Good morning, New York. Today is 11 Kislev, meaning there are only 14 shopping days left until Hanukkah.
HATE WATCH: Gov. Kathy Hochul directed the state police Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate a Rockland County man who made threatening statements against Jews at a. town Planning Board. (Jerusalem Post)
- Complaining about the growing Orthodox Jewish community near Haverstraw, New York, the man told the Board that if he were to run over a member of a “certain sect,” he would “back over them again.”
- Related: The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is searching for a group of five people who struck a man in Crown Heights Thursday night while making anti-Jewish remarks. (ABC7)
ANTI-VAX PROTEST: A Jewish lawmaker in the Bronx blasted anti-vaccine protesters who flashed Nazi symbols outside his office on Sunday. (New York Post)
- At least two protesters displayed the symbols — one comparing himself to a Holocaust victim — during the protest against a state bill sponsored by Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz that would require all New York students to be vaccinated in order to attend school. Dinowitz blasted the symbols as “repugnant and offensive.”
- Photo, top: A protester, right, holds up a sign with a swastika during an anti-vaccine protest outside the Bronx office of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, Nov. 14, 2021. Former Westchester County Executive and gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino, at podium, spoke at the rally. (Courtesy Jeffrey Dinowitz, via Twitter)
SOLD: Christie’s in New York sold a Vincent Van Gogh watercolor that was stolen by the Nazis from its Jewish owner for a record $35.8 million Thursday. (JTA)
- According to a settlement, proceeds from “Wheatstacks” will be be shared among the estates of three former owners: Texan oilman Edwin Cox, the Berlin industrialist Max Meirowsky and its last Jewish owner, Paris-based Alexandrine de Rothschild.
HUMAN TOUCH: Humans of New York, the online photo project, profiled rabbinical student Jericho Vincent’s journey from living in a haredi Orthodox community, to leaving it, to reconnecting with Judaism at Romemu, the Renewal congregation on the Upper West Side. (Jewish Week via JTA)
A TALE OF TWO MARTYS: Former Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz doesn’t know much about “The Shrink Next Door,” the new series on Apple+ TV, but he does know he shares a name with one of its main characters. (Jewish Week via JTA)
- The former Beep tells us he never met the other Marty Markowitz, who fell under the sway of a prominent New York psychiatrist who came to control his life and finances.
PEOPLE & PLACES
UJA-Federation of New York received a $10 million legacy gift from longtime New York-based philanthropists Jack and Shirley Silver that will be directed toward UJA’s anti-poverty initiative “Upward New York.” The gift is in addition to the Silver’s $20 million legacy gift made in 2017 to support Jewish camping. Jack Silver is the founder of New York-based SIAR Capital, and Shirley Silver is a former social studies teacher, corporate trainer and founder of the Jack and Shirley Silver Center for Special Needs at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
Knock Knock Give a Sock, a nonprofit founded by Adina Lichtman, has won the NextGen Innovation Award from the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter, a nonprofit providing housing and supportive services for New Yorkers. Lichtman, honored as one The Jewish Week’s 36 Under 36 in 2018, started Knock Knock as a sophomore at NYU. The program collects and distributes socks to the homeless and creates gatherings among donors and recipients.
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Scholar Leah Garrett draws on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, to tell the story of X Troop, a commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who had escaped to Britain and fought the Nazis. Register here for this Commonpoint Queens event. $8 members/$10 non-members. Noon.
If the rabbis of the Talmud couldn’t make a living learning Torah, how did they balance Torah with more mundane concerns? Dr. Rachel Rosenthal, adjunct assistant professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary, will study some of their stories and look at some models for lives that are enriched both by Torah and by work. Register here for this event, part of the JTS fall learning series, “Six Days Shall You Labor: Perspectives on Work in Jewish Text and Tradition.” 2:00 p.m.
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Robert Siegel (former senior host of NPR’s “All Things Considered”) discusses the present and future of COVID-19 with Dr. Irwin Redlener (director, Pandemic Resource & Response Initiative, Columbia University), Dr. Nahid Bhadelia (founding director, Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research, Boston University), Dr. Kavita Patel (fellow and managing director of Clinical Transformation, Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform, Brookings Institution) and Dr. Michael Drescher (director, Emergency Medicine & Trauma, Israel’s Rabin Medical Center). Register here for this American Friends of Rabin Medical Center program. 4:00 p.m.
Orthodox Jews are disproportionately targeted for physical and verbal attacks. Moderated by journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, a panel will share both their lived experiences and their expertise as prominent professionals in the Orthodox world. With Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center; Laura E. Adkins, opinion editor of the Forward; Rabbi Eli Cohen, executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council; and Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of media relations, Chabad Lubavitch. Register here for this virtual Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan event. 7:30 p.m.
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