BRIEFS MANDALORIAN STAR FIRED AFTER COMPARING TODAY’S POLITICAL CLIMATE TO THE HOLOCAUST Gina Carano, an actress who starred in the first two seasons of the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff hit, The Mandalorian, was kicked off the series on Wednesday, Feb. 10, after posting an image on social media that compared being conservative today to being a Jew during the Holocaust. In an Instagram story, Carano wrote: “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors… even by children. “Because history is edited,” she continued, “most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?” Lucasfilm released a statement saying that Carano will no longer be part of the show, and that “her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” Carano, a former mixed martial arts fighter, has drawn ire for past social media posts, including some that mocked wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and advanced conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. (JTA) STEVEN SPIELBERG GETS 2021 GENESIS PRIZE, THE ‘JEWISH NOBEL’ Director Steven Spielberg has won the 2021 Genesis Prize, the award nicknamed the “Jewish Nobel.” The award, which “honors extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values,” was announced, Feb. 10. “Key Jewish themes are often woven into his narratives: importance of identity and belonging, maintaining humanity in a ruthless world, caring for the other, and honoring the moral obligation to do the right thing,” the Genesis Prize Foundation wrote about the Oscar winner in a statement. The foundation also says it is honoring “his extraordinary work to preserve
the memory of the Holocaust and prevent future genocides through film, public advocacy and philanthropy.” Spielberg is founder of the USC Shoah Foundation, which preserves Holocaust survivor testimonies and which he created in the wake of the acclaim for his 1993 Holocaust film, Schindler’s List. In contrast to past years, the foundation considered votes on a winner from people around the world. “While the Prize Committee had the ultimate discretion about the recipient of this prestigious award, the fact that Spielberg received the most votes was a major determining factor,” the statement continued. The honor comes with a $1 million prize. Past recipients, including Michael Douglas, Michael Bloomberg, Natalie Portman and Natan Sharansky, have donated the winnings. Launched in 2013 by a group of RussianJewish philanthropists that includes current foundation chairman Stan Polovets, the prize is financed through a permanent endowment of $100 million established by The Genesis Prize Foundation. (JTA)
AMAZON’S NEXT CEO IS JEWISH Andy Jassy, a longtime Jewish Amazon executive and confidante of Jeff Bezos, will take the reins of the company as CEO later this year. Bezos made the announcement this month in a letter to his employees. “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have,” Bezos wrote. “He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.” Jassy, 53, is known for helping come up with the most profitable part of Amazon’s business model: cloud computing. The Wall Street Journal reported that in its most recent quarter, Amazon Web Services had “net sales of $12.7 billion with an operating income of $3.6 billion, more than half of the company’s overall operating income.” Companies as large as Uber and Netflix have used Amazon’s cloud infrastructure to build their businesses. The Harvard Business School graduate has worked at Amazon since 1997, just three years after its launch. His various
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roles have included serving in the music and CD sales division before rising to become Bezos’ “shadow”—akin to a chief of staff, according to one of Bezos’ former business partners. Jassy grew up in a Jewish family in suburban Scarsdale, N. Y. He married his wife, Elena Caplan, in a Jewish ceremony in California in 1997. At the time, her father was president of what was then called the Jewish Television Network. (JTA)
FAUCI WINS $1 MILLION ISRAELI PRIZE FOR ‘COURAGEOUSLY DEFENDING SCIENCE’ DURING PANDEMIC Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease specialist, was awarded a $1 million prize from an Israeli foundation for “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging COVID crisis.” The Dan David Prize’s award announcement on Monday, Feb. 15, credited Fauci for “speaking truth to power in a highly charged political environment.” The prize is awarded by the Dan David Foundation, which was founded by the late Romanian-Israeli philanthropist of the same name. The award, split into three categories—past, present, and future— honors scientists, researchers and cultural figures for achievement in their fields. Past winners range from former Vice President Al Gore to cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The foundation also noted Fauci’s work during the AIDS crisis, commending “his exceptional contribution to HIV research” in the 1980s and his time as the “architect of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.” (JTA) ISRAELI STUDIES SHOW PFIZER’S COVID VACCINE HIGHLY EFFECTIVE Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective in preventing the disease, show studies from Israel’s two largest health care networks. Israel’s vaccination drive has so far gotten shots in the arms of 3.8 million adults, according to government data— more than half of the country’s adult population. Of those, some 2.5 million Israelis have both doses of the vaccine. Now, studies of vaccinated Israelis from the country’s two largest health care
providers show that the Pfizer vaccine is effective in countering the coronavirus. Israel guarantees health care to all its citizens, and operates its health care system through four providers. On Thursday, Feb. 11, Maccabi, Israel’s second-largest provider, released the results of a study showing that the vaccine was 93% effective one week after the second shot, similar to results announced by Pfizer last year. Out of 523,000 clients who were fully vaccinated, only 544 got COVID-19. Of those, only 15 required hospitalization. Clalit, Israel’s largest health care provider, said that the vaccine led to a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID cases. The vaccine was equally effective for all age groups, Clalit said. Israel has so far outpaced the rest of the world in vaccinating its population, though the rate of vaccinations is slowing and case counts are dropping slowly amid a nationwide lockdown. (JTA)
SURVEY: NEARLY 3 IN 10 GOP BELIEVE CENTRAL TENET OF QANON Nearly three in 10 Republicans believe the claim driving the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released last week by a conservative think tank. According to the survey by the American Enterprise Institute, 29% of Republicans believe the baseless claim that former President “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” That’s the idea at the center of the false QAnon conspiracy theory, which has gained millions of supporters across the U. S. and was praised repeatedly by Trump. The conspiracy theory has also been endorsed in the past by two Republican congresswomen, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, though both have since disavowed it. QAnon, scholars say, is rooted in ageold anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that falsely allege that Jews abduct and abuse children for ritual purposes, and that a shadowy cabal of Jewish elites secretly controls the world. The survey also found that more than one in four evangelical Christians, 27%, believes the central tenet of QAnon. (JTA)
