What Happened Today: October 14, 2022
Ransacked businesses closing doors in Philadelphia; secret-agent joggers passing on state intelligence; piles of laundry go unfolded amid Adderall shortage
The Big Story
Wawa, the regional convenience chain and sponsor of one of the largest Philadelphia music festivals, will be shuttering two of its marquee city locations after a store was recently ransacked by a mob of some 100 looters. Following the closure and reduction of hours at multiple locations because of (1) several violent events, including one stabbing, and (2) the doubling of incidents of theft to 687 occurrences reported to police over the past two years compared to the two prior, Wawa officials are now “seriously considering moving out of the city” altogether, City Councilmember Mike Driscoll said at a community meeting this week. The departure would be a major embarrassment for the city, in part because of the chain’s iconic association with Philadelphia and also because the chain, Driscoll said, has spent “millions and millions of dollars [on security] because of the lawlessness that was going on in their stores.”
As in several other U.S. cities, officials and business leaders in Philadelphia have struggled to temper the pandemic-era surge in crime, theft, and incidents of shocking violence. Late last month, a 14-year-old boy was murdered by a group of young men who jumped from a car to fire at least 70 shots at him and four other victims as they left a high school football practice. The city’s current homicide tally of 429 victims puts it on pace to beat last year’s record-breaking death count, and stands alongside a year-over-year increase of 48% in commercial thefts and 52% in robberies with a firearm.
A new Major Cities Chiefs Association survey of 70 law enforcement agencies across U.S. cities found that, while rape and homicide were generally lower this year compared to the last, violent offenses were at significantly higher levels than before the pandemic, with participating “cities [experiencing] a 50% increase in homicides and a roughly 36% increase in aggravated assaults” when comparing 2022 midyear figures to 2019.
The rising crime rates have touched major urban centers with both conservative and progressive mayors and district attorneys, and they remain a top concern for voters ahead of the midterms. An August Pew survey put violent crime as the third most important issue, just behind gun policies and the economy.
In the Back Pages: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/wawa-closing-philadelphia-center-city-safety-20221013.html
The Rest
→ Following last Friday’s announcement from the Biden administration that U.S. companies are banned from providing some semiconductor-chip technology to China, numerous chip equipment manufacturers with prominent market shares in China have suspended their operations there. A memo circulating internally at one of those companies announced that “employees must refrain—either directly or indirectly—from servicing, shipping, or providing support to any customers in China until further notice. We are of course taking precautionary measures in order to ensure full compliance with the new regulations.” While many of these U.S. companies have paused their Chinese operations, it is unclear if the stoppages will be permanent, as the companies can lobby the Department of Commerce to be granted an exception to these new rules. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, the “Commerce Department—led process that reviews U.S. tech exports to China approves almost all requests and has overseen an increase in sales of some particularly important technologies.”
→ Local pharmacists are running low on their supplies of Adderall—so much so that the Food and Drug Administration classified an official shortage of the prescription amphetamine on Wednesday. The bulk of the U.S. supply comes from Teva Pharmaceuticals in Israel, but that company, along with generic makers, is struggling to keep up with demand as attention deficit disorders become an increasingly common condition diagnosed by medical professionals (and some shady telehealth companies now under federal investigation). More and more Americans, regardless of any medical condition, now turn to the stimulant to increase their focus, especially younger people. Last year, prescriptions were up 15% among 22- to 44-year-olds, which might explain why 64% of pharmacists in a recent survey said they’ve had trouble filling their customer’s Adderall scripts.
→ Thread of the Day:
Unidentified joggers make vague hints at secret government reports; a senator requests briefings on withheld documents; it’s all just more trivia in the chronicle of how the United States stumbled into the Iraq War. This fascinating and infuriating thread recounts an anecdote from Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s new memoir. After reading the Bush administration’s intel on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, Leahy was out on a walk with his wife when “two fit joggers trailed behind us. They stopped and asked what I thought of the intelligence briefings I’d been getting.” The joggers then told him to ask for “File Eight” and “File Twelve,” both of which turned out to dispute the Bush administration’s narrative on Iraq, inspiring Leahy to vote against the war. Americans will undoubtedly feel grateful that Leahy kept this anecdote for his memoirs instead of sharing it publicly when it could have informed the public’s decision about whether we should invade a foreign nation.
→ With guns near the top of voter’s minds as we go into next month’s midterm elections, officials are rolling out some timely attempts at new gun legislation, with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as the latest example. This week his office said it would sign the new gun bill that would require owners to buy insurance, complete safety classes, and limit where they could carry a firearm; in its current form, the bill would comprise one of the strongest sets of state gun laws in the nation. Now on the fast track through the New Jersey legislature, the bill is one of several that officials across the country have tried to pass to either build on or cut against the U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that loosened restrictions on carrying a gun in public. The tighter gun laws, though, will have to overcome legal challenges first, with New York’s recent attempt to firm up its gun policy now being debated in a federal appeals court.
→ Resigning from your unpaid gig editing an online literary journal because of a boring interview has become the latest and likely the smallest hill to die on, as five editors from Hobart Pulp announced that they’d be leaving the magazine’s masthead following the publication of an interview with Cuban American writer (and Tablet contributor) Alex Perez. The interview, the editors write in their resignation letter, “was regressive, harmful, and also just boring writing. The misogyny and white supremacy were treated with empathetic engagement, and that sucked beyond measure.” Fear not, though—Hobart will live on! “I never wanted to run this ship. Frankly, I’d rather spend my time writing. It also is more than a little heartbreaking to watch a mutiny,” wrote remaining editor Elizabeth Ellen, who, despite the masthead uprising, will continue to oversee the publication.
→ Image of the Day:
→ On Sept. 26, NASA successfully changed the trajectory of a celestial object for the first time in history by launching a spacecraft into an asteroid. As the image above illustrates, NASA launched its DART—or double asteroid redirection test—in November 2021, then tracked its course as it arched toward Dimorphos, an asteroid orbiting the larger asteroid of Didymos. In late September, DART hit Dimorphos head on and shifted the asteroid’s orbit by far more than the scientists had hoped. “That meeting between Dimorphos and the Dart mission turned out to be a much more moving experience for the little asteroid than anticipated,” one of the scientists working on the project wrote on Twitter.
→ The performers of Medieval Times might playact their battles for the entertainment of their dinner guests, but that doesn’t mean a real war isn’t being waged behind the scenes. In July, the knights and ladies of the Medieval Times castle in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, successfully voted to form a union, but in a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday, the company alleges that the Medieval Times Performers United infringed on its trademark. Medieval Times says the “castle, swords, and old script style text” of the union’s branding hew too closely to the chain’s “Middle Ages-themed decor,” according to its lawsuit. “It is a grotesque attempt to retaliate against workers,” the union said, promising to “pursue all available legal remedies in response to Medieval Times’ unlawful thuggery.”
→ The D.C. city councilmember who introduced and helped pass legislation last year mandating that all of the city’s public school students age 12 and older get vaccinated against COVID-19 is now filing emergency legislation to delay that law’s implementation. “I have no ego about this and saying that revisiting is worth it,” Councilmember Christina Henderson said. “For me, it’s about the science evolving.” It might also be about public sentiment evolving: A Gallup survey taken in July 2022 found a 5% to 7% decrease in public support for such mandates compared to the July of the previous year, leaving those in favor with a razor-thin majority as of early summer.
→ Quote of the Day:
The report finds that actions to suppress the admission of Jewish students to Stanford did, in fact, occur in the 1950s, and that the university for years afterward denied that this occurred.
This is the conclusion of a Stanford University task force launched last year to investigate allegations that the university had limited its number of Jewish students in the 1950s—claims which the university has long denied. “This ugly component of Stanford’s history, confirmed by this new report, is saddening and deeply troubling,” the university’s president said, apologizing on the university’s behalf and pledging to announce ways of improving Jewish life on campus. Why is Stanford copping to it now? Perhaps Stanford admins have been listening to Tablet’s Gatecrashers, or maybe it was the discovery of a 1953 memo in the university’s archives that reported upon the director of admission’s concerns about high Jewish enrollment. The admissions director had “been following a policy of picking the outstanding Jewish boys while endeavoring to keep a normal balance of Jewish men and women in the class,” the memo noted. “The situation forces him to disregard our stated policy of paying no attention to the race or religion of applicants.”
Programming note: The Scroll will be off for Simchat Torah next Monday and Tuesday and will return on Wednesday.
Additional reporting and writing provided by The Scroll’s associate editor, David Sugarman
TODAY IN TABLET:
A Lost Great Yiddish Abortion Play by Alyssa Quint
After sitting in a drawer for a century, a newly unearthed piece of theater is finally having its moment.
The Elder Stateswoman of Rock by David Meir Grossman
The newest album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows a band operating at the top of their powers.
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
A Letter From My Rabbi
On Simchat Torah, figuring out how my interfaith family fit into the community
By Jenna Zark
Halfway to the holiday, I started feeling nervous.
“Where is Josh going for Simchat Torah?” asked Josh’s father.
“Well, he should be somewhere, don’t you think? Either with me or you. He’s a Jewish kid and it’s a Jewish holiday.”
I sent Josh to his dad, knowing that if my son wasn’t with me on Simchat Torah, I might not go to synagogue or to the celebrations the night before.
Making me nervous was the Torah itself—and my new marriage. Or was it my old one? There may be zillions of intermarried couples, but I didn’t know many who were formerly part of a family that included a Jewish clergy member. And trying to give my son a strong Jewish identity, as I promised to do both in marriage and divorce, was a promise I wanted to keep.
Two days before Simchat Torah, I investigated some of the things the Torah says about intermarriage:
“You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son.” Deuteronomy, 7:3.
In Prophets, I read, “And that we shall not give our daughters to the peoples of the land, and we shall not take their daughters for our sons.” Nehemiah, 10:31.
In Jewish Law, it is written, “The Torah forbids a Jew to enter a marital relationship with a non-Jew; be it a Jewish man to a non-Jewish woman, or a Jewish woman to a non-Jewish man.” Maimonides’ Laws of Forbidden Relationships, 12:1.
Reading this made me think of a conversation I overheard at the age of 12 between my mother and a friend. They were lamenting the fact that someone’s daughter had fallen in love with someone who wasn’t Jewish. The couple had encountered so much resistance from their families and religious communities, they had to break things off. This seemed to me the most devastating thing you could do to someone, but it was obviously, at least in my family, a very hard-and-fast rule.
This Maimonides. Was he ever in love?