Need to Know for Aug. 3

Stephen Miller and the Statue of Liberty, NAACP travel advisory, and a record set at Temple Mount

‘Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’

In a White House press briefing on Aug. 2, aide Stephen Miller told reporters that the famous pro-immigration poem associated with the Statue of Liberty “doesn’t matter” since it was attached to the site years after the statue was erected, according to JTA. When CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Miller whether a new immigration bill favoring English-speaking applicants and vetting potential immigrants according to their skill sets is “keeping with American tradition” and the spirit of the Emma Lazarus poem, Miller said that the poem doesn’t matter since it was “added later” to the statue. “I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty and lighting in the world; it’s a symbol of American liberty lighting the world,” Miller argued.

Read: White House Aide Stephen Miller Doesn’t Think Statue of Liberty Has to do with Immigration

NAACP issues travel advisory

In a truly disturbing first, the NAACP has issued a statewide travel advisory. The organization is warning people to avoid traveling to Missouri following the state passing a law that some say allows for legal discrimination. “Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION,” the advisory warns. “Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri.” According to CNN, the advisory doesn’t tell people to not go to Missouri. Rather, the NAACP wants minority travelers to be aware of what it says are potential risks. “People should tell their relatives if they have to travel through the state, they need to be aware,” Chapel said. “They should have bail money, you never know.”

Read: NAACP issues its first statewide travel advisory, for Missouri

Preserving a language

Spain’s leading linguistic authority will create an academy in Israel dedicated to the study and preservation of the Ladino language. The institution will be the 24th branch of the Spanish Royal Academy, the Guardian reported on Aug. 1. Nine Ladino specialists have been appointed to help start the institution’s work. The academy’s 23 other branches specialize in other Spanish dialects and are located across Latin America and other countries, such as the Philippines. Ladino, sometimes referred to as Judeo-Spanish, is an endangered species in the language world. Some estimates say less than 100,000 people currently know how to speak it. – JTA

SlutWalk to allow Star of David

After a week of consultations with “Jewish and Palestinian community members,” organizers of a Chicago demonstration on behalf of women’s rights said they would allow religious symbol at its Aug. 12 event, but not “nationalist” ones. “Bring symbols of your respective faiths, if that is what you choose to do. Bring symbols of resistance, but leave symbols of nationalism and oppression at home,” SlutWalk Chicago posted Monday on its Facebook page. “Let us be clear: the Star of David is welcome at our event, just as all symbols of faith and heritage are welcome. We are as firmly against anti-Semitism as we are against Islamophobia,” it also said. The organizers’ statement on the issue came in the wake of a controversy surrounding the decision in June by the Chicago Dyke March, a separate group, to remove three Jewish women from an LGBTQ demonstration who carried rainbow Pride flags bearing the Star of David. Under the SlutWalk policy, Jewish Pride flags will be permitted, but Israeli flags and all other national flags are not. –JTA

Literary editor dies

Judith Jones, the literary editor who rescued Anne Frank’s diary from the U.S. publisher’s rejection list, has died, according to the New York Times. She was 93. Frank’s manuscript had been rejected for publication until Jones read it. The first US edition of ‘Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl’ ran to a modest 5,000 copies and contained a preface from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Read: Remembering Judith Jones and Her Recipe for Food Writing

Auschwitz guard fit for prison

A 96-year-old former Auschwitz guard is fit to serve a prison sentence, according to prosecutors in the German state of Hanover. Oskar Groening was convicted and sentenced in July 2015 to four years in jail for his role in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews at the concentration camp in Poland. A federal appeals court rejected his appeal in November. A doctor who examined Groening found him fit to go to prison with appropriate medical care, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press. The prosecutor’s office then rejected a defense request to excuse Groening from going to jail. A date for Groening to enter prison has not yet been set. He has remained free for the appeal and the decision on his fitness for prison.

Read: Former Auschwitz guard, 96, found fit to serve prison sentence

Temple Mount sets a record

More than 1,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount on Aug. 1, a new one-day record for Jewish visitors. At least 1,046 Jews visited the site on the observance of Tisha b’Av by early afternoon. More were expected to visit later in the day when the site reopens to visitors, Haaretz reported, citing Jewish Temple Mount activists. The fast day marks the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. On Jerusalem Day, in May, some 900 Jews visited the Temple Mount.

Read: Temple Mount attracts record Jewish crowd on Tisha b’Av

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Top photo: An aerial view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York, Sept. 8, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)