Photo by Stephen Harmon. “Some of the great performances at Lincoln Center are outdoors.”
July 9, 2018 Weather: Sunny, with a high of 86 degrees. There’s an air quality alert.
Notices:
Free music and more local events this week are on our calendar.
News:
Upper West Sider Max Fuchs, a U.S. soldier during WWII, led Sabbath hymns on German soil in a famous service in the middle of the war. He died last week. “Private Fuchs — who had attended a yeshiva and sang cantorial music in a choir while growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side — sang the traditional Sabbath hymns at a hugely emotional open-air service on the Aachen battlefield before some 50 fellow Jewish soldiers.”
Desmond Smith was arraigned on attempted rape and other charges on Saturday in connection with a July 4 attack.
Kevin Shea, the only firefighter from Ladder 35 on Amsterdam Avenue and 66th street to survive the 9/11 attacks, gave another person the gift of life by donating a kidney. “Shea, a third-generation firefighter from Long Island, had miraculously survived Sept. 11, 2001. He had just gone off-duty after finishing a 24-hour tour with Ladder 35 that morning but went back to work when the fateful alarm sounded. He was just outside the South Tower when it collapsed. His body battered and neck broken, Shea was found unconscious lying amid the twisted steel and crushed concrete near Albany and West streets. He was the only one of 13 members of his Upper West Side firehouse to make it out alive. He was looking to pay his good fortune forward, and signed up for a program that allows living people to donate organs to anonymous individuals. He filled out a series of online questionnaires with the National Kidney Registry.”
Read a lengthy history of Donald Trump’s attempts to develop the neighborhood along the Hudson from 59th to 72nd Street. “The insights the saga provides into Trump could fuel a playbook for the current “resistance” battling him and his administration—but also serve as a reminder of the strengths that make him nearly impossible to back into a corner. Thwarted by his opponents and weakened by the consequences of his own worst attributes, Trump actually did come away with something.”
Luxury buildings, including on the UWS, contribute an enormous amount of CO2 emissions, according to one report. “A consortium of advocacy groups including New York Communities for Change analyzed public electricity use data and concluded that just two percent of the city’s buildings produce almost half of the total carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the offenders were luxury condominium towers.”
Madonna’s spat with the co-op board at Harperley Hall on 64th and CPW continues. “Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gerald Lebovits said the pop superstar was “merely harassing” fellow residents of her Upper West Side co-op for continuing to seek records from the board after she lost a legal bid challenging a rule that required her to be physically present in her $7.3 million pad when any of her family or staff are there.”
Condo apartments are now available at the historic Belnord on 86th, starting at $3.2 million. The building had previously been filled with rentals.
Why was Max Fuchs a hero? Not being cheeky here but there’s nothing in the article to support that assessment.
Woody, the article above contains a link to an obituary in NY Times, which details Mr. Fuchs’ military service( landing at Omaha Beach, for one ). That makes him a hero in my book. Another interesting point that article brings up is how humble he was – truly a great person! May he rest in peace! My sincere condolences to the family.
He fought in the war.
He was a brave, distinguished WWII vet who served so that we can enjoy our freedoms. A hero to me! RIP Mr. Fuchs.
Woody – According to an article in the Forward, Max Fuchs was an amateur cantor, a rifleman in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day, where he was hit by shrapnel. When he heard of the fate of his relatives in the Holocaust, he resolved to fight the Nazis. The Jews of Rzeszów needed all the help they could get. Numbering 14,000 before the war, only 700 would survive by fleeing and in deportation camps. Almost all of these finally abandoned Poland, where anti-Semitism only intensified after the war. With some of these grim stories in mind, Fuchs fought in the battle for Aachen, Germany.
In October 1944, a Shabbat service was planned for Jewish soldiers, and although a rabbi was present as chaplain, no cantor was available. When the soldiers were asked to volunteer, Fuchs said that he would do his best. As gunfire resounded nearby, he sang “Ein Keloheinu” and “Yigdal.” They were aware of the weight of their responsibility as bearers of Jewish tradition. This was the first direct broadcast of a Jewish religious service from German soil since Adolf Hitler and his Nazis began the destruction not only of the Jewish religion,but of all religions
The U.S. military seized the opportunity to send an international message by recording the service for broadcast and releasing a transcript to better promulgate a message of interfaith tolerance.
Read more: https://forward.com/culture/404899/remembering-max-fuchs-a-cantor-of-heroism-and-defiance/
— “Why was Max Fuchs a hero?”, Woody asks.
Jeez. Let’s see (from the linked Times article you don’t thinks shows why Mr. Fuchs was a hero):
“Max Fuchs was a rifleman in the First Infantry Division when it came ashore at Omaha Beach, the bloodiest sector of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, on the morning of June 6, 1944.”
That’s not a hero? I’d say that *anyone* who took Omaha Beach was a hero.
But wait, the article you dismiss has more:
“Four months later, he fought with the division in the battle for Aachen, which became the first German city to fall to the Allies in World War II.”
I’d say that a soldier fighting to liberate a German city — let alone the *first* German city — during World War II was a hero. Or would you say he was just doing his job??
But wait, there’s more:
“And on Oct. 29 of that year, Private Fuchs * * * sang the traditional Sabbath hymns at a hugely emotional open-air service on the Aachen battlefield before some 50 fellow Jewish soldiers. The site was near the city’s destroyed synagogue, and during the service the crack of German artillery reverberated. * * * [Private Fuchs’s service was] the first Jewish service to be broadcast from German soil since the rise of Hitler.”
Proclaiming himself a Jew in the middle of Germany — and leading others to do the same — doesn’t make him a hero in your book? With German artillery going off around you, fighting for nothing other than the Nazis’ claimed right to exterminate those self-same Jews?
What on earth do you demand before someone earns the right to be called a “hero”?
Rest in peace, Max Fuchs. There are lots of us out here who gladly call you “hero”.
The man saw combat in D-Day. I think that qualifies as heroic.
Hum…a ” consortium of advocacy groups” …”analyzed public use data”. Of course their report shows that the “evil” 1% are once again killing our city.
Here are some questions that need to be answered;
1. Who are these groups and who are their founders?
2. Where does their funding come from?
3. Who did the analysis and what is on their CVs.
4 What was their methodology?
5. What is the baseline CO2 emissions for NYC and the UWS historically, say the last 50 years and what are the current emissions.
The problem with these type of environmental reports, and we have seen too many of these since the 1960s are that they are often self-serving and only serve a narrow political agenda or purpose. Junk science reports only serve to confuse and make people cynical about science.
It’s a ‘study’ whose conclusions were written before the data was analyzed. They clearly didn’t understand the nature of the data they were using.
Jeff Berger – Excellent point. I for one am really tired of the “studies show” nonsense the left uses to push its narrative. Vilifying the wealthy is so tiring…without them the there’s a lot less $$$ to fund the government.
“.. Vilifying the wealthy is so tiring…without them the there’s a lot less $$$ to fund the government…”. – according to which study?
The only individuals who vilify the wealthy are, well, those who aren’t wealthy. How many of them would change their tune with a lot more money in the bank?
I expect that getting “a lot more money in the bank” would not change the values of most people.
So, I’d say very few would change their tune.