The U.S. Navy has commissioned its newest Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the USS Carl M. Levin. The ship honors Michigan’s longest-serving senator for his years of service as a member and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The senator’s three daughters — Kate, Laura and Erica — participated in the keel laying, mast stepping, and christening ceremonies held on June 24 in Baltimore.

Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers are the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet, said Adm. Michael M. Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, noting that these ships conduct a variety of operations, from peacetime presence to national security. Home port for the ship will be Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Elina Svitolina, a Ukrainian professional tennis player, made history as the first Jewish woman to make the Wimbledon final.

She reached a career-high rankings of world No. 3 in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association, winning 17 WTA Tour singles titles and finishing runner-up three times.

And yet, she had no answer for the showcase of shots that Marketa Vondrousova produced in her straight sets victory on Center Court, 6-3 6-3 in 74 minutes.                                             Getty Images

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has elected Carol Ann Schwartz as its 28th national president. Schwartz, who is from a four-generation Hadassah family and whose election caps more than 30 years of service to the organization, will begin her four-year term on Jan. 1, 2024. She will succeed Rhoda Smolow, who took office in 2020.

President Isaac Herzog of Israel addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 19 as part of an official visit to Washington. Herzog used the address to smooth tensions between his country and the United States, appealing to American lawmakers to continue investing in the positive relationship between the two nations. “We are proud to be the United States’ closest partner and friend,” he said.

Writing for The Forward, Benyamin Cohen declared “…It was “a very Jewish Tony Awards” on June 11, with antisemitism-themed shows big winners. “Leopoldstadt,” about a Viennese family decimated by the Holocaust won best play; and “Parade,” about the real-life lynching of Jewish businessman Leo Frank, won for best musical revival.

Other Jewish winners were Brandon Uranowitz (best actor) for his role in “Leopoldstadt”; Alfred Uhry (writer “Parade,” best musical revival); Michael Arden (best director, “Parade”); Miriam Silverman (best featured actress, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”); Jeanine Tesori (composer, “Kimberly Akimbo”); Joel Gray and John Kander (lifetime achievement); Beowulf Boritt (set design, “New York, New York”); Charlie Rosen (orchestrations “Some Like it Hot”).                                                                                                                 Photo/Getty: “Parade” cast/creative team

The Biden administration has released the country’s first-ever national strategy to combat antisemitism, calling on government, law enforcement and schools to stanch the spread of online hate.

Last year, the Anti-Defamation League reported 3,697 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism in the United States. The figure, a 36 percent increase over 2021, is the largest number of incidents against Jews in the United States since the organization began its assessments in 1979.

The new strategy was developed in consultation with some 1,000 federal and local officials, faith leaders and civil society groups, and contains more than 100 recommendations for the federal government to take in the next year.

The actions include workshops to counteract bias in hiring and the workplace, enhanced Holocaust education programs, and an effort to eliminate barriers to reporting potential hate crimes. The strategy sets a November deadline for the Pentagon to assess antisemitic and Islamophobic behavior in the military.

In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers there. Colleagues at the other end of a long worktable rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths on the leather of the fragile objects. The work is part of a two-year effort launched last month to preserve 8,000 children’s shoes, remnants of the deaths of 1.1 million people during WWII, most of them Jews.

Today, the camp is a memorial and museum managed by the Polish state. The Germans destroyed evidence of their atrocities at Treblinka and other camps, but they failed to do so entirely at the enormous Auschwitz site as they fled the approaching Soviet forces toward the war’s end.

Eight decades later, evidence is fading under the pressure of time. But more than 100,000 shoes of victims remain. Many are warped, their original colors fading, shoe laces disintegrated, yet they endure as testament s of lives brutally cut short.

“Children’s shoes are the most moving objects for me,” said Miroslaw Maciaszezyk, a conservation specialist from the museum’s conservation laboratories. He said that he and the other conservation workers never lose sight of the human tragedy behind the shoes. Sometimes they are overcome by emotion and need breaks.