Monday, February 28, 2022
'I'm not running' Meet the warrior Jews fighting back against Putin
Asher Joseph Cherkaskyi does not fit the stereotypical image of a Ukrainian soldier. With his long beard and kindly face, he looks more like a shopping centre Father Christmas or a Fidel Castro tribute act than a natural-born soldier. But he's one of dozens of orthodox Jews taking up arms for their country in the face of Russian invasion.
Cherkaskyi re-enlisted in the Ukrainian Defence forces over a month ago, saying at the time "I'm not running anywhere" and branding Putin's Russia the "Nazi federation." Writing on Facebook, he said: "No, I'm not running anywhere and I'm not going to run.Dear friends, as many of you know, in the wake of the escalating international situation and the threat of a full-scale war by the Nazi Federation, I signed a contract and am currently an officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
He signed up for service with his 20-year-old son David in Dnipro, a city home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Ukraine.
Cherkaskyi first saw combat in the 2014 war with Russia. The AK-47-bearing Chabadnik, enlisted in the Ukrainian army in 2012 and was soon engaged in fierce combat against Russian separatists near Donetsk and was part of a frontline force that included the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists.
After the war, he became a local hero in Dnipro, receiving praise from regional politicians including the mayor of the city.
In a Facebook post in late 2014, then Dnepropetrovsk deputy regional governor and now mayor Boris Filatov even called the Crimean native a "hero and a symbol of the resistance".
Mayor Boris Filatov said: "Of course, some of you saw photos of a man with a huge full beard, similar to Fidel Castro. His name is Asher Joseph Cherkaskyi and he is a fighter of our Dnipro battalion. The efforts of all the liars and cowards of the world cannot stop this man. The only thing that bothers him on the front line is the lack of kosher food."
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Friday, February 25, 2022
Ukraine’s Jews seek refuge in synagogues as Russia invades
Several hours after Odessa awoke to explosions Thursday morning, Avraham Wolff, the city's chief rabbi, got a call from a nearly 90-year-old Holocaust survivor. The man was so distressed he could barely speak.
"He cried and cried, and I just listened to him," Wolff said. "I told him that everything is OK, the Russians are not coming to kill us, these are not Nazis."
For weeks, the rabbi had prepared for the possibility that Russia could invade Ukraine. He bought several tons of sugar, macaroni, rice, flour and water, hired 20 security guards and reserved buses to evacuate thousands of Jews to neighboring Moldova.
But the bus drivers, like so many others, have fled the city, with some lines to cross the border stretching more than a mile. Wolff's job now is to calm and feed congregants, many of whom are elderly and too scared to leave their home.
The invasion has thrown all of Ukraine into crisis, and the panic is acute in the Jewish community, where Holocaust survivors and their descendants carry a long history of trauma. Synagogues have turned into shelters, while some Jews try to flee to Israel.
And when people don't know what to do, they call their rabbi.
"I got hundreds of phone calls from people with fear," said Wolff. "People are worried and they call us all day, from morning until night."
Ukraine was once home to the largest population of Jews in Europe after Poland. The vibrant community, which included Jewish schools and theaters, started to wane after waves of anti-Jewish riots under Russian czars in the late 1800s and the following decades spurred massive migration to the United States.
During the Holocaust, an estimated 1.2 million to 1.4 million Jews in Ukraine were killed, according to Wendy Lower, a historian at Claremont McKenna College. Hundreds of thousands died in gas chambers or in mass shootings. Others died from malnourishment in ghettos.
No longer welcome in rural towns where Nazi sympathizers had lived, many survivors of the war moved to big cities. In the decades that followed, antisemitism sent Jews fleeing, often to Israel.
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Thursday, February 24, 2022
Ukraine begins evacuating Uman, site of annual Hasidic pilgrimage
As fighting raged across Ukraine following Russia's invasion, Ukrainian authorities ordered the evacuation of civilians from the city of Uman, an official at an Israeli first responder organization said Thursday.
"The Uman municipality has begun evacuating hundreds of families from the city, the danger is very great — there are many weapons depots in the area and the explosions are intense," Shlomi Elisha, the deputy chief of the Ukraine division of United Hatzalah, told Army Radio.
Uman normally sees some 30,000 visitors, most of them from Israel, visit the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov for the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid repeated his call for Israelis to leave Ukraine by land.
The Foreign Ministry estimates that there are around 8,000 Israeli citizens still in the country, including 200 families in Uman. A number of Arab Israeli students also returned to Ukraine this week in order to take exams at their university in Kharkiv.
Israel has called on citizens to evacuate through western border crossings. It has stationed representatives at border crossings into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania in order to assist Israelis leaving Ukraine. Representatives are also being sent to a Moldova crossing.
"Our representatives are ready to receive you," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett added on Thursday afternoon.
Israel is currently operating under the assessment that there will be 5 million refugees from Ukraine amid the conflict, The Times of Israel has learned.
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Wednesday, February 23, 2022
A Hasidic village in New York is paving the way for a ‘white, Christian, conservative’ America
Years ago, friends of mine visited the Satmar village of Kiryas Joel, established in 1977 in upstate New York. "It was amazing," one of them said of the streets and shops filled with men and women in traditional black clothing. "Literally everyone was Hasidic. It was like visiting Eastern Europe a century ago."
Actually, I pointed out, Eastern Europe wasn't anything like that, least of all the Romanian city of Satu Mare, the home base of the Satmar. A century ago it was bustling with secular culture, diverse Jewish politics, and — above all — non-Jews, who constituted three-quarters of the population.
Indeed, a community like Kiryas Joel could never have existed in Europe. It is a uniquely "American Shtetl," as the title of a new book about the town by David Myers and Nomi Stolzenberg suggests.
In "American Shtetl," Stolzenberg, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, and Myers, a professor of Jewish history at UCLA, provide the definitive study of Kiryas Joel, its history, people, and its profound relevance for America and American Jewry well beyond the town's 25,000 residents.
The authors of "American Shtetl" understand Kiryas Yoel not as an authentic Eastern European Jewish town, but as a recreation of a mythic past built on uniquely American features: above all, the power of religious freedom, private property, and state welfare.
The book is divided into two sections. Part one describes the "past and present" of the city. It opens with a detailed portrait of life in the village today: religious life, gender roles, education, politics, work, charity networks, and economy.
Kiryas Joel is one of the poorest cities in the country, suffering four times the national rate of poverty with over 93% of its residents on Medicaid.
It remains an extremely homogeneous community, where religious or cultural deviance is punished, sometimes harshly. The regular presence of violence in the village against those who reject the rebbe's leadership – slashed tires, torched cars, smashed windows, physical assault, and even death threats – constitutes a steady part of this story.
Though the town's leadership always claimed it was the action of young "hotheads," the authors make it clear that it was a "direct result" of the victims' resistance to the leaders' authority. One famous sermon of the rebbe, the "Ki sisa drusha," openly instigated these attacks.
In the village, religious and political authority are deeply intertwined. Beyond social consequences for defying rabbinic leadership, the rebbe essentially appoints all local political office holders, despite the technical compliance with democratic procedures. Thus religious authorities wield both private and secular power.
The book jumps back to review the history of Satmar Hasidim – relative latecomers to the Hasidic world despite today constituting its largest faction – and their first rebbe, the late Joel Teitelbaum , after whom the village is named.
After losing his entire family in the Holocaust and escaping on the famous Kasztner train which spirited hundreds of Hungarian Jews to safety, the anti-Zionist Teitelbaum failed to find a place in Palestine and ultimately settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1946.
In Williamsburg, the Satmar Hasidim paradoxically attempted to create their own "fortress" of isolation through active engagement in urban politics – to a far greater extent than their prewar ancestors – as documented in last fall's brilliant study of the community, "A Fortress in Brooklyn".
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Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Jewish Group Calls for ‘Emergency Action’ Following Antisemitic Incidents in Toronto Schools
A Canadian Jewish group called on the Toronto District School Board on Tuesday to take "emergency action" to address antisemitism after a couple of incidents involving Nazi salutes were reported this month.
On Thursday, two students climbed onto a file cabinet in the classroom of a Jewish teacher at Valley Park Middle School and pantomimed a Nazi salute, with a third student then saying, "Heil Hitler," according to the teacher. A similar incident was reported at Charles H. Best Middle School in North York earlier this month.
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) has since urged the Toronto District School Board to "send a strong message that Jew-hatred will simply not be tolerated within our schools."
"This wave of antisemitism at TDSB schools that we are seeing is unprecedented in terms of both number of incidents and their escalating gravity," said FSWC President and CEO Michael Levitt. "It is unfathomable and shocking that, in 2022, a Jewish teacher is faced with Nazi salutes and a 'Heil Hitler' chant in her classroom. Clearly something is broken in Toronto's public school system and requires immediate attention."
Valley Park Middle School, which also experienced recent incidents of antisemitic graffiti, called the students' actions "very upsetting and unacceptable" in a letter to parents, and announced that in March it will host a presentation by Carrying Holocaust Testimony from Generation to Generation, an educational nonprofit that teaches about the Nazi genocide.
"On occasions where there are incidents at school that make any of us feel unwelcome, we take these very seriously and address the situation immediately," Principal George Bartzis wrote. "As a school, Valley Park is committed to providing students with critical thinking skills that enable them to understand complex issues from many different perspectives."
Bartzis said that social workers will be made available to students affected by the incident.
The Toronto District School Board did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner's request for comment.
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Friday, February 18, 2022
Jewish Louisville mayor candidate ‘traumatized’ as shooting suspect released
A Louisville mayoral candidate said Thursday that he was "traumatized" by the news that the man charged with drawing a gun and firing at him earlier this week had been placed on home incarceration.
Quintez Brown, 21, was arrested and charged with attempted murder shortly after Monday's shooting in Louisville. The Democratic candidate, Craig Greenberg, was not hit by the gunfire but said a bullet grazed his sweater.
"Our criminal justice system is clearly broken. It is nearly impossible to believe that someone can attempt murder on Monday and walk out of jail on Wednesday," Greenberg said in a statement. "If someone is struggling with a mental illness and is in custody, they should be evaluated and treated in custody. We must work together to fix this system."
A group called the Louisville Community Bail Fund paid the $100,000 cash bond on Wednesday afternoon. Under the terms of home incarceration, Brown has been fitted with a GPS ankle monitor and is confined to his home.
Brown, a social justice activist running as an independent for Louisville's metro council, has been charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment.
A judge has ordered Brown to have no contact with Greenberg or his campaign staff and said Brown cannot possess firearms. Brown's lawyer said the man has "serious mental issues" and said he would undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Chanelle Helm, an organizer with the Louisville Community Bail Fund and member of Black Lives Matter Louisville, said the organization was worried he wouldn't get the support he needed in jail.
"They do not have the resources to get mental health resources to people. We do that, we set them up with folks in our communities," Helm explained.
Bail fund donors who disagree with the group's choice to post Brown's bond, Helm added, should learn more about "why we create bail funds in the first place."
"Not everybody that's in jail and prison are going to be nonviolent offenders with easy cases or cases that are low bail. We bail out folks because we can provide the resources and support that they need to get those cases handled," she said.
Jefferson County Attorney Mike O'Connell, the initial prosecutor on the case, called Brown's release "frustrating." O'Connell said in a prepared statement that state law calls for bond to be set in cases like Brown's. He said prosecutors argued for and received a higher bond for Brown, an increase from $75,000 to $100,000 cash, and also requested home incarceration if Brown was released.
"However, the criteria of release should not be the ability to access a certain amount of money," O'Connell said. "It should be the threat to the community and whether there is a history of non-appearance in court."
O'Connell said his office has "kept the victim involved throughout the process."
Sean Delahanty, a former Louisville criminal judge for two decades, said he felt the $100,000 cash bond for Brown was "substantial."
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Thursday, February 17, 2022
The Lev Tahor Hasidic sect is bouncing around the Balkans, attracting attention wherever they go
Members of Lev Tahor, the Hasidic group that is often described as a cult and has been chased across continents in the wake of a child abduction scandal, were sighted in a remote town in Bosnia and Herzegovina last month and in North Macedonia this month, as they bounce around the Balkans in a continual attempt to avoid scrutiny.
The group reportedly moved on from Bosnia in early February, but not before causing a media storm in the small country.
Lev Tahor members were sighted in Hadžići, a town about 12 miles west of Sarajevo. In the largely Muslim town of about 20,000, the group stood out due to their traditional dress. They later relocated to a predominantly Bosnian-Serb neighborhood of Sarajevo known as Ilidža. There they stayed in a building owned by a member of the national assembly of Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb enclave within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to Igor Kozemjakin, the cantor and de facto spiritual leader of Sarajevo's sole synagogue, the country's small Jewish community only heard about their arrival as other locals did, via media reports.
But he and other members of the Jewish community quickly found themselves called on to explain the group as their neighbors started learning more and more about their background.
"The media was speculating, they didn't know who they were, so they called us. But we didn't know they were in the country either, they didn't call us," Kozemjakin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "They didn't make any connections with the Jewish community here, their way of life is very closed."
"I learned from the media that they were here, when I saw their pictures it was understood they were Jewish, but I had to learn about them as well," he added.
The group, whose name means "pure heart" in Hebrew, was founded in 1988 by an Israeli rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans. They follow an extreme interpretation of Hasidic Judaism, requiring women to be covered from head to toe, in garb not dissimilar to a burqa. They also eat a diet of mostly fruits and vegetables, considering almost everything else not sufficiently kosher and eschew all Jewish texts beyond the Torah and Helbrans' own books. According to one former member of the group, Helbrans and later his son Nachman held almost complete control over it's 300 or so members, even in matters of life and death.
By 1990, Helbrans and his followers had relocated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There, Helbrans served prison time for abducting a boy who had been sent to study with him as a bar mitzvah student. After their troubles in New York, they relocated to Canada. But in 2014, after allegations of child abuse and neglect, most of the group fled to Mexico and Guatemala.
Helbrans reportedly died in Mexico in 2017, drowning in a river he was using as a mikvah for ritual immersion, leaving the group in the hands of his son Nachman.
Nachman Helbrans and his right hand man Meyer Rosner were arrested in Mexico in 2018 and extradited to the United States, where they were convicted by a U.S. court in November for a scheme in which they tried to force a 14-year-old girl into a sexual relationship with a 19-year-old as part of an arranged marriage.
By then, Lev Tahor's leadership had fled Mexico and Guatemala and arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan hoping to enter Iran, after applying for asylum and pledging allegiance to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini.
Interviewed during their stay in Bosnia, members of Lev Tahor said that they were detained by Kurdish security for days and held in harsh conditions. Ultimately they were turned back and deported to Turkey, from which they traveled to Romania, and onto Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As their neighbors in Sarajevo became aware of more of their history, they became increasingly uncomfortable with the group's presence.
One Bosnian media outlet reported that neighbors were put off by what they described as "rituals throughout the night" and hearing children's voices singing from the building at all hours.
"The media portrayed them as child kidnappers, so people got scared in the neighborhood. But ultimately they understood they are a closed community, who don't interact with the locals," Kozemjakin said.
Under Bosnian law, as citizens of the US, Canada and Guatemala, they were legally permitted in the country for 90 days.
According to the Times of Israel, on Feb. 3, ahead of Shabbat, 37 members of the group crossed over Bosnia's southern border into Montenegro. A man who had serviced the apartment building they had been living at, suggested they may be planning on heading to Bulgaria.
"Not that I was worried too much, but I'm happy that they left because now the media can focus on local issues, this was just a distraction from the real problems in our society," Kozemjakin said.
He said that an unfortunate result of the group's presence was that the media flurry around them began on Jan. 26th, just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, drowning out other local coverage of the day.
Since their departure from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the group made similar headlines in another former Yugoslav republic, North Macedonia, where the group surfaced in the city of Kumanovo, about a half hour's drive northeast from the capital Skopje.
Lev Tahor members told local media that they have been harassed in the town.
"We want to feel safe, but at the moment I do not know how to feel safe," one member told a reporter from the North Macedonian outlet Telma. He said that the house they were staying in was pelted with eggs and stones the night before.
But as in Bosnia, Macedonian authorities reminded local residents that the group had entered legally on American, Canadian, Belgian and other passports and posed little threat.
"These people respect the laws of the Republic of Northern Macedonia, are completely legally residing here, and are temporarily residing in our country," the Macedonian interior minister said in a statement on Sunday. "[Kumanovo police] informs the citizens of Kumanovo that the said group does not pose any danger and appeals for tolerance and solidarity towards them."
Nonetheless, for security reasons the group was moved to the capital, Skopje, Tuesday where they stayed in a hotel.
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Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Israeli ultra-Orthodox fret over Russia-Ukraine conflict
As this article is penned, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced he will partially pull back Russian troops from Ukraine. But what does that mean? Is the conflict over?
These questions intimately concern the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel. The most fascinating analyses are to be found at the stiblech, the Hasidic synagogues, where the congregations have been following with great interest all that's happening on the border of Ukraine.
The connections between Ukraine and the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community go back to 1740, when Rabbi Israel, who became known as the Baal Shem Tov, was born in the town of Okup in Ukraine. He founded the Hasidic movement from the forests of the Carpathian mountains. Within a short time, it spread to all of eastern Europe and beyond.
Rabbi Israel enraptured all of Ukrainian Jewry. His path, based on the teaching that every Jew is beloved by the Almighty, was continued by Hasidic leaders from the cities of Ukraine: his successor Rabbi Dov of Mezeritch, the first grand rabbi of Chabad Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, or Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav. Hundreds more great rabbis lived throughout Ukraine, and after their deaths, they were buried in these towns, and their graves became sites of pilgrimage.
The Holocaust that exterminated Ukrainian Jewry did not stop the Hasidic movement, which came back to life in Israel and the United States, where the grand rabbis' successors led Hasidic sects which bore the names of the Ukrainian cities.
These names, non-Jewish in origin, today draw such respect among the Hasidim that various inflections and spellings are assigned significance. Some Hasidic sects adopted a different spelling to distinguish themselves from the rival sect (for example, Chernobyl/Tzernabyl; Vizhnitz/Vizhnitza). Attached to these names are institutions in which millions of dollars are invested, with ongoing squabbles and even legal battles on who may hold the honorific of "the Grand Rabbi of Bobov" or "the Grand Rabbi of Satmar."
It is no wonder that the wish to return to Ukraine, to the places where the great men of Hasidism lived and worked, burned in the hearts of many during the decades when the nation was closed under Communist rule. In these years, generations of ultra-Orthodox children continued to be raised on the example of these righteous men who lived in Ukraine. When the Communist wall fell in the early 1990s, the ultra-Orthodox community jumped at the opportunity to visit those places where the Hasidic movement began.
At first, it was the missionaries sent by the rabbi of Chabad, who established hundreds of communities throughout Russia and Ukraine. The missionaries today operate a broad network of synagogues, educational institutions, yeshivas and schools, welfare and health institutions, ritual baths, even orphanages.
Alongside the institutions, an enormous tourist industry has been built in the region, which operates in areas that have no Jewish communities today, only silent tombs. For instance, the cities of Hadyach (where the grand rabbi of Chabad is buried), Medzhybizh (where the Baal Shem Tov is buried), Belz, Zitomir, Berditchev, Hannipol, Yampil, and more, have magnificent mausolea over the tombs themselves, as well as "guest synagogues" which are high-class hotels, visited by thousands of Jewish tourists every year.
Not only Hasidim visit the region. Many Orthodox Jews of the Lithuanian stream who are ideologically opposed to Hasidism visit, and so do secular Jews who go on pilgrimages to discover their roots.
The city of Uman, in which Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav is buried, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. A giant tourism industry provides for the needs of visitors, especially at the Jewish New Year, when tens of thousands arrive. Around 200 Israeli families have settled permanently in the town.
For many ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, the towns of Ukraine are also an indelible part of their religious folklore. Unmarried and married young men, and even children who don't consider visiting the United States or Europe, travel every year to Uman, to Medzhybizh, or Berditchev, and know the streets of these towns as if they were in the Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox Meah Shearim neighborhood.
Even in the midst of military tension, the Chabad missionaries broadcast business as usual. Rabbi Avrahmi Deutsch, who operates a huge hospitality center in Zitomir – a Soviet resort turned Jewish center – and Rabbi Moshe Weber, who heads the massive Menorah Center in Dnepropetrovsk, say that in Israel, people are more concerned about the situation than they are.
Rabbi Weber is in Israel, where he celebrated the engagement of his son and is now busy arranging for his flight back to Ukraine. He explains that he has many tasks to accomplish: he has to prepare for Passover in April, which for the Chabad missionaries means baking more than a million kilograms of matzah (Passover-kosher bread) to be sent to every corner of Russia and Ukraine, as well as arranging to host hundreds of Passover traditional dinners.
Chabad missionaries are preparing for a special campaign to mark the 121st birthday of the rabbi who passed away 30 years ago, but whose birthday is still celebrated. They are preparing to open 121 new institutions in Ukraine, the country where the rabbi was born. The war, it seems, does not concern them, and they clarify that they act according to the rabbi's instructions: "Missionaries do not get involved in global politics."
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Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Louisville council candidate accused in shooting attack on Jewish mayoral hopeful
A candidate for Louisville's metro council stands charged with attempted murder, accused of opening fire on a mayoral candidate whose shirt was grazed by a bullet in his campaign headquarters, police said Tuesday.
Quintez Brown, 21, also faces four counts of wanton endangerment, Louisville police spokesman Aaron Ellis said.
Police said Brown appears to have acted alone, and the motive remains under investigation.
After a previous incident last year when Brown briefly disappeared, his family said his mental health was among their concerns.
Brown, a social justice activist running as an independent for the council, has campaigned with a slate of candidates opposed to projects they say will worsen gentrification in Kentucky's largest city.
The apparent target of Monday's shooting, Jewish Democrat Craig Greenberg, has promoted his experience at the center of the city's revitalization efforts, and helped draft legislation promoting developments in Louisville's predominantly Black west side.
Greenberg said he was at his campaign headquarters with four colleagues when a man appeared in the doorway and began firing multiple rounds.
"When we greeted him, he pulled out a gun, aimed directly at me and began shooting," Greenberg said. "Despite one bullet coming so close that it grazed my sweater and my shirt, no one was physically harmed."
One staffer managed to shut the door, which they barricaded using "tables and desks," and the suspect fled, he said.
Apprehended a short time later less than a half-mile from the scene, Brown was carrying a loaded 9mm magazine in his pants pocket and had a drawstring bag with a handgun and additional handgun magazines, according to the arrest report.
"Today is not a day for politics, but it's not lost on me that the violence my staff and I experienced today is far too common in our city. Too many Louisville families have experienced the trauma of gun violence," Greenberg said Monday.
Brown, a former intern and editorial columnist for The Courier Journal, has been prolific on social media, tweeting and retweeting comments on social justice issues. In one recent post, Brown showed the faces of several young Blacks killed by gun violence in Louisville, writing: "This is our reality. All of these kids are gone."
"Gun violence reveals the interconnected nature of our reality," Brown posted. "What affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Especially in our segregated conditions."
Greenberg has built a big fundraising lead in a crowded race to succeed outgoing Mayor Greg Fischer in the Democratic-leaning city. A Harvard-educated lawyer, Greenberg helped start Louisville-based 21c Museum Hotels, building the company to more than 1,100 employees. The company is credited with helping revive Main Street in downtown Louisville and other urban neighborhoods across the country.
Brown disappeared for about two weeks last summer. After he was found safe, his parents issued a statement asking for patience and privacy while they attended to "Quintez's physical, mental and spiritual needs," the Courier Journal reported.
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Monday, February 14, 2022
Jewish man slapped in random Brooklyn attack in suspected hate crime
An attacker randomly slapped a Jewish man on a Brooklyn street in an assault that authorities are investigating as a hate crime, new footage released by cops shows.
The 22-year-old victim was walking on Avenue L near East 32nd Street in East Midwood around 11:30 p.m. Friday when a man got out of the passenger side of a light-colored minivan and approached him, authorities said.
The video clip released late Sunday shows the suspect standing next to the victim — at one point appearing to get into a fighting stance — before striking him in the face a second later, knocking his yarmulke off his head.
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Thursday, February 10, 2022
Rival Jewish congregations feud over America’s oldest synagogue
Touro synagogue sits on a hill at an angle so that its ark faces Jerusalem, as tradition dictates. Stepping inside, one immediately senses its sacredness. But it is not just a shrine for Jews. It is also, as President John F. Kennedy once said, "one of the oldest symbols of liberty". Touro sits at the intersection of religious freedom, American history (a trapdoor in the bimah , or podium, may have been part of the Underground Railroad) and the history of Jews in America. For nearly a decade the oldest synagogue in the country has been at the centre of a dispute between its occupants, Congregation Jeshuat Israel (cji), and its owners, Congregation Shearith Israel (csi).
Jewish merchants came to Newport in around 1658 from Spain and Portugal, by way of the Caribbean and South America. They bought land for a cemetery two decades later. By 1763 the community was large enough to open a synagogue. In 1790 George Washington famously promised Touro's members that religious "toleration" would give way to religious liberty.
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Wednesday, February 09, 2022
JEWISH STUDENT REPRIMANDED FOR REVEALING CLASS’ NAZI SALUTE
A Jewish high school student in Alabama says he was reprimanded after publicly revealing that a history teacher had classmates stand and give a Nazi salute in class.
Ephraim Tytell says he received a reprimand from administrators with Mountain Brook Schools after sharing photos and video of the incident online.
The lesson was about the way symbols change, and what's now known as the stiff-armed Nazi salute was used to honor the American flag before World War II.
A statement from Mountain Brooks schools says images shared online weren't representative of the lesson. It also says the system has addressed the lesson with the teacher.
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Tuesday, February 08, 2022
Three men arrested for attacking Jewish man during neo-Nazi demonstration in Orlando
According to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, three men have been arrested after an altercation during a neo-Nazi demonstration near Alafaya Trail and Waterford Lakes Parkway.
The incident report says a driver, with an Israeli flag on his license plate holder and a Star of David charm on his necklace, was passing through when the demonstrators spit in the direction of his vehicle, partially into the sunroof.
The report said the driver got out of his car and openly stated he was of the Jewish faith. That's when, the report said, he said he was spit on again, pepper-sprayed and punched until he was able to get help from other drivers.
All three men were arrested outside of Orange County.
Burt Colucci, from Lakeland, appeared before a Polk County judge Saturday.
The other two, Joshua Terrell and Jason Brown, faced a Brevard County judge Monday. Brown was given a $5,000 bond but will be held until other unrelated charges are taken care of.
Terrell was given a $10,000 bond.
The incident report said the men are well-known members of the National Socialist Movement.
Terrell and Colucci are facing charges of battery with the hate crime enhancement.
Brown is being charged for grand theft, after taking the victim's phone and throwing it into a storm drain.
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Monday, February 07, 2022
NYC antisemitic crimes up nearly 300% in January
Antisemitic crimes in New York City have spiked nearly 300% in January year over year as the NYPD investigates at least two more alleged hate crimes that targeted Jewish people over the weekend.
There were 15 hate crimes committed against Jewish people in January – a 275% increase compared to the four hate crimes recorded in January 2021, according to NYPD statistics provided to Fox News Digital.
And just four days into February, the number of antisemitic crimes continued to rise after reports that yeshiva school buses were tagged with Swastika graffiti and a Jewish man dressed in Hasidic attire was ambushed from behind. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force said it is investigating both incidents.
"The Jewish community is on extreme edge and this violence has got to stop," Scott Richman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of New York and New Jersey, said Sunday in a written statement after the assault. "It is becoming normalized, and we simply cannot accept that as the state of affairs."
The assault happened in Brooklyn around 10:30 p.m. Friday when an unknown male ran up to a 24-year-old man and punched him in the face from behind, police said. The victim, who was dressed in traditional Hasidic clothing, was treated at the scene for pain to his face.
Police released video showing the suspect brutally punching the victim from behind and knocking the man's Shtreimel, a fur hat worn by some male members of the Hasidic community, off his head.
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Friday, February 04, 2022
Enough is enough. Sadiq Khan must take action on antisemitic hate crime now
Over the last week we have witnessed scenes of shocking harassment, violence and abuse of Orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill, Hackney.
There have been reports of windows smashed, a five-year-old spat at as he played in a park, two men violently attacked as they left work and antisemitic abuse shouted from a hire bus as it travelled through the borough.
The last incident took place on Saturday afternoon, the day of the Sabbath, as families were leaving their synagogues.
It has chilling echoes of the horrific scenes we witnessed last May when a convoy of cars drove through a Jewish community in north London shouting foul antisemitic messages from a megaphone.
In the wake of that appalling incident, the London Assembly passed a motion calling on London Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Sadiq Khan to draw up an action plan to tackle a surge in antisemitic violence and abuse that has terrorised communities.
Yet six months on, Jewish families are still waiting for a London-wide strategy to tackle the antisemitism that blights the capital and leaves too many families living in fear.
It is deeply troubling to me that the very real concerns of a minority community who have been subjected to repeated physical and verbal assaults on their streets and in their schools, their places of work and worship have been ignored by City Hall.
As Home Secretary, I am determined to tackle antisemitic abuse in all its forms and ensure that all perpetrators of anti-Jewish hate crime face justice.
The Home Office has this year provided £14m for the protection of Jewish institutions — such as faith schools, synagogues and communal buildings — administered through the Community Security Trust.
In the same week that Stamford Hill witnessed a spate of anti-Jewish race hatred, Britain marked Holocaust Memorial Day: a stark reminder of the dangers of allowing antisemitism to spread unchallenged.
We must never become complacent. Antisemitism, whether it is on the streets or online, must never be allowed to fester and grow in our society, which means we must always act with urgency to stamp it out.
We all have a responsibility to stop intolerance and hate from spreading in our communities and to stand together to say: Never again.
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Thursday, February 03, 2022
The Making of an American Shtetl
Authors Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers join Yehuda Kurtzer to chronicle how the upstate New York town of Kiryas Joel created a world apart by using the very instruments of political and legal power that are uniquely American. They explore religious, social, and economic norms, delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism, and uncover the American dream in the unlikeliest of places.
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Wednesday, February 02, 2022
NYPD arrests Brooklyn man who punched Hasidic man in the face
The New York Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force has arrested a man accused of punching a Hasidic man in the nose early on Saturday, Jan. 22 in Crown Heights.
Babyson Dumervil, a 24-year-old from Brooklyn, has been charged with assault.
In the wake of the early Shabbat morning attack — in which Dumervil allegedly crossed a street and punched a 21-year-old Hasidic man in the face at Troy Ave. and Carroll St. — the Anti-Defamation League offered up to $5,000 for information about the person responsible for the attack.
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Tuesday, February 01, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg's second 'sorry' over Holocaust remarks
The actress and television personality said on ABC's The View that the Nazi genocide of the Jews involved "two groups of white people".
She apologised - but in a muddled attempt to clarify her comments, ended up having to say sorry again.
The Nazis, who believed themselves an Aryan "master race", murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Monday's discussion was sparked by a Tennessee school board's ban of a graphic novel about Nazi death camps during World War Two.
Maus, which depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, has won a number of literary awards.
The school board said it banned the book because its profanity, nudity and depiction of suicide was inappropriate for 13-year-olds.
Goldberg, a 66-year-old Oscar-winning actress who has been on The View since 2007, told her co-hosts: "I'm surprised that's what made you uncomfortable, the fact that there was some nudity.
"I mean, it's about the Holocaust, the killing of six million people, but that didn't bother you?
"If you're going to do this, then let's be truthful about it. Because the Holocaust isn't about race. No, it's not about race."
Co-host Joy Behar pointed out that the Nazis said the Jews were a different race.
Goldberg said: "But it's not about race. It's not. It's about man's inhumanity to other man."
"But it's about white supremacy," responded co-host Ana Navarro. "It's about going after Jews and Gypsies and Roma."
"But these are two white groups of people," countered Goldberg.
Co-host Sara Haines pointed out that the Nazis "didn't see them as white".
Goldberg continued: "But you're missing the point! The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let's talk about it for what it is. It's how people treat each other. It's a problem."
She nodded to someone behind the camera as the show's theme music played to signal an ad break.
Critics blasted the show for platforming dangerous disinformation.
Jonathan Greenblatt, leader of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-hate watchdog, tweeted: "No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people - who they deemed to be an inferior race.
"They dehumanised them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering six million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous."
Meghan McCain, a former co-host of the The View, tweeted: "Antisemitism is a cancer and a poison that is increasingly excused in our culture and television - and permeates spaces that should shock us all."
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted a quote from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: "Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?"
The US Holocaust Museum, in what was interpreted as a subtweet at Goldberg, wrote: "Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fuelled genocide and mass murder."
Amid growing criticism, Goldberg later apologised.
"On today's show, I said the Holocaust 'is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man'. I should have said it is about both," Goldberg wrote in a Twitter post.
"The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused," she added.
But on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert while attempting to clarify her comments she said the Nazis had lied and actually had issues with ethnicity not race, which caused further offence and prompted another apology on The View on Tuesday.
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