yom Kippur — even if they didn’t really plan to observe the holiday. “You have every equal right to claim this heritage,” Bintel wrote. Read the story ➤ Plus, more perspectives on Yom Kippur … • “Must I say kaddish for my abusive father?” • “I fast on Yom Kippur but don’t go to synagogue. And there are plenty of Jews like me.” • “My non-Jewish husband doesn’t fast for Yom Kippur. We spend the day in shul together anyway.” • Everything to know about Yom Kippur this year. |
The University of Pennsylvania Hillel. (Courtesy of Penn Hillel) |
With campus president fending off ADL criticism, Penn Hillel hit by vandal. The University of Pennsylvania has been in the spotlight this week, with its administration defending plans for an on-campus Palestinian literature festival featuring some speakers who have been accused of antisemitism. Yesterday, the day before the conference was scheduled to kick off, the university’s Hillel was vandalized by an individual who shouted antisemitic slurs during his rampage, which took place just before morning services. Read the story ➤ A multi-faith, multiracial team of artists wages a billboard campaign to fight antisemitism. In advance of the high holidays, an art collective enlisted 13 artists of mixed faiths, including MacArthur genius Carrie Mae Weems and Jewish artist Deborah Kass, to create billboards to raise antisemitism awareness in seven states and Washington, D.C. “The majority of Americans are being attacked,” Kass said of the project’s multicultural approach. “So let’s get together.” Read the story ➤ |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Adidas’ former deal with Ye annually generated some $2 billion for the athletic brand. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) |
? Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the CEO of Adidas apologized for appearing to defend Kanye West. Adidas ended a lucrative partnership with West, now known as Ye, over his antisemitic comments last year, but during a recent appearance on an investing podcast, CEO Bjorn Gulden said “I don’t think he meant what he said.” (Associated Press) ? A man accused of helping hang an antisemitic banner on a Florida bridge previously served time for killing a man and shooting and wounding two others. Anthony Altick, who faces charges over the June bridge incident, was sentenced to two years in prison on second-degree assault charges after the 2015 shooting in St. Louis. (Fox 35) ? X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and owned by Elon Musk, released then quickly deleted an ad featuring a tweet mocking Musk for blaming X’s falling revenue on Jews. The ad was later re-uploaded, with the tweet in question nowhere in site. (JTA) ? German concentration camp memorials are experiencing heightened levels of right-wing harassment, a new report said. “Two years ago, these incidents occurred about once a month, then they happened every 14 days, now we have to report them almost weekly,” said one memorial official. (Haaretz) ? Jewish photographer Annie Leibovitz recreated a famous photo of a photojournalist in Hitler’s bathtub with Kate Winslet, who stars as the journalist, Lee Miller, in an upcoming biopic. (PetaPixel) What else we’re reading ➤ What Gloria Steinem learned in the early years of Ms. Magazine … How the Nazis used “jazz as a propaganda tool” … Why “Yom Kippur’s origins are shrouded in obscurity.” |
A billboard advertises the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in 1967. (Walter Leporati/Getty Images) |
On this day in history (1964): The original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof opened, starring Zero Mostel as Tevye. “Fiddler has never stopped resonating with viewers across the globe,” Simi Horwitz wrote in a 2022 story for the Forward, in part because “almost anyone can relate to Tevye, a Jewish dairy farmer, whose values are rooted in tradition, yet is in conflict with his three daughters, each of whom has modern ideas that threaten his place in the world.” |
Dueling groups of protesters faced off in Manhattan yesterday, with one crowd gathered to support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — in New York this week to address the United Nations General Assembly — and another, pictured, to protest him. Our senior political reporter Jacob Kornbluh was there to capture the scene: “Days before Yom Kippur, Lexington Ave. looked more like a Hanukkah festival,” he said, “from Shmuley Boteach in a ‘NY❤️BB’ T-shirt, dancing to the repeated tune of ‘Am Yisrael Chai,’ to the thunderous chants of ‘demokratia’ drowned by drums, horns and whistles.” — Thanks to Benyamin Cohen and Jacob Kornbluh for contributing to today’s newsletter, and Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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