Yom HaShoah and more
This edition honors Yom HaShoah while diving into films, plans, and political updates.
Yom HaShoah started on Wednesday evening at sundown in the Jewish calendar. It’s the date in the Jewish calendar in which we remember the Holocaust. Usually observed on 27 Nissan, it was moved to 26 Nissan this year so as to not conflict with Shabbos. The date was also codified on October 7, 1980 by Public Law 96-388, which established both the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (responsible for planning, constructing, and overseeing operations of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and Holocaust Remembrance Days. In the US, Holocaust Remembrance Days start on the Sunday before Yom HaShoah and runs through the following Sunday and were previously targeted by the Defense Department as they started to gut diversity, equity, and inclusion measures.
I watched or covered a few films this week in connection with Yom HaShoah:
Not related to the Holocaust but The Children of October 7 is now streaming on Paramount+. The 36-minute documentary features social media activist Montana Tucker. Tucker meets with eight survivors, including one who was kept hostage for 52 days in Gaza. Another was taken hostage but fell off the vehicle. Many of them lost one or both parents. It’s saddening.
April has been an extremely busy month. I have a number of tabs open (and now officially closed on sending out this edition) with articles I found of interest. Aside from that, I’ve been busy working on my Jewish-American Heritage Month editorial calendar. This is where American Masters documentaries are coming in handy. With so many of them available through either the library or streaming services, I’m going to be keeping busy. I’ve been so focused on May that one could say I’ve forgotten to stay up to date with April!
Andor was my big project during Chol Homoed Pesach. I finished the second season by Wednesday afternoon. This led to spending Wednesday and Thursday nights by rewatching Rogue One and the original Star Wars trilogy. Let’s face it, four days of Chol Homoed does not leave enough room for productivity.
If I wasn’t watching movies, I was vacation planning. Comerica Park (Detroit) and PNC Park (Pittsburgh) are the last of the ballparks that I can travel to and from in a single day from Chicago. Pittsburgh isn’t happening this year but Detroit definitely is (thank you, Southwest points!). It’ll be my first time back since the Detroit Tigers hosted the Kansas City Royals on July 22, 2004. This daytrip will also mark my third overall visit to Detroit with the first coming in 1998 (DET vs. BAL, July 30, 1998) at old Tiger Stadium. That was the same trip in which I saw Saving Private Ryan in theaters. I’ll be writing about the ballpark tour on Dugout Dirt.
The only other ballpark tours that are confirmed for this year are Great American Ball Park (Cincinnati) and Rogers Centre (Toronto). I haven’t been back to the former since 2017 and the latter since 2006, when Roy Halladay faced Mike Mussina on the mound.
Getting to the West Coast for ballpark tours is in the works, albeit the early stages of planning. All of those trips require multiple days so all I’m doing right now is just playing around with potential itineraries for if and when those trips happen. If all goes well, I’m getting to both Phoenix and Seattle next year. Any Phoenix trip will require a side trip to the Grand Canyon and maybe even a Spring Training game. Likewise, no trip to Seattle would be complete without stopping by Mt. Rainier. All of these trips, of course, will depend on both budget and the economy.
Leading voices against antisemitism at Harvard are urging reforms while speaking out against the current administration.
The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board is even speaking out against the administration’s funding cuts. What does this administration think it’s going to accomplish? The funding cuts will only serve to hurt Jewish students. They are not doing anything to combat antisemitism. It’s just another way of fascist authoritarians to act in an authoritarian manner.
In Democratic news, DNC Vice Chair David Hogg is spending money to take down Democratic incumbents. While I have issues with a number of far-left members of Congress, DNC officials usually take a neutrality pledge and stay out of the primaries. Hogg has refused to sign the pledge. Two incumbents being targeted are Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). Schakowsky’s opponent does not even live in the district!
The Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was targeted in an arson attack on the first night of Pesach. The attacker has been reported to be anti-Israel and targeted Gov. Josh Shapiro for this reason. Gov. Shapiro penned an op-ed in The New York Times.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) addressed a full room of Alaskan non-profit leaders about recent developments.
“We are all afraid,” Murkowski said, taking a long pause. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Here’s to more senators and members of Congress being willing enough to stand up and speak out. As Sen Murkowski notes, Congress is not doing its job in providing a check on the administration.
Ron Kampeas explores how the recent arrests of anti-Israel critics in the US are dividing Jewish-Americans. Kampeas has quite the lead, too:
The director of the largest Jewish umbrella organization is urging Jewish community officials not to sign on to a statement put forward by ten major Jewish groups that decries the Trump administration’s arrests of foreign students.
Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut is behind the letter to local federation leaders and the essence of the message is this: “Objecting to the Trump administration’s plans to deport students for holding anti-Israel views and to defund and penalize universities is outside the Jewish consensus.”
No matter my feelings on how abhorrent antisemites are in their rhetoric, America is a nation of laws and one of those laws is to provide due process. This means, anyone being targeted for deportation needs to have their day in court. If they violated their visas, the government needs to make a case for it. They cannot just say, well, this person is a threat to American foreign policy interest. That’s not enough. What crimes did they commit?
Former ADL national director Abraham Foxman had words.
Meanwhile, going into the second days of Pesach, a federal judge partially blocked an executive order being enacted for targeting transgender passports.
“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”
The ACLU is planning to file a motion for this ruling to apply to all transgender and nonbinary Americans. My own passport expires at the end of December 2026. I’ll have to renew it next year and hopefully all of this will be worked out by then. I doubt it will.
Interestingly, San Francisco Democrats are looking to push the national party to the center. Going further left is not the answer—it will alienate those of us closer to the center.
Barnard employees received a federal questionnaire asking of they were Jewish.
In WTF news, the governor of Oklahoma has called on rural county leaders to resign after their abhorrent comments made the news.
Mark Mellman is stepping down as president of Democratic Majority for Israel.
The ADL reported over 9000 antisemitic incidents in 2024. One of those was a death threat against me.