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.

The Sackler family will pay out $6 billion to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic and also give up control of their company, Purdue Pharma in exchange for protection from current and future civil lawsuits against its opioid business, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled on May 30.

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and its owners, the Sackler family, are facing hundreds of lawsuits across the country for the company’s alleged role in the opioid epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans over the past 20 years. Purdue created and sold the highly addictive painkiller beginning in the 1990s. Purdue and the family have been accused of knowingly misleading consumers about the drug’s addictive properties.

As part of the current settlement, Purdue will be restructured into Knoa Pharma, which will be overseen by a public board and manufacture medications for addiction reversal and treatment, as well as continue to produce drugs, including OxyContin. The company’s profits — in addition to the $6 billion — will go toward fighting the opioid crisis.

Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, was convicted by a federal jury of all 63 charges against him. Bowers now faces the possibility of the death sentence at the hands of the same jury for the deadliest attack ever on Jewish people in the U.S.

Bowers was convicted of 11 capital counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death, and 11 capital accounts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence, among other charges, including 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death.

The penalty phase is scheduled to begin on June 26.

Published this month and appearing on the Amazon website is Diner of Lost Souls, the second book in the series penned by shul members Graham Diamond and Hedy Campeas.

The mystery thriller features sleuth Cora Drakos, who owns the renowned Athena diner, from which she initiates an investigation into a death — a murder? — where the facts are elusive and the danger escalating. Multiple suspects present a trail of deception that put Cora’s own life in danger.

The first book in the series introduced Cora Drakos and left readers eager for more from this writing duo and their dynamics-from-the-diner concept.

Diner of Lost Souls, books 1 and 2, are available on Amazon, Amazon Kindle, and from local bookstores.