Friday, May 31, 2024
Incendiary device thrown at Vancouver synagogue
The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver says an "incendiary device" was thrown at the front doors of a synagogue and police are investigating.
The incident, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a "disgusting act of antisemitism," left a front door and doorway of the Schara Tzedeck synagogue on Vancouver's Oak Street blackened.
There was a strong smell of burning inside, but the charring did not appear to have made it far under the doorway.
The federation said in a statement posted online that the attack occurred around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, and that damage was minor and no one was hurt.
It called the incident a "deliberate act of hate" and an "attempt to intimidate" the Jewish community.
Trudeau said on social media platform X: "A synagogue in Vancouver was attacked last night in another disgusting act of antisemitism. We cannot let this hate or these acts of violence stand. This is not the Canada we want to be."
Canada's special envoy for combating antisemitism, Deborah Lyons, called it "horrible news" and said on social media that "incendiary rhetoric leads to incendiary violence."
The Jewish federation said the Vancouver Police Department and a fire inspector searched the building before declaring it safe to be reopened.
Vancouver police did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a police car and officers were outside the synagogue on Friday morning.
The federation said extra police patrols were being put in place at local Jewish institutions.
The incident comes after bullet holes were found at two Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto in recent days.
Lyons said on social media that it is "past time to stand up" against the incidents.
"Three Jewish institutions in three major cities this week have been attacked, and more over the months since Hamas's horrific massacre on Oct. 7. There is no excuse for silence or inaction," she said.
She said the law must be enforced and "incidents of hate" could not go unanswered.
"It means that incitement and violent rhetoric must be met with consequences. It means that capitulation to unreasonable or threatening demands must end."
The alleged Vancouver attack comes after incidents at a building housing a Jewish school and synagogue in Montreal, and at a Toronto Jewish girls school. Nobody was hurt in either incident.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, an outspoken voice against antisemitism, called on his party to change the Criminal Code in response to the rash of violent incidents targeting Jewish gathering places.
"At this point, condemnation is not enough," Housefather said in a speech to the House of Commons Friday, citing the incidents in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.
"All levels of government need to do more, immediately."
He suggested creating safe zones around schools and places of worship where protests are not allowed, just as the government did for hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea was also floated in Toronto months ago by a local city councillor.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Antisemitic driver tries to run over Jewish people outside Brooklyn yeshiva; none injured
A crazed driver passing a Hasidic Jewish school in Brooklyn verbally assaulted a group of Jewish people before getting up on the sidewalk and trying to run them down Wednesday, police said, noting none were injured.
The 58-year-old driver was zipping past Mesivta Nachlas Yakov School, a private school known as a yeshiva, on Glenwood Road in East Flatbush around 11:25 a.m. when he made antisemitic statements to people outside, according to cops.
The man, behind the wheel of a white Ford Crown Victoria, then turned onto E. 55th St. and mounted the sidewalk, attempting to run the group over.
Cops were called to the intersection and later took the driver into custody. Charges against him were pending late Wednesday afternoon.
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Tuesday, May 28, 2024
After 10-Year-Old Killed By Driver, South Williamsburg Residents Resigned To Dangerous Streets
Where is the outrage?
A 10-year-old Hasidic girl was killed by a driver on her way to school last month, yet unlike other community members who demand change after their most vulnerable road users are killed, there remains silence in South Williamsburg.
"Accidents happen," multiple residents said.
But Yitty Wertzberger's killing at Wythe Avenue and Wallabout Street was no accident. The intersection is known to be a dangerous spot in a neighborhood where there have already been two other road deaths this year — an alarmingly high number for such a small enclave. Given the numbers, the lack of outrage from the mostly Hasidic neighborhood is shocking. There is virtually no pressure from local community leaders on the Department of Transportation to fix the deadly streets.
In fact, the most vocal of those leaders, longtime Community Board 1 member Simon Weiser, opposes pre- or post-crash safety intervention because, he says, he doesn't believe they work.
"Some people take every accident and they want DOT to stand on their head," Weiser, the vice-chair of the CB1 Transportation Committee, told Streetsblog.
If there was ever a reason to stand on one's head, the death of 10-year-old Yitty Wertzberger might qualify. She was on her way back from school when the driver of an SUV — the vehicle of choice in South Williamsburg, where family sizes are large — got frustrated waiting behind other cars in traffic on Wallabout Street, so he crossed the yellow line on the two-way street, raced westbound in the wrong lane, turned left onto Franklin Avenue and ran right over the girl.
It was no "accident": there have been 24 reported crashes at that very intersection in just five years, injuring 11 and killing one, according to city data compiled by Crashmapper.
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Thursday, May 23, 2024
New program will send 85,000 8th graders to NYC’s Holocaust museum to curb spike in antisemitism
New York City will send tens of thousands of students to Manhattan's Holocaust museum as the city and its school system grapple with a surge in antisemitism since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Under the new initiative, 85,000 eighth graders from public and private school will visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage over the next three years, starting in the fall. That's in addition to the 40,000 students from fifth through 12th grade who already visit the museum each year.
After three years, it will then expand to bring all eighth graders to the museum. Last year, the city's public school system had roughly 73,000 eighth graders, with tens of thousands more in private schools.
It's the latest bid by New York officials to use museum visits, and Holocaust education in particular, to fight hate. In response to a surge in antisemitism several years ago, the city arranged tours of the Museum of Jewish Heritage for eighth and 10th grade public school students from three heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhoods.
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Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Canadian police arrest teen who beat Israeli student in 'brutal attack'
The Fredericton Police Force on Friday arrested a female teenage student who physically assaulted an Israeli-Jewish schoolmate in New Brunswick on April 30 in a documented attack that drew condemnation from Canadian politicians and accusations of Islamophobia by a Muslim rights group.
The 16-year-old assailant was taken into custody and released with charges pending, though the investigation is ongoing, said the police.
Officers said Thursday that officers had responded to the fight that occurred off Leo Hayes High School grounds, and collected evidence from those involved, such as the victim 14-year-old Shaked Tsurkan and the witnesses who watched and recorded the unfolding attack.
The police and Anglophone School District West (ASD-W) urged the public on Thursday not to spread speculation and rumor as the video of the attack circulated on social media.
The footage showed the Muslim student attacking Tsurkan from behind, grabbing her hair, and punching her repeatedly in the face. Tsurkan attempted to fight back against the attacker.
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Monday, May 20, 2024
At Duke, pro-Israel Jewish students go ‘on the offense’
The only tents on Duke University's campus this year had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dozens of students camped out for weeks in February to secure basketball season tickets, predating the Gaza solidarity tent encampments that took over the quads of colleges and universities around the country two months later.
But those demonstrations never came to Duke, the rare elite university that escaped widespread rancor over Israel and concerns about antisemitism this year.
"We're not consistently defending ourselves as Jews at Duke," said Nicole Schwenk, a senior from Long Island. "We're on the offense here."
Pro-Israel Jewish students have covered a lawn at the center of campus with 1,200 Israeli flags to mark the victims of Oct. 7, placed empty Shabbat tables for the Israeli hostages outside of the student center and covered a bridge on campus with posters of the missing.
It's not that the opposition has taken a softer tone than at other schools rocked by protests over the past eight months. Some students walked out during Jerry Seinfeld's commencement address last week over the comedian's position on Israel, and the signs at Students for Justice in Palestine demonstrations — like "no peace on stolen land" — match the rhetoric some have complained about elsewhere.
But despite this, pro-Israel students feel confident at Duke during a period when many of their peers at other schools feel beleaguered. Over three days of reporting at the university, Jewish students, and the staff and clergy who work with them, explained this to me by pointing to a student body that shies away from political activism, an administration responsive to Jewish students' concerns about antisemitism, and a rapidly growing Chabad that has mobilized to support Israel.
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Friday, May 17, 2024
New York Man Attacks Orthodox Jewish Children on Street
New York police are searching for a man who hopped off his bicycle in Williamsburg Sunday night to attack two young Hasidic boys playing on the sidewalk.
Police said the man told the boys, 11 and 13, to get off the sidewalk and then assaulted two of them while other boys scattered away from him, WCBS reported. He hit and kicked the boys before getting back on his bike and riding away, traveling the wrong way on the one-way stree as he had been when he arrived on the scene. The boys were taken to a local hospital for treatment and are expected to be OK.
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Thursday, May 16, 2024
Rutgers University Student Files Suit Against Rutgers Charging ‘Hostile Environment’
A Jewish Rutgers University rising sophomore who has been subject to "a hostile school environment and discrimination" on campus has filed suit against the university.
Rivka Schafer, an Orthodox student from Bergen County, has been targeted with antisemitic posters left on the student's dorm door and throughout Demarest Hall on the university's New Brunswick campus. Schafer has also been taunted by pro-Palestinian students.
The suit was filed May 9 on behalf of the ecology major in the university's School of Environmental and Biological Sciences by the Roseland law firm of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman.
"Rutgers has been a hotspot for antisemitism for a while," said Schafer's attorney Cory Rothbert."The lawsuit cites a number of incidents."
He said that Jewish students have been targeted on college campuses across the country. However, he noted that at Rutgers it is "open season" on Jewish students.
Among the incidents cited in the lawsuit is a dorm meeting the rising sophomore attended the week after the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas where a student expressed appreciation for the high Israeli death toll and other students snapped their fingers, leaving Schafer shaken.
In another incident, Schafer was present at Rutgers President Dr. Jonathan Holloway's town hall meeting in early April, when it was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors chanting for the genocide of Jews. Holloway had to be escorted from the gathering by Rutgers Police.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Man jailed for indecent exposure in Stamford Hill
Met police detectives compiled hours of CCTV footage and pieced together Mohammed Amin's movements by tracking his GPS through his bike hire accounts.
With guidance from private Jewish safety patrol group Shomrim, specialist officers provided support to the victims throughout the investigation.
Mohammed Amin, 28 of Sparsholt Road, N19, appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday 10th May where he was sentenced to two years and ten months in prison. He was jailed after committing four sexual offences against four victims over a three-month period in 2021. The youngest victim was 12.
Detective Constable Patrick Godin, who led the investigation said: "Today's sentence demonstrates how seriously we take incidents of this nature. Our local team are committed to pursuing predators who threaten the safety of women and girls in their own neighbourhood.
"We did everything we could to take this perverse individual off the streets of Stamford Hill and were supported throughout by the local Shomrim. I'd like to thank the Shomrim for their continued help during this case – they were able to use their knowledge of the area to help us quickly identify Amin and provided vital guidance and advice.
"It's important that we work with partners and listen to community concerns. It's our job and duty to act on any information and make Londoners as safe as they can be."
Amin had previously been found guilty at Wood Green Crown Court on Tuesday, 19 March of sexual assault on a female, causing a child aged 13-15 to watch/ look at an image of sexual activity, exposure and attempted exposure
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Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Men appear in court accused of IS-style terror plot against Jewish community
Two men who allegedly plotted to carry out an Islamic State-inspired gun attack against the Jewish community have appeared in court.
Walid Saadaoui, 36, of Crankwood Road, Abram, and Amar Hussein, 50, of no fixed abode, are accused of plotting a terror attack designed to cause "multiple fatalities using automatic weapons" in north-west England, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard on Tuesday.
The two men had also intended to target law enforcement and military as part of the "Isil or Daesh-inspired terrorist attack", prosecutors alleged.
Both are charged with the preparation of terrorist acts between December 13 2023 and May 9 2024.
Bilel Saadaoui, 35, of Fairclough Street, Hindley, also appeared before the court accused of making arrangements for Walid Saadaoui – who is his brother – after his death.
He pleaded not guilty to a charge of failing to disclose information about an act of terrorism between the same dates.
The defendants appeared separately in the dock, flanked by police officers and wearing grey sweatshirts.
Hussein, who represented himself and had an interpreter, did not speak to confirm his name, date of birth or address.
The other two men spoke only to confirm their identities.
Angelo Saponiere, defending Bilel Saadaoui, said his client was a "family man" who had not known of the alleged plans.
The men were arrested last week after Greater Manchester Police (GMP) executed four warrants in Bolton, Great Lever, Abram and Hindley.
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Monday, May 13, 2024
Mandel Jewish Community Center in Beachwood evacuated for chemical odor
Firefighters evacuated the Mandel Jewish Community Center on Monday afternoon after a report of a chlorine smell throughout the building.
Firefighters responded at about 12:30 p.m. on Monday to the South Woodland Road facility, according to a news release.
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Thursday, May 09, 2024
Police investigate attack on Michigan synagogue members by 'Jew hater'
Police are investigating what witnesses said was an antisemitic attack against two Jewish women at a synagogue in Oak Park by a man who called himself a "Jew hater."
At about 9 a.m. last Thursday, a man driving in a Chevy SUV pulled up into a parking lot outside Congregation Beth Shalom, a Jewish congregation in Oak Park, said Oak Park Police Lt. Ryan Bolton. During the incident, he shouted at a synagogue member, calling her a "baby killer" and using an epithet, then attacked a synagogue employee with an object that hit her, Bolton said. He fled before police arrived.
Bolton said police are trying to locate the vehicle the suspect drove in, described as a 2008 to 2012 Chevy Traverse, dark in color — black, possibly blue — with a heavy dent on the front passenger door.
"It was driven by a white male with dark hair and a long beard," Bolton said.
Rabbi Robert Gamer, the religious leader of Congregation Beth Shalom, said the incident took place near the entrance of his congregation. The suspect spewed obscenities and threw an object at a person, he said.
The incident comes at a time of concern about antisemitism among many in the Jewish community. President Joe Biden delivered a speech Tuesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony about the threats that Jews are currently facing. Knollwood Country Club, a predominantly Jewish country club in West Bloomfield, was vandalized in February. In April 2023, a Royal Oak synagogue, The Woodward Avenue Shul, was vandalized and in December 2022, a man drove to Temple Beth El, a Bloomfield Township synagogue, yelling antisemitic remarks at parents and children.
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Wednesday, May 08, 2024
Town fires back at state's claim of biased zoning regs targeting Jews
The leaders of a Sullivan County town say the state attorney general's office recently erred when it accused them of adopting zoning regulations last year that allegedly discriminate against "places of worship" and appear to have been designed to block a large development project proposed by Hasidic Orthodox Jews.
Jafid Afzali, an attorney representing the town of Forestburgh, wrote a letter Monday to the attorney general's office disputing that town officials had crafted new zoning regulations to target the developers of the 2,600-unit project, which involves companies and individuals with Hasidic Orthodox Jewish principals. The owners purchased the property and its development rights four years ago from another developer who had received approvals from the town for a planned development district.
Afzali wrote that "there is no 'wholesale exclusion' of religious uses from any district as your letter claims."
"In fact, out of the 15 other towns located in Sullivan County, Forestburgh is one of two towns that allow religious uses in every zoning district, whereas there are five other towns in the county that allow religious uses in less than half of their zoning districts," his letter continued. "Moreover, as the town zoning code defines place of worship broadly to encompass all religious faiths, it is unclear on what basis your referenced 'report' focuses on the effects of Local Law 3 on the Jewish community only."
Town officials and their attorneys also dispute the attorney general's assertion that they may have violated the state Open Meetings Law in the proceedings leading up to the adoption of the new zoning regulations last November.
In a statement accompanying the letter that was released by the town Tuesday, they also alleged the developers of the project, known as Lost Lake Resort, had filed the report with the attorney general's office that spurred the agency's intervention.
"This new owner has been seeking to develop this district in a way that is inconsistent with the approvals that were granted to the prior owner of the property over 10 years ago, after going through an approval process to amend our zoning code that took (five) years of work, input from multiple state and federal agencies, environmental experts and public comment and review," the town said in the statement that was issued by Supervisor Dan Hogue Jr. "Rather than seeking permission to amend the zoning code and requirements for this district, this new developer has sued Forestburgh in (six) separate lawsuits and (six) appeals, which we have defended and to date, have prevailed in."
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Tuesday, May 07, 2024
Police arrest a Jewish pro-Palestinian demonstrator near the Met Gala in New York
Police arrest a Jewish pro-Palestinian demonstrator near the Met Gala in New York on May 6, 2024.
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Monday, May 06, 2024
Dozens of gravestones desecrated in Jewish cemeteries in New York
New York State Police have opened an investigation following the vandalism and toppling of around 50 gravestones in several adjacent Jewish cemeteries in Rotterdam, located in the northern part of the state. The police have not yet determined if these acts constitute a hate crime, but members of the Jewish community are apprehensive and believe the vandalism is a reaction to the conflict in Gaza.
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Friday, May 03, 2024
My Favorite Airbnb Experience: A Walking Tour Through Hasidic Brooklyn
A scroll through what's on offer in New York City under Airbnb's "Experiences" tab reveals little of value in the way of adrenaline or anthropological knowledge—the two reasons to experience anything, in my opinion. If you want to pose for some digital photography, you can do so beneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Dumbo's cobblestoned streets or sprawled alluringly across a Central Park lawn. You can book a crawl through Manhattan's "secret bars" and speakeasies (drinks not included). Having seen my colleagues sail the Adriatic and traverse Rio's rainforests by bike for this series, I wanted to find something in our own city—the best city, if you hadn't heard—that was at least as interesting, if not as exhilarating. Only one listing caught my eye—a walking tour of Hasidic Brooklyn.
If you live in North Brooklyn as I do, you share the streets with a vast diversity of friends and neighbors. It follows that most of said neighbors are different from you, but none are more so on the surface than the Hasidic Jewish citizens of Williamsburg and Crown Heights. There, the boys never shave their beards and wear a uniform of bekishes, black overcoats (silk, silk blend, or polyester depending on budget); the girls, pleated charcoal skirts to the ankle and, once married, wigs over their hair (whether she owns multiple lace-fronts of human hair or a single synthetic affixed atop her head with some sort of hat is again largely a matter of money, as I learned later on). Pulling off the BQE onto Bedford Avenue one Saturday afternoon, an Uber driver who had recently moved here from Uruguay was greeted by an abundance of fur hats with coils spilling out either side and turned to me with a bewildered, "What is going on here?"
We were five minutes from my apartment, but beyond the fact that it was Shabbat, I had to admit that I didn't really know. I wanted to. And so I booked the tour listed on Airbnb, which promised that a rabbi (at 25, Mayer Friedman is two months younger than me) would take me deep into Crown Heights' Chabad-Lubavitch sect—a private home and its kosher kitchen, the inside of a synagogue. While talking over the idea, I learned that while this type of thing might fly in the relatively progressive Crown Heights, the Satmars of Williamsburg would never allow it. Indeed, while no rabbi pierces the veil there, a woman named Frieda Vizel does. Frieda left the Satmar Hasidic community at age 25, but she didn't go very far, and her unique combination of knowledge, freedom, and love for what she's left behind inform her work there. I don't choose. I go to both. What I find Vizel and Friedman share is an expectation that their guests come with open minds and respect—we are not gaping at zoo animals here—and faith that, by the tour's end, participants will find some level of affinity with a group of people so visibly different from them.
Should time and money allow, I recommend New Yorkers and visitors alike embark on both Vizel's and Friedman's tours—each lasts about three hours. Not only does each make a fabulous guide, but they've also designed fine experiences that stand alone. But if you need to narrow it down, I've outlined the strengths of each below without spoiling all of the fabulous gems of information that make each worthwhile in the first place. The long and the short of it is that Friedman's Hasidic Crown Heights is cheaper and warmer—you're embedded in the community rather than infiltrating it. Vizel's is scrappier, real woman on the street fare. It also includes a bunch of delicious food that justifies the higher price tag.
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Thursday, May 02, 2024
Attempted abduction of Hasidic Jew in London caught on video
UK police are investigating the attempted kidnapping of a Hasidic Jewish man in Stamford Hill, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox area of north London, British media reported on Tuesday.
The incident reportedly took place this past Friday, mere hours before the onset of Shabbat.
Police said the victim "was walking on Moundfield Road, N16 when a car pulled up beside him and two males got out of the vehicle. The victim was approached by one of the males and allegedly told the victim to get into the boot of the car, shortly before driving off."
The local branch of the neighborhood watch group Shomrim reported the incident. The group claimed that the incident "ended when the victim said he was calling the police and other vehicles approached."
Police said that they were aware of a video recording shared by Shomrim and were working with the community to trace the suspects.
The incident took place in a primarily Jewish neighborhood of London that boasts the largest concentration of Hasidic Jews in Europe.
It comes amid a soaring number of antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which have topped 4,000. According to a report by the Community Security Trust, this is double the number of incidents that took place in the same period in 2022.
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