The Voice Ground Zero Took
A chaplain gave the Pile his voice in 2001. Twenty-five years later, cancer finished the job.
Providence voted out its pro-Israel mayor. State Sen. David Morales beat incumbent Brett Smiley, who converted to Judaism in 2024, in Wednesday's Democratic primary, 52.5% to 47.5%. Morales, backed by Bernie Sanders, supports a November ballot measure barring the city from investing in companies tied to Israel; Smiley called it illegal. His own campaign signs got Hitler mustaches drawn on them. 1
Two-thirds of Jewish voters are sticking with the Democrats. A poll of 800 Jewish voters found 67% plan to vote Democratic in the midterms, 26% Republican. Antisemitism ranked third among their concerns, behind affordability and the state of democracy. 2
A Dutch journalist spotted a stolen painting in a real estate ad. Peter Schouten noticed "Portrait of a Lady," looted from Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Goering, hanging over a couch in photos for a $265,000 house for sale in Argentina. A judge ordered it returned to Goudstikker's heir this week. 3
Twenty-five years
September 11 turns 25 this year, and the anniversary lands on Erev Rosh Hashanah, the last day of 5786. The week before the attacks, American Jewish news was Central Synagogue's reopening in Manhattan after a three-year, $40 million restoration from a 1998 fire, and outrage over the Durban conference, where Israel and the U.S. walked out of a U.N. summit historian James Loeffler later called "a turning point" for antisemitism dressed as anti-Zionism. Then came September 11, and American Jewish anxieties never fully returned to what they'd been. 4
Rabbi Ronald Kaplan spent that fall driving from northern New Jersey to Ground Zero every week, wearing a green "CHAPLAIN" vest, no mask, just his kippah, praying in English and Hebrew over the wreckage. In 2020, doctors diagnosed him with laryngeal cancer and linked it straight to that exposure. Nine rounds of chemo, 35 of radiation, and a 2023 surgery took his vocal cords. The cancer is back. A rabbi who talked for a living, comforting mourners for four decades, can barely speak now. 5
Thursday night, families and firefighters lit 2,977 drones over New York Harbor, one for each person killed, shaped into the towers. "We rose together, from the ashes," said Terry Strada of 9/11 Families United. 6
Miznon, the Tel Aviv pita chain, is having a moment at the U.S. Open: its green beans, sold in paper bags as a fries alternative, are "selling by the thousands," says operations head Liad Balki, in Miznon's first year at Flushing Meadows. The line's reportedly longer than the one for the Honey Deuce. 7
Good holiday timing too: Netflix set October 22 for season three of "Nobody Wants This," which the streamer is billing as a bonus High Holiday. Sarah Silverman joins as Joanne's conversion instructor. Season two ended with Kristen Bell's character headed for the mikveh. 8
Norm Eisen, the Orthodox lawyer who built his career suing the Trump administration, is now teamed up with Mark Ruffalo to block the Paramount-Warner merger, and separately representing Karen Attiah, the columnist the Washington Post fired after she posted about October 7. Ruffalo called the merger "genocide" and Oracle "apartheid"; the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt called that "cynical and sickening," and reportedly turned down Eisen's request to help Ruffalo apologize. 9
Eisen says he's "a Zionist" and "strongly anti-Bibi," and that's plausible. But picking allies for a media lawsuit isn't the same fight as picking allies for how Jews get talked about, and he's treating them as one when they aren't. A coalition built to beat Trump in court doesn't need people who reach for "apartheid" to describe a business deal.
At the first Republican midterm convention, in Dallas, with the U.S. and Iran still trading strikes (fifteen ships hit between them Wednesday, the worst exchange since the war started in February), Donald Trump spent part of his hundred minutes on stage lobbying to rename the Strait of Hormuz after himself. "I should get something out of this," he said. "The Trump Strait." He also predicted the war would end "very shortly after the election," which is a specific kind of promise to make about a war he's running. Sailors are dodging live missiles in that strait right now. The commander in chief wants his name on the water they're dodging them in. 10
Hero: Sergii Gurbych. A Ukrainian-born researcher at Vilnius University built VILNISH, an AI tool that reads handwritten Yiddish and Hebrew, because, in his words, "I want to know more about the world where my grandfather lived." His grandfather escaped the Lodz Ghetto in 1942. In May, Felicita Trueblood sent him about 50 Yiddish letters her great-grandfather wrote between 1927 and 1934. A month later she had full translations and details about his death her family never knew. 11
Villain: Sondhi Limthongkul. The Thai conspiracy theorist led a Bangkok rally against Israeli tourists, delivering a letter to Israel's ambassador claiming Chabad centers are buying up Thai land to "advance objectives orchestrated and funded by international Zionist networks." Protesters carried signs reading "Jews out." Activists also failed to shut down a Chabad Rosh Hashanah dinner in Phuket; organizers just trimmed the guest list and ended the night early. 12
Send this to the one who'll argue about it at Shabbat dinner.
Shabbat shalom.