Kraft Just Matched Macklemore's Dare

Jewish teens egged a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem, the second attack in a month. Youths threw eggs at Rosh Hashanah worshippers at Kol HaNeshama with homophobic taunts, Rabbi Debi Shoua-Haim said. Vandals hit the same synagogue last month, smashing windows and tearing down Pride flags. Reform Judaism's Israeli movement called it "violence against Jews for the way they choose to practice Judaism." ¹

Over 600 Michigan Jews are backing Abdul El-Sayed for Senate anyway. A coalition's open letter, signed by former Reps. Sander and Andy Levin, admits it's complicated: "a vote is not a valentine; it's a strategic chess move." El-Sayed opposes a two-state solution and has appeared alongside anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker. ²

Iran is rebuilding the nuclear site Israel has bombed twice. Satellite images from Sept. 13 show cranes and concrete mixers at Taleghan 2, the Parchin facility Israel struck in 2024 and again this March. A think tank flagged it this week and posed the question nobody's answered: why does Iran keep rebuilding it? ³

Robert Kraft got Macklemore thrown off Ed Sheeran's tour. Now he's paying for it, on purpose.

Macklemore joined Sheeran's Loop tour dates starting Sept. 4 waving Palestinian flags and playing footage from the Columbia University encampments onstage. Kraft called it hate speech and pushed Sheeran to cut him. Sheeran did. Four other opening acts quit in solidarity, ticket prices for the remaining shows dropped, and Macklemore, who hasn't had a top-100 single in seven years, pledged $1 million of his tour earnings to six pro-Palestinian nonprofits and dared Kraft to match it. Sheeran privately asked Kraft for double that instead. This week Kraft said yes: $2 million toward Middle East humanitarian relief, on top of decades funding programs that bring young Israelis and Palestinians together. "I believe deeply that all lives are worth protecting," he said. ⁴⁵

Times of Israel's Ben Sales calls it a trap. Ignore Macklemore's onstage act and it spreads by itself. Fight it and a musician who hasn't charted in years gets the biggest platform of his career anyway. Free-speech advocate Greg Lukianoff asked it straight: "Would we be talking about Macklemore's views on Israel right now if it wasn't for this campaign?" Three years past Oct. 7, pro-Israel activists are still choosing between those two bad options. ⁴

Judge Judy is retiring, for real this time. Judith Sheindlin, 83, is stepping away from her on-screen career once "Judy Justice" wraps its run this fall, three decades after she turned daytime court TV into a genre. Her granddaughter, currently a clerk on the show, is what the family calls l'dor vador, generation to generation. Sheindlin peppered the bench with chutzpah and kvetch for thirty years, delivered with the same glare she used on deadbeat dads. Even RuPaul credits her for his Yiddish vocabulary. ⁶

Rabbi Noa Kushner published a book this week arguing Judaism isn't self-help, and she's right in a way that should sting a little. "Pretend You Believe," out from Schocken, argues religion exists "for the sake of God," not to make you calmer, kinder, or more mindful. Her fix is what she calls chosen naivete: suspend the doubt and do the practice before you've settled whether you buy it. That's a real correction. A lot of the pitch for Jewish life these days, including plenty of it in this newsletter's orbit, leans on the wellness-app version: better sleep, better community, better you. Kushner's book is a useful reminder that the tradition was never selling calm. ⁷

Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair got fined $11,941 for wearing "Hind Rajab" in his eyeblack Sunday, named for a five-year-old Palestinian girl the IDF is investigating over a 2024 killing. He'd already paid a fine this year for eyeblack reading "stop the genocide." Kyrie Irving posted Wednesday that he'd cover the bill. This is the same Kyrie Irving who was suspended and fined by his own team in 2022 for sharing an antisemitic film and refusing to apologize, until he did. Fully rehabilitated, he is now bankrolling somebody else's protest fine, unprompted, from Dallas. Leagues ban political messaging on the field for exactly this reason, and it happened anyway. ⁸

Hero: Erielle Reshef. The MS NOW anchor grew up in Oklahoma City's small Jewish community, her mother running the local federation, her father from Tel Aviv. She's anchored the night an Egyptian president fell, reported from the Gaza border, and was one of the first correspondents at the 2018 Tree of Life shooting. Now anchoring across MS NOW's lineup, she says what a lot of journalists in her seat won't: her Jewish identity is an asset in the job. "I will allow the values of Judaism to guide my humanity in this business, but ultimately I'm a journalist committed to fact." ⁹

Villain: Yehia Amin. Pled guilty to a hate crime for attacking an Israeli tourist in Times Square, days after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Sentenced Tuesday to 90 days, he reportedly flashed peace signs and grinned during sentencing. ¹⁰

This week's parsha is Ha'azinu, Moses's closing poem to the Israelites, read on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The haftarah pairs it with Hosea's call to return, fitting for the ten days of repentance. Yom Kippur begins Sunday night. ¹¹¹²