Weekly roundup of world briefs

‘Enthusiasm’ remains uncurbed: Larry David’s 11th season with HBO debuts in October

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — Will there be a Martha’s Vineyard episode, and if there is, who plays Alan Dershowitz?

The pandemic-delayed 11th season of Larry David’s signature misanthropic series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is set to debut on HBO in October, the show announced today via social media.

“You’re allowed to be happy, but not in front of me,” the post read Monday, above a production photo of David hoisting up a small dog.

HBO announced in June 2020 that it was renewing the series, but did not announce a debut date because of delays related to the coronavirus pandemic. David was among the many celebrities urging Americans to take pandemic precautions, recording a video for the Los Angeles County Department of Health last year telling his fans to “stay in the house, sit on the couch and watch TV.”

David recently exchanged words at a Martha’s Vineyard store with constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz. David was livid that Dershowitz boasts on social media of his ties with former President Donald Trump and others in the Trump administration. Dershowitz has previously been a professed fan of the show; he even once sent a copy of the “Curb” episode “Palestinian Chicken” to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the hopes that he would watch it with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

2 former California police officers charged with vandalism for swastika spray-painted on a car seat

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged two former police officers with vandalism for allegedly spray-painting a swastika on the back seat of an impounded car.

The investigation into the vandalism also uncovered messages exchanged between the two former officers in Torrance, a city in Los Angeles County, and at least another 13 officers that included racist, homophobic and antisemitic statements, CBS2, the local CBS affiliate, reported last week. The 13 other officers were placed on leave.

Torrance officers responding to a report of mail theft on Jan. 27, 2020, impounded a car they believed to be implicated in the alleged crime. When the owner retrieved the car he found a happy face spray-painted on the front seat and a swastika spray-painted on the back seat.

The DA is still considering whether the charges rise to the level of a hate crime.

Man wearing kippah beaten by a group of 10 attackers in Cologne, Germany

By Toby Axelrod

(JTA) — An 18-year-old Jewish man wearing a kippah in Cologne, Germany, was beaten by a group of 10 attackers in a public green space and taken to the hospital with a broken nose and cheekbone.

Police arrested two suspects in what they are deeming an antisemitic hate crime. The attack was captured on police surveillance video on Friday.

The suspects, ages 18 and 19, were released on Saturday on their own recognizance. There was no further information released about them.

Frankfurt Rabbi Avichai Apel, speaking for the board of the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany (ORD), told the Jewish weekly newspaper Juedische Allgemeine that the age of the suspects was particularly worrying.

“Young people in schools, educational institutions or other public institutions must be taught more about Jewish life,” he said.

Germany’s commissioner on antisemitism, Felix Klein, told the German Press Agency, or dpa, on Monday that he was “appalled by this horrific and cowardly attack.” He praised the police for their quick action; in the past, few perpetrators of hate crimes have been caught.

“In our city, everyone must be able to live without fear, no matter what religion you belong to, what worldview you have and how you live and love,” Cologne mayor Henriette Reker told German media on Sunday.

The victim left the hospital on Saturday.

London police looking for man who separately punched Jewish man and child on the same day

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) – Police in London are looking for a man who was filmed assaulting a Jewish man and a child on the street in separate incidents on the same day last week.

Security footage shows a tall suspect punching a 64-year-old haredi Orthodox Jewish man as they pass one another on the street in the heavily-Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill. The victim sustained minor injuries, Shomrim, a Jewish security service, wrote on Twitter.

Earlier in the day, the same man punched a Jewish child in the neighborhood, Shomrim said. The child was not seriously hurt. Shomrim said they believed the incidents were hate crimes against Jews. 

In a separate incident on Aug. 12, a 72-year-old man was slapped and had his kippah knocked off his head in another suspected hate crime in London.

That man, Ronnie Phillips, was walking near Wyndham Theatre on Charing Cross Road, in the city’s center, with his wife, the Jewish News of London reported.

The assaults are part of a major increase in the number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the United Kingdom this year by CST.

In the first half of 2021, CST recorded the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents in any six month period since it began monitoring the issue in the 1980s. The tally for January-June in 2021 was 1,308 incidents, compared to 875 in the corresponding period the previous year. The total for 2020 was 1,668 incidents.

The spike in incidents is partially connected to the exchange of fire between Hamas and Israel in May, CST said. More than 600 of the 1,308 incidents recorded in the first half of 2021 occurred in May.

1 arrested after vandalism, including stolen Torahs, discovered at Long Island synagogue

By Philissa Cramer

(JTA) — Police in Long Beach, New York, have arrested one man in connection with vandalism that took place this weekend at a local synagogue that had just become part of Chabad of the Beaches.

Rabbi Eli Goodman shared photographs of the damage that showed one door of the Torah ark torn off and prayer shawls strewn on the ground. Two Torah scrolls and their silver adornments were taken, although some of the metal decorations were later recovered, Goodman told Hamodia, an Orthodox news service. He said the vandalism had taken place sometime on Saturday after the synagogue hosted a bar mitzvah during Shabbat services.

Police announced on Sunday that they had arrested and sent for psychological evaluation a 23-year-old man whom they described as homeless, the Long Island Herald reported.

Chabad of the Beaches, which runs Chabad centers in three towns on Long Island, launched a crowdfunding campaign with a goal of $250,000 that it said would support security upgrades. The vandalism took place the same day the group began holding services in that building, according to the campaign, which has raised nearly $10,000 as of Monday afternoon.

“We though we’d have a quiet, soft opening without so much fanfare, but unfortunately we have this whole tragedy,” Goodman told Hamodia. He said he would be adding “more security, better locks, upgrading our security system right now.”

50 essential New York restaurants and attractions, as chosen by the New York Jewish Week’s ’36 Under 36′

By Jacob Gurvis

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — For comfort food, Kylie Unell, a philosophy student and comedy-show producer, heads to Izzy’s BBQ Smokehouse. The Crown Heights restaurant “is not distinctly Jewish, but it is kosher BBQ that rivals the Kansas City BBQ I grew up eating,” she says.

Meanwhile, Rachel Figurasmith, the executive director of Repair the World NYC, heads to Lee Lee’s Baked Goods in Harlem, a decades-old rugelach joint operated by Alvin Lee Smalls, an octogenarian Black man originally from South Carolina whose first encounter with the buttery Jewish pastry came while working as a chef in a hospital kitchen.

Kelly Whitehead, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College, makes frequent visits to the Brooklyn Museum, especially, she said, to see “The Dinner Party,” a room-sized art installation by the feminist Jewish artist Judy Chicago.

And while Rabbi Ben Goldberg lives near the synagogue in Westchester County where he works, he heads to B&H Dairy in the East Village whenever he can. “For me, this place is heaven on earth,” said Goldberg.

Those are just some of the places that this year’s New York Jewish Week “36 Under 36” suggested when we asked them about their favorite places to eat Jewish food in the city and to take out-of-town guests.

Use the map below the explore the full set of suggestions. Be sure to click on each pin on the map to see comments from the 36er who recommended it.

Following media criticism, Spike Lee is re-editing his documentary featuring 9/11 conspiracy theorist who flirted with antisemitism

By Andrew Lapin

(JTA) — Spike Lee has announced that he is re-editing the final episode of his new HBO documentary series about New York following reports of early media screenings that criticized the Oscar-winning filmmaker for prominently featuring a conspiracy theorist who has entertained antisemitic ideas.

“New York Epicenters: 9/11-20211/2,” a four-part documentary examining the character of the city in the 21st century, began airing Sunday on HBO.

In its original cut, the final episode, which had been scheduled to air on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, featured extensive interviews with members of the conspiracy group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. 

Lee did not specify whether he would cut the segment featuring the group or what other changes might be in the works. 

“I’m Back In The Editing Room And Looking At The Eighth And Final Chapter Of ‘NYC EPICENTERS 9/11-20211/2,’” Lee said in a statement released by HBO and provided to Variety. “I Respectfully Ask You To Hold Your Judgement Until You See The FINAL CUT.”

The announcement follows articles in The New York Times and Slate about Lee’s flirtation with 9/11 conspiracy theories. 

Slate in its article critical of Lee focused on the interview space devoted to Richard Gage, the leader of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. At a 2012 event, Gage appeared to endorse the suggestion by another participant that Israel was behind the terrorist attack. He regularly appears on podcasts where conspiracies about Jews and the Holocaust are common. 

The Times, meanwhile, quoted Lee as saying that he still had “questions” about what caused the Twin Towers to collapse after they were hit by airplanes, alluding to an alleged government cover-up. 

Spanish university cancels ‘Auschwitz/Gaza’ seminar comparing Holocaust to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Orge Castellano

MADRID (JTA) — After taking criticism from several Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations, a Spanish university has canceled a course titled “Auschwitz/Gaza: A Testing Ground for Comparative Literature,” according to the European Jewish Congress.

The course at the University of of Santiago of de Compostela in Galicia trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish groups argued. The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the seminar in a letter sent Monday to Spain’s minister of universities, Manuel Castells Oliván.

“This very title and expected content is not an issue of ‘freedom of expression,’ but a banalization of the Holocaust, which can incite to hatred and violence against Jews of today,” wrote Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations.

The university has not commented, but the European Jewish Congress reported the cancellation on Wednesday. The course was to be taught through the Faculty of Philology in the Comparative Literature Department.

Catalan journalist Pilar Rahola called it an “antisemitic act” on Twitter.

Mario Sinay, a specialist in Holocaust education, told an Argentine Jewish radio station on Tuesday: “I am totally outraged at the trivialization of the Holocaust in its fullest form, disguised as intellectualism and presented as a rational discourse, in the framework of a Spanish public university.”

The Galician Association of Friendship with Israel organization, located in the autonomous northern Spanish region, had also issued a scathing statement on Facebook.

“There is a majority consensus in considering, as a clear form of contemporary antisemitism, the trivialization of the Holocaust and the comparison of the Jewish genocide with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” it read.

Jewish group renovating a Jewish cemetery in Ukraine accused of damaging headstones

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — A Jewish group renovating a Jewish cemetery in Ukraine has caused damages there, Jewish heritage experts said.

The dispute is over works at the cemetery of Sataniv, near Ternopil in western Ukraine, the website Jewish Heritage Europe reported Tuesday.

In recent months, Agudas Oholei Tzadikkim has been performing what the Orthodox group said was renovation work on some of the oldest parts of the cemetery. Jews built a synagogue in Sataniv as early as the 16th century.

According to the Jewish Heritage Europe report, ancient headstones were erected in the frameworks and planted at random in some parts of the cemetery, away from the graves whose whereabouts they mark.

Part of the cemetery has been “irreversibly harmed,” Ilia Rodov of the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan in Israel told JHE. “Many tombstones have been crudely renovated and misplaced.”

Boris Khaimovich, chief curator of the Museum of Jewish History in Russia, told JHE, “I think this is a crime.”

Ukraine has no laws to effectively regulate renovation works of the kind done there by Ohalei Tzadikkim, according to the report.

The group did not return the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s emails and phone calls on Friday seeking comment.

Israeli-Arab swimmer wins gold at Tokyo Paralympics, makes history

By Emily Burack

(JTA) — On the first day of the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, swimmer Iyad Shalabi made history: He became the first Israeli-Arab athlete to win a medal in the Olympics or Paralympics.

Shalabi, 34, won gold Tuesday in the 100-meter backstroke in the S1 division in a time of 2 minutes, 28 seconds. Paralympic sports have a wide range of classifications; S1 denotes severe activity limitations.

“My heart was pounding,” Shalabi’s father, Yusuf Shelby, told the Israeli media. “When he overtook his competitor, I cried. He was constantly training. Six years every day he trains. It’s like a dream.”

Shalabi was born deaf to a Muslim family in Shfar’am, in northern Israel. At age 12 he was paralyzed in an accident falling from a rooftop and lost the full use of his limbs.

He competed in the Beijing and London Paralympics but failed to medal. A 2017 short documentary “Swimming Against the Current,” directed by Assel Abu Hjoul, documented Shalabi’s path to the World Championships in Scotland. The documentary premiered at the 2017 Jerusalem Film Festival.

“Iyad is an inspiring man whose life is full of victories, and today he delivered another brilliant victory,” Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Hili Tropper wrote. “Iyad was not frightened by the high expectations and filled us all with great pride.”

IDF launches retaliatory strike on Hamas targets in Gaza Strip after arson attacks, border riots

(JNS) The Israel Defense Forces conducted airstrikes against Hamas targets early on Sunday in response to incendiary balloon attacks and violent riots along the Gaza fence.

Fighter jets attacked a Hamas military compound used for training and the production of weapons, and a tunnel near the Jabalya, just north of Gaza City, the IDF reported.

The border riots began at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, Channel 12 reported, with rioters burning tires and throwing stun grenades and explosives at Israeli forces.

Earlier on Saturday, incendiary balloons ignited two fires in Israel’s south on Saturday, Israeli fire-fighting services reported.

Saturday’s unrest followed similar riots last week, in which Israeli Border Police officer Bar-El Hadaria Shmueli was critically wounded by Palestinian gunfire. IDF warplanes struck four Hamas weapon depots and production facilities in response.