Uncategorized
In HBO’s new Stephen King series, the Holocaust is fuel for jump scares
This article contains spoilers for the first episode of the HBO Max series It: Welcome to Derry.
In the first episode of It: Welcome to Derry, it’s immediately clear that the local high school has a bullying problem. Kids stuff pickle jars in the locker of a girl whose father died in a pickle jarring accident. The Bert the Turtle mascot (it’s set in 1962 after all) is knocked around. But among the bullies stands Theodore “Teddy” Uris, a kinder, more compassionate teenage boy. It may come as no surprise that he’s Jewish.
A prequel to the 2017 movie of It, based on Stephen King’s novel, the series starts with the disappearance of the friendless and abused Matty Clements. Teddy immediately feels guilty, wondering if he could’ve prevented Matty from running away by being nice to him. Teddy’s friend Phil, who is much more interested in spying on female neighbors as they undress, doesn’t understand why Teddy cares.
Jewish men are often painted as less masculine and more sensitive than their non-Jewish counterparts. This is sometimes done derisively, although in Derry, which was developed by Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the brother-sister director-producer team behind It and It Chapter 2, and Jason Fuchs, co-writer of Wonder Woman, it makes Teddy one of the most likeable characters.
What feels more shocking is the way the show incorporates the Holocaust to torment him, although King’s work has mined the Holocaust for horror fodder in the past, such as in the novel Apt Pupil.
Shabbat dinner at the Uris household starts off normally, with the Hebrew prayers for wine and challah (incorrectly identified as “Yiddish” in the subtitles). Teddy, who is haunted by the idea that Matty is still alive, asks his dad, Rabbi Uris, if it’s possible for someone to be held underground for months. His father chides Teddy for what he thinks is his son’s wild imagination. Rabbi Uris reminds Teddy that his grandparents survived Buchenwald, where Jewish skin was allegedly turned into lampshades.
“We are Jews, Theodore,” he says. “We know better than anyone the real horrors of this world. Reality is terrifying enough as it is. Cut it out with the fantasy.”
That night, as Teddy reads a Batman comic, his lamp begins to turn off on its own. The third time he turns it back on, he is greeted with a lampshade sewn out of groaning faces.
Although the episode is packed with creepy moments — some are so overdone as to verge on parody — this scene feels the most disturbing. You may or may not believe in the two-headed devil baby that flies at us in the beginning of the episode, but the horrors of the Holocaust are very real. Behind the otherworldly spectre of the lampshade is true torture and abuse.
It feels almost exploitative to use the Holocaust for shock value. For many years, claims that Nazis turned the skin of Jewish prisoners into objects were seen as too controversial to discuss. Some feared that the claims were so outlandish, it would give credence to Holocaust deniers. Although it’s not clear if this was a common Nazi practice, at least one lampshade recovered from Buchenwald was confirmed to have been sourced from human skin. Should one really be using the skinned faces of Holocaust victims for a jump scare?
There’s something to be said for how Pennywise, Derry’s resident demon clown, mines the psychology of his victims to terrorize them, and surely the Rabbi’s comments about the Shoah affect Teddy’s young mind. But one can point to epigenetic Jewish trauma in other ways.
In It, the Jewish character Stanley Uris (Teddy’s nephew) is haunted in his synagogue by what looks like a surrealist Amedo Modigliani figure. It’s a Jewish haunting in setting and source (Modigliani was Sephardic), but it didn’t play on specific Jewish trauma the way the lampshade does.
Maybe the whole point of Derry is to take things up a notch from its predecessor. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches in the final scene of the episode: Multiple children are brutally murdered on screen, something most shows tend to avoid depicting in detail. The first — and most graphic kill — is Teddy.
The post In HBO’s new Stephen King series, the Holocaust is fuel for jump scares appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
(JTA) — Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
The post Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
—
The post Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Harvard Demands Dismissal of Latest Antisemitism Lawsuit
A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot
Harvard University on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss an antisemitism lawsuit which alleges that administrative officials violated civil rights law when they declined to impose meaningful disciplinary sanctions on two students who allegedly assaulted a Jewish student during a protest held to rally anti-Israel activists just days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities.
According to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s lawyers contended that the Jewish student, Yoav Segev, has not backed his claim with evidence and that his grievance is founded not in any legally recognizable harm but a disagreement regarding policy.
“Mr. Segev’s allegation, then, is not that Harvard failed to take action, but simply that he disagrees with the actions taken after the investigation,” the university’s lawyers wrote in a filing submitted on Monday, adding that the school believes Segev’s contention that Harvard “conspired” to deny him justice cannot be substantiated.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Segev endured a mobbing of pro-Hamas activists led by Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, who stalked him across Harvard Yard before encircling him and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as he struggled to break free from the mass of bodies which surrounded him. Video of the incident, widely viewed online at the time, showed the crush of people shoving keffiyehs — traditional headdresses worn by men in the Middle East that in some circles have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism — in the face of the student, whom they had identified as Jewish.
Nearly two years after the assault, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo have not only avoided hate crime charges but also even amassed new accolades and distinctions — according to multiple reports.
After being charged with assault and battery, the two men were ordered in April by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each, a decision which did not require their apologizing to Segev even though Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described what they did as “hands on assault and battery.”
Harvard neither disciplined Bharmal nor removed him from the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, a coveted post once held by former US President Barack Obama. As of last year, he was awarded a law clerkship with the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, a government-funded agency which provides free legal counsel to “individuals … who are charged with committing serious criminal acts.” Bharmal also reaped a $65,000 fellowship from Harvard Law School to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic group whose leaders have defended the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s atrocities against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.
As for Tettey-Tamaklo, he walked away from Harvard Divinity School with honors, according to The Free Press, as the 2024 Class Committee for Harvard voted him class marshal, a role in which he led the graduation procession through Harvard Yard alongside the institution’s most accomplished scholars and faculty. Harvard did, however, terminate his serving as a proctor for freshmen students.
The US campus antisemitism crisis has kept Harvard University in the headlines.
Earlier this month it disclosed a $113 million budget deficit caused by the Trump administration’s confiscation of much of its federal contracts and grants as punishment for, among other alleged misdeeds, its admitted failure to combat antisemitism on its campus.
According to Harvard’s “Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2025,” the university’s spending exceeded the $6.7 billion it amassed from donations, taxpayer support, tuition, and other income sources, such as endowment funds earmarked for operational expenses. Harvard also suffered a steep deficit in non-restricted donor funds, $212 million, a possible indication that philanthropists now hesitate to write America’s oldest university a blank check due to its inveterate generating of negative publicity — prompted by such episodes as the institution’s botching the appointment of its first Black president by conferring the honor to a plagiarist and its failing repeatedly to quell antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement. “We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue that have sustained our work for many years. We have intensified our efforts to expand our sources of funding.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.