The week’s must-reads: Making sense of a PM’s indictment and 5 other stories

The people of Israel entered this week not knowing who would head the government in the near future, and ended the week on the same footing — but under very different circumstances.

A day after Blue and White leader Benjamin Gantz failed to form a new coalition government and returned the mandate to President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged with criminal wrongdoing in three separate cases against him and will stand trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

The Times of Israel’s overworked political correspondent Raoul Wootliff explains Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision, the first time in Israel’s history that a sitting prime minister is facing criminal charges.

The charges, writes Wootliff, cast a heavy shadow over Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving premier, and his ongoing attempts to remain in power.

AG announces Netanyahu to stand trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust: Mandelblit’s decision is legal bombshell, marks first time in Israel’s history that serving PM faces criminal charges; Netanyahu says he won’t quit, will keep leading Israel

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In an analytical op-ed, the Times of Israel’s founding editor David Horovitz describes the ripple effect for all Israelis of a prime minister who, while professing respect for Israel’s law enforcement community, goes on to castigate it, repeatedly, in the harshest terms.

Asking us to side with him against the state, Netanyahu harms his beloved Israel: No matter how burning his sense of injustice, would that Netanyahu had taken a nobler course; instead he has plunged Israel deeper into a dreadful ordeal

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In other grave news, our environment reporter Sue Surkes spoke with leading climate change researcher Prof. James (Jim) Salinger, who said that if we think Israel is hot now, just wait until immensely hotter temperatures are the norm by 2050.

Israelis should prepare for 50-degree Celsius summer days, climate expert says: James Salinger, a lead author on a Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN report on climate change, warns that the Middle East and North Africa are likely to suffer most from global warming

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This week, the Anti-Defamation League released figures that show that roughly one in four Europeans harbors strongly negative attitudes toward Jews. Deputy Jewish World editor Yaakov Schwartz brings the story, reporting that according to a worldwide 2019 poll on anti-Semitism commissioned by the ADL, respondents from countries in Central and Eastern Europe showed a marked increase in anti-Semitic beliefs. Age-old stereotypes about Jews controlling business and finance, and being more loyal to Israel than to their home country, remain firmly entrenched.

ADL survey: 25% of Europeans anti-Semitic, East European bigotry rises sharply: A global poll of 9,000 adults in 18 countries shows significant numbers believe age-old tropes about Jews, including that they seek world domination

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Jewish World editor Amanda Borschel-Dan reports on what may be the sole archaeological remains of Bulgaria’s medieval Jewish community, currently being uncovered in the country’s ancient capital of Tarnovgrad (today’s Veliko Tarnovo). The proposed Jewish house of worship was discovered on the outskirts of a medieval fortress complex located on the city’s Trapezitsa Hill. If confirmed as a synagogue after further research, it would be the only one from Bulgaria during this era, and one of only a handful of medieval synagogues discovered throughout the continent.

Odd 13th-century Bulgarian worship hall may be country’s sole medieval synagogue: Its location in a traditionally documented Jewish quarter outside a Middle Ages fort and its unusual architecture leads archaeologist to believe building is a unique synagogue

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Beloved by Diaspora Jews (for more than her widely circulated chicken soup recipe), Israel’s only female prime minister Golda Meir has a much more nuanced perception in the Holy Land. Times of Israel film writer Jordan Hoffman speaks with Shani Rozanes, an Israeli filmmaker living in Berlin and one of the three directors behind “Golda,” which aims to bring balance to that picture.

Israeli documentary may knock Golda Meir off her pedestal — and into your heart: Unlike her ambivalent reception in the Jewish State, in the Diaspora, Israel’s only female prime minister is ‘Queen of the Jews.’ New film ‘Golda’ paints a more human picture

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What, or who, is a “typical” Jew? This is the question deliciously unanswered in photographer John Offenbach’s new book, “Jew.” Offenbach, whose book forms the basis for the Jewish Museum of London’s latest exhibition, also entitled “Jew,” has many stories to tell about his subjects, some of which he shares with London correspondent Jenni Frazer.

Wild, colorful, book of portraits shatters all stereotypes of who is a Jew: Catch an Argentinian-Jewish cowboy, a murderer, tattooed Jews and more in ‘Jew,’ by John Offenbach, the center of a new exhibit at London’s Jewish Museum through April

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