Need to Know for March 15

Toys R Us closing, Orthodox Jews try to stop time and Stephen Hawking’s Israel relationship

Cash out those gift cards!

Toy store chain Toys R Us is planning to sell or close all 800 of its U.S. stores, affecting as many as 33,000 jobs as the company winds down its operations after six decades, according to a source familiar with the matter. The news comes six months after the retailer filed for bankruptcy. The company has struggled to pay down nearly $8 billion in debt — much of it dating to a 2005 leveraged buyout — and has had trouble finding a buyer. There were reports earlier this week that Toys R Us had stopped paying its suppliers, which include the country’s largest toymakers. On March 14, the company announced it would close all 100 of its U.K. stores. In the United States, the company told employees closures would likely occur over time, and not all at once, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement on March 14 that once the liquidation is complete, gift cards could be “as worthless and unwanted as a lump of coal in a stocking.” He also wrote a letter to Maureen Ohlhausen, acting chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, asking the FTC to make sure the retailer is doing everything it can to honor the gift cards. According to The Washington Post, Toys R Us got its start as a baby furniture shop in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood in 1948. It didn’t take long for Charles Lazarus, who founded the company at age 25, to realize he could make a lot more money selling toys than one-off cribs at Children’s Bargain Town. He renamed his business Toys R Us and created an emporium of exclusive products and ever-rotating inventory.

Orthodox Jews try to stop year-round daylight saving time

Florida’s Orthodox Jewish community is working to convince the governor not to sign a bill that would keep the state in daylight saving time all year. Agudath Israel of Florida has contacted state lawmakers to explain how the Sunshine Protection Act would adversely affect the Orthodox Jewish community, Vos Iz Neis reported, citing Rabbi Moshe Matz, the state Agudah’s executive director. Matz also called on Florida’s Jewish community leaders, institutions and residents to contact Gov. Rick Scott to express their opposition. The bill is awaiting Scott’s signature; the Florida House of Representatives and Senate voted overwhelmingly this month to adopt the measure. It will still need congressional approval. One of the major reasons for the enthusiasm is the benefit to tourism, a major industry in Florida, by providing an extra hour of daylight for activities. But having sunrise and sunset arrive an hour later is a problem for Orthodox residents and visitors, Vos Iz Neis reported. For example, certain morning prayers cannot take place until after sunrise, such as putting on tefillin and the silent Amidah, or Shemona Esrei. Under daylight saving time in the winter, that would make the earliest time for the prayer at 8:05 a.m., likely too late for people who have to go to work or drive a school carpool. In addition, ending Shabbat an hour later would hurt Jewish business owners who open up on Saturday night. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established the system of uniform daylight saving time throughout the country. Hawaii and most of Arizona are exempt from the act.

Physician/patient — An illustrative photo of a physician speaking to a patient. (AJ Watt/Getty Images)

New study for cancer risk in Ashkenazi Jews aims to be a model for genetic testing

A new study will provide free testing for three mutations that substantially increase the risk for developing breast, ovarian and prostate cancer among people with Eastern European Jewish ancestry. The BRCA Founder Outreach Study (BFOR), which was launched last week, will test 4,000 men and women in four U.S. cities — New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston — for mutations in the BRCA gene that are more common among those with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Those who test positive for one of the mutations will receive genetic counseling to figure out next steps. The BRCA gene is found in all humans, but mutations can cause it to function improperly and increase the risk of developing certain cancers: breast and ovarian in women, breast and prostate in men. Those with Ashkenazi Jewish roots are 10 times more likely to have a BRCA mutation than the general population, with one in 40 carrying a mutation in the gene.

Spotify headed to Israel

Spotify, the streaming service that offers access to millions of songs, is now available in Israel. The platform’s ad-free service will cost less per month in the Jewish state than it does in the U.S. — 19.90 shekels, or about $5.80, as opposed to $10 here. The company expanded to a few other countries as well, including South Africa and Vietnam, just three weeks before its initial public offering. Most listeners use Spotify’s free, ad-supported tier. In Israel, the response to not having access to platforms like Spotify has been to pirate music, or illegally download it from the internet and from freely distributed copies (think burned CDs). This has actually been the case for decades, well before Spotify began upending the music industry with its U.S. launch in 2011 (and before rival streaming service Apple Music launched in Israel in 2016).

Stephen Hawking and Israel

Stephen Hawking, the famed physicist who died March 14 at 76, had a publicly strained relationship with Israel. Although Hawking visited the country several times, giving lectures at Israeli and Palestinian universities, he pointedly boycotted an academic conference in Jerusalem in 2013 on what a spokesman at the time said was the “unanimous advice” of his Palestinian colleagues there. Israelis organizers felt doubly insulted, noting that the conference honored then-Israeli President Shimon Peres — seen widely as an international symbol of peace. However, Hawking has an Israeli scientist to thank for some of his most groundbreaking research. In the early 1970s, when the British-born Hawking had already done essential work on the cosmic gravitational fields known as black holes, he got into a disagreement with Jacob Bekenstein, then a doctoral student at Princeton. Bekenstein, the son of Polish-Jewish parents in Mexico, had Israeli citizenship and later taught at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem for 25 years. In his doctoral thesis, Bekenstein theorized that black holes had entropy, or disorder in its system, and subsequently, according to the laws of physics, a temperature. Hawking disagreed, maintaining that black holes could not radiate anything and therefore had no temperature. At a conference in France that year, Hawking gathered a few colleagues and angrily confronted Bekenstein. But in 1974, Hawking proved Bekenstein’s idea through a complicated quantum theory calculation. Today, the entropy of a black hole is called Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, but the radiation emitted from a black hole is called Hawking-Bekenstein radiation, or often just Hawking radiation.

March for Our Lives

Jmore is looking for young adults who will be attending the March for our Lives in D.C. on March 24 and would like to contribute to our live coverage that day. If you’re interested, please contact amandak@jmoreliving.com #MarchforourLives

Beware the Ides of March …

…AKA the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Go to facebook.com/JMORELiving every Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. to watch Need to Know with Editor-in-Chief Alan Feiler. Join the discussion on the week’s news and current events.