Good morning, New York. Join our colleagues at My Jewish Learning for a book talk with Shaul Magid, author of a new biography of the Brooklyn-born radical rabbi Meir Kahane. He will be in conversation with Emily Burack, an editor at Alma who contributed research for the book. Today, 4:00 p.m.
TARGET: A 23-year-old Jewish man in Crown Heights was shot with what authorities think was a BB gun. (New York Post)
- The victim was walking around 10:30 p.m. Monday night when someone pulled up in a black van and fired at him, grazing his head, police said. The shooter did not make any antisemitic statements during the incident, but the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force has been notified.
- Related: Police arrested a suspect who allegedly punched a Jewish man in Crown Heights and stole his hat last Friday. (CrownHeights.info)
REUNITED: An Upper West Side survivor and her family were reunited with an heirloom Bible hidden during the Holocaust. (Jewish Week)
- The 1874 Bible, with illustrations by Gustave Doré, was secured behind the wall of a house in Germany by a couple before their deportation to Treblinka. Its winding journey “home” is a bittersweet coda to a tragic chapter in the Leiter family’s story.
UNSALVAGEABLE: Over 5,000 books destroyed during Hurricane Ida, including 2,000 children’s books, were cleared out of a popular Jewish library in Crown Heights. (CoLive)
- Damage to the Chabad-run Levi Yitzchok Library from last month’s flooding runs to $150,000.
NOT SO FAST: A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on New York’s health care worker COVID-19 vaccine mandate, halting the mandate until a case seeking to include exemptions on religious grounds makes its way through the courts. (Times Union)
- ICYMI: Read about Jewish schoolteachers who want a religious exemption, even though nearly all mainstream Jewish denominations say there is no basis for an exemption under Jewish law. (JTA)
AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD, WITH JTA
- The Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages in the UK is offering free, online classes in 12 Jewish languages, hoping to revive tongues seen as endangered.
- In a “terrible mistake,” a German church buried the remains of a notorious Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi in the burial plot of a Jewish music scholar who died before the Holocaust and whose remains were moved elsewhere.
- Venezuela’s tight-knit Jewish community is still mourning their victims in the deadly condo collapse in Surfside, Florida.
REMEMBERING
Jim Fleischer, a Canton, Ohio native who served as CEO of the historic Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi since June 2018, died from cancer on Saturday. He was 52. Fleischer previously worked as a fundraiser for UJA Federation of New York and later owned his own printing business on Long Island.
PEOPLE & PLACES
KEEPING IT 100: Gil Erdan, third from left, above, Israel’s representative to the United Nations and ambassador to the United States, and current and former participants from The Jewish Week’s Write On For Israel and Fresh Ink programs attend the 8th Annual Algemeiner J100 Gala in Rockleigh, New Jersey, Oct. 12, 2021. The Jewish newspaper honored Erdan with its “Warrior for Truth” award, along with TV host Meghan McCain, philanthropist Nina Rennert Davidson and Algemeiner editor in chief Dovid Efune and his wife Mushka. (Jewish Week)
WHAT’S ON TODAY
My Jewish Learning presents the first in a three-part series about the Book of Job with Rabbi Dorothy Richman. No previous knowledge of Hebrew or Torah study necessary. Register here. 12:30 p.m.
“Two Centuries of Modern Antisemitism,” a five-week course unpacking the evolution of antisemitism in the 20th and 21st centuries, begins today. Presented by the Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, the course is taught by Yael Weinstein, Melton’s director of Community and Online Learning, $59 sliding scale fee; register here. 1:00 p.m.
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Robert Siegel, former senior host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” hosts a webinar on how genetic testing can prevent breast, ovarian and prostate cancer. Presented by American Friends of Rabin Medical Center. Register here. 4:00 p.m.
NCJW NY presents a book talk, “I Had a Miscarriage,” with author Jessica Zucker, followed by a Babies Remembrance Memorial Service. Register here. 7:00 p.m.
Photo, top: Susi Kasper Leiter and her grandson Jacob Leiter hold the 1874 family heirloom Bible that was returned to their family after being hidden during the Holocaust and discovered by the owners of a house in Germany where Jacob’s great-great-grandparents were interned. (USHMM)
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