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A US military base canceled a children’s event celebrating a pioneering Jewish woman cyclist, citing DEI ban
A children’s museum housed on a U.S. military base cancelled a planned storytime reading celebrating the life of a pioneering 19th-century female Jewish cyclist earlier this year, after the book was flagged under a military-wide ban on “DEI” content.
The stated reason was because the book was about a woman, its author, Mary Boone, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“If they had actually read the book and found out it was about a Latvian Jewish immigrant, it would have been a double whammy,” Boone said.
The recently revealed reason for the cancellation is the latest example of how a broad crackdown on diversity initiatives throughout the U.S. military, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has pushed out Jewish representation as well.
Earlier this year the U.S. Naval Academy removed a display honoring Jewish female graduates ahead of a planned Hegseth visit. The academy also removed several books about Judaism and the Holocaust from its campus library, while leaving others including “Mein Kampf” intact. The Pentagon additionally removed content about Holocaust remembrance from its websites this spring, prompting a response from Jewish War Veterans of the USA.
The incidents all occurred this spring, immediately following Hegseth’s anti-DEI order. That was also when a military base near Tacoma, Washington, cancelled a planned reading of the children’s book “Pedal Pusher: How One Woman’s Bicycle Adventure Helped Change The World.” The picture book is a biography of Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, who in 1895 became the first woman to cycle around the world.
Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a.k.a. “Annie Londonderry,” poses with her bike she used to cycle around the world in the 1890s.
The talk featuring the book’s author was scheduled to be held this past March, during Women’s History Month, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, home to around 110,000 people including service members and their families. Boone, a Tacoma resident, revealed the reasons behind the cancellation in a Seattle Times op-ed on Oct. 11, in recognition of Banned Books Week.
“Four days before the event, I was told it violated the administration’s executive order restricting so-called ‘radical’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across federal institutions,” she wrote. “Someone complained when they saw my story time being promoted. Museum higher-ups appealed to military attorneys, who ruled that the program about a pioneering cyclist was out of bounds.
“Let that sink in: the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military had effectively declared a woman on a bike too threatening for children.”
A representative for Joint Base Lewis-McChord declined to comment, citing reduced office functions owing to the ongoing government shutdown.
Boone, who is not Jewish but is married to a Jew, told JTA that she was led to believe someone on the base had complained after seeing a poster advertising the reading. She doubts that those objecting to the book had actually read it, but rather had reacted because “it was a book about a woman.”
A section of the book briefly mentions Kopchovsky’s Jewish and immigrant identity as one reason why her journey, as a mother of three circumnavigating the globe by bike in 1895, was so improbable.
“Annie was a Latvian Jewish immigrant, and this was a time when prejudice toward Jewish people was widespread,” the book reads.
Initially, Boone said, she had not planned to include the section in the book, which only runs to 700 words. “My editor called and said, ‘This is a huge part of her story you left out,’” the author recalled. She said she responded, “I’m not a Jewish writer. Can I tell this? She was like, ‘Yes, you can tell this.’” The passage made the book.
Greentrike, a nonprofit that operates the base’s museum as well as a different children’s museum in Tacoma, did not immediately return a request for comment. Another March event featuring Boone at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, off base, went forward as scheduled.
The Seattle Times obtained an email from Greentrike outlining the military’s reasons for the book’s cancellation as part of the op-ed’s fact checking process.
In March, the museum had initially announced the events “in celebration of Women’s History Month,” saying the readings would be paired with children’s activities including bike safety lessons. A brief update announcing the military base event’s cancellation only stated that storytime “will not be taking place at this time and has been removed from the event calendar.”
Back in 1895, Kopchovsky set off on her bicycle journey from Boston as part of a wager between two men who had placed bets on whether it was possible for a woman to cycle around the world. Initially pedaling west, she reached Chicago and almost gave up before ditching her heavy women’s bicycle for a lighter and more practical men’s model, then set off back east — eventually sailing on to bike in Europe and Asia before heading back to Chicago.
During her travels, Kopchovsky went by “Annie Londonderry” — not to disguise her Jewish identity, but because she had struck a sponsorship deal with the mineral-water company Londonderry Lithia. She earned $10,000 for her ride and wrote often about it after her return, frequently embellishing her tales of derring-do.
Children on the base have still received multiple opportunities to hear about Kopchovsky. When the storytime cancellation was initially announced, Boone said, she was contacted by representatives from two public schools also housed on base. She wound up speaking at both of them, without incident.
Months later, after she went public with the initial cancellation, she was swarmed with speaking invitations and sales of her book picked up. Among the new connections she made were to distant relatives of Kopchovsky.
“It’s given me the opportunity to talk about her to a lot more people who are outraged that this book about a woman would be cancelled,” she said.
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How Shabbat bound Lindsey Graham to Joe Lieberman
Lindsey Graham did not always know what time Shabbat started, but he always knew when it ended. That was the joke the South Carolina Republican made while remembering his close friend, the late Sen. Joe Lieberman, at a memorial service in Washington in 2024.
In his remarks, Graham said that while traveling around the world with his Senate colleague, Lieberman, an observant Jew and author of a book about Shabbat, always knew exactly when sundown arrived on Friday, no matter where they were. After years of traveling together, Graham joked, he learned to recognize when Shabbat ended on Saturday “so we didn’t have to do this anymore.”
This past Saturday evening, almost exactly as Shabbat came to a close, Graham died after suffering an apparent heart attack at his Capitol Hill townhouse. Emergency dispatch audio indicates first responders were called to his home at around 8:30 p.m. after a report of chest pains.
The two politicians from different sides of the aisle first became close when Graham joined the Senate in 2003, joining an already close friendship between Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018. Despite disagreeing on many domestic issues, Graham and Lieberman bonded over shared views about American leadership abroad, traveling together to the world’s most dangerous conflict zones in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The three senators, who became known as the “Three Amigos,” also made repeated trips to Israel.
At Lieberman’s memorial, Graham recalled one of their more memorable trips together, accompanying McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Graham said he was pinned against the ancient stones by photographers scrambling for the perfect shot and injured his knee. “They crushed me against the wall, and I began to wail,” Graham joked, referencing the site’s English name, the Wailing Wall. Lieberman, he recalled, helped pull him back to his feet.
Months later, during a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Colorado, Lieberman brought the Tibetan spiritual leader over to Graham and asked if he could heal his injured knee. The Dalai Lama placed a hand on it and asked if it felt any better. “No,” Graham replied.
“I didn’t think so,” the Dalai Lama quipped.
A strong ally of Israel
Israel occupied a central place in Graham’s political career. He was one of Congress’ strongest supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance, pushed for a tough approach toward Iran and backed efforts to expand peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Axios reported Sunday that Graham spent his final weeks working on a renewed push aimed at normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that he and Graham disagreed over Israel’s recent proposal to phase out U.S. military assistance in the coming years, amid growing criticism of aid to Israel from both parties. Graham “went ballistic,” Netanyahu said. “He said, ‘No way. You can’t do that.’ He was so concerned with our security, which he believed was your security, that he actually fought the prime minister of Israel on keeping America’s aid – or actually increasing it.”
As news of Graham’s death spread Saturday night, Jewish organizations and leaders mourned his passing and reflected on the legacy he leaves as one of the Senate’s strongest advocates for Israel and Jewish causes.
In his farewell to Lieberman two years ago, Graham concluded: “One of the best things that ever happened to Lindsey Graham was to meet Joe Lieberman. So until we meet again, my amigo, God bless.”
For those who watched their friendship over the years, it is hard not to imagine that somewhere beyond this world, McCain, Lieberman and Graham have found each other once again.
The post How Shabbat bound Lindsey Graham to Joe Lieberman appeared first on The Forward.
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I was there when the lights went out and New York was plunged into darkness
I’m the lifelong resident of a vast and complicated metropolis that smugly prides itself on never stopping. Subways, buses and cabs running day and night, bodegas and diners open 24/7, hundreds of thousands of people at work or out partying somewhere, bike couriers and truck drivers making deliveries — all in a town with a million moving parts, where the show always goes on — until, suddenly, it doesn’t.
I was reminded of that one evening not long ago in a drab Chinese restaurant uptown on Broadway, clutching a pair of wooden chopsticks poised to shovel another mound of chicken and walnuts into my mouth.
Music was playing softly over the house PA system. The melody suddenly sounded strangely familiar, but oddly out of place in those surroundings. I froze mid-bite, trying to place what I was hearing. Then it hit me. I glanced at my dinner companion Ann Aptaker, author of the Cantor Gold noir crime novels.
“Wow,” I said. “Do you hear that?”
She paused, tilted her head slightly, then raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s Threepenny Opera!”
Sure enough, the song drifting through the room was Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s wickedly jaunty tango, “Ballad of Immoral Earnings.” Even stranger, it was a track from my favorite production of the show: the Lincoln Center revival from decades ago, starring the late, great Raul Julia as Mack the Knife and Ellen Greene as his favorite prostitute, Jenny Diver.
“Of all things! What a weird song to play while people are eating,” I mused.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in a restaurant before,” she agreed. “And certainly not a Chinese place.”
“They must have good taste in musicals.”
Shrugging, we resumed picking away at our dinner. A minute later another song from the same show began to play. We gaped at each other.
“They’re playing the whole album!” I sputtered. “What are the odds?”
Ann frowned and paused. then suddenly whirled to reach into the pocket of her denim jacket hanging behind her chair. She pulled out her phone, and the music instantly grew louder. We both laughed. She must have leaned back against her jacket and set off her music app. Whew — mystery solved!
But hearing those distinctive strains of Weill’s score transported me back to one of the hottest summers New York City had ever endured.
It was 1977, the year I attended an outdoor performance of Threepenny Opera at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. My mother and a roommate from Pratt had joined me that night.
The Delacorte sits beneath the stone towers of Belvedere Castle, lit by floodlamps like a fairytale illustration, open to the sky and the sounds of the city beyond the trees. On a good night it can feel magical. On this particularly sweltering night, the air hung over us in the audience like a damp blanket as Philip Bosco, who had replaced Raul Julia for this summer staging, swaggered across the stage as Mack the Knife, and Ellen Greene reprised her role as Jenny.
And then — just as she was belting out her furious solo number, Pirate Jenny — all the lights shut off. Greene’s mic abruptly went dead, and the band lurched sourly out of tune before grinding to a halt.
We were plunged into pitch darkness. For a moment, there was silence.
Then the crowd began to buzz nervously. Was this part of the show? I’d seen the play several times before, and knew that it most definitely was not.
A few awkward minutes later, some of the cast reappeared wielding flashlights. While the tech crew worked on the electricity, the band filled the darkness with some lively jazz. Rubber-limbed dancer Tony Azito pranced around jovially in the flickering beams, easing the mood for a spell. But that age-old theater adage, the show must go on, was about to bite the dust.
The house manager finally stepped up on stage to make an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we just learned that there’s been a massive power failure at Con Edison. It’s not just us; the whole city is dark!”
We didn’t know it yet, but this was the Big Blackout of July 13, 1977, and there we were, thousands of us stranded smack in the middle of Central Park. There wasn’t even much of a moon out that night, so it was really, really dark.
“Well, this is some pickle,” Mom said.
We wondered how the hell we were going to get out of there.
I vividly recalled the last big blackout in New York City, the one in 1965. I was just a young kid back then and safely at home, so it had actually been fun. While my mother lit a few Sabbath candles, my little sister and I roamed from room to room pretending we were in a haunted house. Meanwhile, our poor Dad had to trudge back to Brooklyn from midtown Manhattan — a five-hour hike in hot leather shoes.
But this time felt very different. I was far from the safety of home, trapped in the middle of what might as well have been a forest at night. Central Park is beautiful when you can see it. In pitch darkness it’s downright hazardous.
“Guess we’ll all just have to sleep in the park tonight,” I cracked. Neither Mom nor my Pratt roomie were laughing.
Thankfully, a phalanx of city cops eventually arrived to help guide us out. Audience members, cast and crew all joined hands as we carefully made our way along the park’s winding paths, stepping over roots and curbs, catching one another when someone stumbled. Our only illumination came from a few scattered police car headlights.
A walk that normally takes ten minutes took forever, but eventually we emerged onto Central Park West.
The scene was eerie. Streetlamps were dark. Traffic lights were out. Cars sat frozen in the intersections. Not a single apartment window was lit. For a city that never sleeps, it felt as if someone had suddenly flipped off the master switch.
Then I spotted something: “Look, the buses are still running!”
A city bus was rumbling slowly toward us, brightly lit inside. With the subways dead, getting back to my dorm in Brooklyn would have been impossible, so Mom’s place on the Upper East Side looked like the safest destination. She had temporarily split with my Dad and was living there with a roommate at the time.
The three of us squeezed aboard along with what felt like half the audience, and somehow made it across town to First Avenue. As we approached my mother’s high-rise, a dreadful thought suddenly hit me.
“Mom, what floor are you on again?”
“Twenty-five,” she replied grimly.
Of course both elevators were dead. We trudged up 25 flights of stairs in complete darkness, arriving exhausted and panting. My mother fumbled with her key, finally opening the door to reveal Sylvia, her gravel-voiced, seen-it-all Long Island roommate, standing there with her ever-present cigarette tip glowing in the dark.
“Come on in, darlings,” she rasped dryly. “Join the party.”
Sylvia had lit a few candles around the apartment, the only light we’d see that night.
Outside, the city was far from peaceful. While we tried to sleep on sofa cushions on the floor, one of the worst nights of unrest in New York history was unfolding in the streets below. Store windows were smashed. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were set on fire.
Lying there in the dim glow of flickering candlelight, hearing distant sirens punctuated by the sudden crash of breaking glass somewhere in the darkness below, I felt a growing sense of dread. An evening that had begun with music and theater had improbably ended with Manhattan plunged into darkness, its fragile machinery suddenly exposed.
By morning the city looked as though it had survived a world war.
This resilient burg has been battered and bruised over the years, enduring terrorist attacks, blackouts, blizzards, hurricanes, floods, garbage strikes, transit strikes, and the occasional collapse of its aging infrastructure. Yet somehow it manages to reset and lurch forward each time, improvising solutions the way Tony Azito danced in the dark that night at the Delacorte.
The post I was there when the lights went out and New York was plunged into darkness appeared first on The Forward.
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Lindsey Graham, pro-Israel Trump confidant in the Senate, dies suddenly at 71
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, has died at 71.
Graham’s office announced his death in a statement early Sunday morning, saying that he had died late Saturday after “a brief and sudden illness.” Graham had returned from Ukraine, where he met with Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky, the day before.
Graham’s death means the Senate and Republican Party have lost one of its most durable pro-Israel voices at a time when anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise in both places. In his more than three decades in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate since 2003, Graham aggressively backed U.S. aid to Israel, advanced a hawkish line on Iran and met repeatedly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in both Israel and the United States.
Netanyahu repeatedly said Israel had “no greater friend” than Graham in the United States. Graham’s most recent visit to Israel was in February, ahead of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, which he later took credit for urging. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said of Israeli officials at the time.
Graham was also a vocal backer of Israel’s military responses to attacks by Hamas, including during the 2014 and after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza and augured a period of declining support for Israel. On Oct. 8, he issued a statement calling for Israel to defeat Hamas “by any and all means necessary” and in the subsequent weeks drew attention for calling on Israel to “flatten the place.”
Graham continued to promote a two-state solution as it receded as a U.S. priority, but he also adjusted to reflect the mounting isolationist streak in his party. Last year, he made news for embracing Netanyahu’s announcement of a plan to “taper” U.S. aid to Israel, saying it should be done sooner than Netanyahu’s 10-year timeline.
Graham’s outlook on Israel fit into a broad portfolio that included helming the Senate Budget Committee and pushing for a stronger U.S. response to Russia. Graham, who never married and had no children, was up for reelection in November.
This obituary will be updated.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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