Rabbi Niederman had a message for the non-Haredi Jews who form the vast majority of New York’s incredibly diverse Jewish community. “Don’t think that because you don’t have a kippa and you don’t dress like the Hasidim that you are safe”

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Jewish Blood on the Streets of Jersey City
by Armin Rosen
December 12, 2019

…Still, some of the locals who gathered around the crime scene on Wednesday had a slightly different view of things. “This neighborhood is not that great,” said Ali, a truck driver in his 60s. “There’s a lot of poverty. A lot of drugs here. The cops see people carrying guns, and sometimes they don’t want to arrest them.” “The problem,” he continued, as we stood directly across the street from the grocery store’s blown-out facade, “is that the Jews are buying everybody out. This, I think, is revenge. It’s not a drug thing. They came for the Jews. All this property belongs to the Jews … they say it’s a hate crime, but later on you will know what’s going on.”  READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Jersey City mayor: Gunmen wanted to target next door yeshiva with 50 kids inside If police hadn’t managed to trap shooters in kosher store where 3 killed, result would have been ‘much worse,’ says Steven Fulop; attack viewed as domestic terrorism

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“If you are against federal action to stop anti-Semitic discrimination on college campuses just because Trump is doing it, then you’re the one with the problem”

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
President Trump Is Defending Jewish Students
by Jared Kushner
Dec. 11, 2019

On Wednesday, the president will sign an executive order to combat the rise of anti-Semitism on American college campuses. As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I understand the horrors of anti-Semitism. I could not be more proud of President Trump’s new policy. According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents have been rising in the United States since 2013. Students, in particular, continue to face anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses. READ MORE

JNS Trump’s anti-Semitism order is a Rorschach test for Jews Demographers have spent a great deal of time in recent decades trying to learn more about the changing demographics of American Jewry. But whatever else he has accomplished, President Donald Trump has, albeit unwittingly, gone above and beyond those efforts. In signing an executive order extending protections to Jewish students against anti-Semitic hate on college campuses due to vicious incitement and discriminatory actions promoted by the BDS movement, Trump has, in effect, provided us with a sanity test for Jews.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged | Comments Off on “If you are against federal action to stop anti-Semitic discrimination on college campuses just because Trump is doing it, then you’re the one with the problem”

German owners of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Pret a Manger, Dr Pepper, Panera Bread among others initiate program to support Holocaust survivors

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wealthy German family gives millions to Holocaust survivors
by David Rising
December 12, 2019

One of Germany’s richest families, which owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Pret A Manger and other international brands, is giving millions to support Holocaust survivors as it seeks to atone for its use of forced laborers during the Nazi era and its enthusiastic support of Adolf Hitler, The Associated Press has learned. In addition to 5 million euros ($5.5 million) being given to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to help thousands of elderly survivors around the world, the Reimann family’s JAB Investors company plans to announce Thursday that it will provide another 5 million euros to find and support forced laborers used by its predecessor under the Nazis. READ MORE

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Corrupt and mismanaged UNRWA–the only UN agency that exists solely to manage one group of “refugees”–has been renewed

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

REUTERS
In face of U.S. opposition, U.N. renews agency helping Palestinian refugees
Michelle Nichols
December 13, 2019

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly renewed the mandate for a U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees for another three years amid misconduct allegations and a cash shortfall triggered by a halt in U.S. funding. The mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was extended until June 30, 2023, with 169 votes in favor and nine abstentions, while the United States and Israel voted against. UNRWA, which as established in 1949, provides education, health and relief services as well as housing and microfinance assistance to more than 5 million registered refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. READ MORE

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“In 2019, two in every three religious or racially motivated assaults in the New York City area were on Jews”

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

SPECTATOR USA
Trump’s ‘Jew shenanigans’
by Domenic Green
December 12, 2019

…In Europe, the majority of assaults upon Jewish people or schools or synagogues seem to be committed by Muslim immigrants. In the United States, and in the New York area in particular, the majority of the assaults against Jews seem to be committed by African Americans against their ultra-Orthodox neighbors. The number and range of these assaults has risen sharply over the last year: beatings by gangs, a man with a gun smashing synagogue windows, rocks thrown at a school bus…These figures correlate to three awkward facts. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are nothing if not distinctive. They are frequently poor, so they cannot deal with racial tension in the American way and retreat to the suburbs. READ MORE

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The Illinois financial crisis: “Outside of unfunded state employee pension obligations, no other challenge facing legislators poses a greater threat to the state’s long-term prosperity”

Posted on December 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

CRAINS
The other financial storm threatening to capsize Illinois’ economy
by Joe Cahill
December 10, 2019

We’ll soon find out if Illinois lawmakers are serious about easing the state’s unsustainable property tax burden. As you may know, Illinois has the second-highest property tax rate in the nation, trailing New Jersey by just five one-hundredths of a percentage point. The pain has become so acute for homeowners and landlords across Illinois that Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointed a task force this year to study the causes and recommend solutions. The task force report is due Dec. 31, setting up possible legislative action on the issue when state lawmakers reconvene next month. READ MORE

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“Kosher store opened by Leah Mindel Ferencz, who was killed in attack, and her husband, was a foundation stone of new community of Hasidic Jews escaping Brooklyn’s high prices”

Posted on December 11, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Orthodox Jews tried to build a home in Jersey City, the shooting won’t end it
by Ben Sales and Laura E. Adkins
December 11, 2019

Every Friday afternoon, Leah Mindel Ferencz would cook hot kugel and cholent and serve them in the small grocery store she and her husband, Moshe, opened here about four years ago. The couple had moved from Brooklyn, and the store they opened, JC Kosher Supermarket, became a cornerstone of the small but growing Jewish community of Greenville, a largely African-American neighborhood in this city across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The sole kosher grocery for the 100 or so Orthodox families here, the store signaled that the community was there to stay, hopefully for years to come. READ MORE

WASHINGTON POST Jersey City shootout: Mayor says deadly attack on kosher deli was a targeted hate crime The pair had already killed, police say, when their van slowed to a stop on a rain-drenched street opposite the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket and David Anderson jumped out, ready to fire. Inside the shop — a small store catering to the city’s growing population of ultra-Orthodox Jews — co-owner and mother of three Mindy Ferencz was working alongside an employee.

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“How could a speech that centered on advocating support for Israel and opposition to anti-Semitism, and in particular, the BDS movement, be considered anti-Semitic incitement?”

Posted on December 9, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Donald Trump to IAC: Some American Jews ‘Don’t love Israel enough’
by Omri Nahmias, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman
December 8, 2019

Some American Jews “don’t love Israel enough,” US President Donald Trump said to a crowd of around 4,000 people in southern Florida on Saturday night at the Israeli-American Council’s (IAC) annual event, a comment reminiscent of previous remarks made by the president. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump told reporters in April. READ MORE

JNS Is it anti-Semitic to urge Jews to support Israel and oppose a wealth tax? Context matters. While talk of Jews and money can be dangerous, labeling Trump’s latest speech Jew-hatred is a partisan talking point, not community advocacy.

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Executive order to protects Jewish students “will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion” but J Street opposes it

Posted on December 8, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON POST
Trump’s expected executive order on campus anti-Semitism draws praise and concern
by Laura Meckler, Julie Zauzmer and Ashley Parker
December 11, 2019

President Trump plans to sign an executive order Wednesday that defines the Jewish people as a nationality for purposes of federal civil rights law, an effort to step up enforcement against episodes of anti-Semitism on college campuses, two administration officials said. Defining Jewish people as an ethnic group and not just a religious one allows the government to consider discrimination against the group as a violation of a key civil rights law. That means schools could lose federal funding if they fail to combat discrimination against Jewish students. READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM Left labels Trump an anti-Semite for defending Jews Trump’s executive order protecting Jews against anti-Semitism on campus is embraced by Republicans, but slammed by liberals.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Jewish groups divided on Trump order targeting college anti-Semitism However, the left-leaning J Street lobby group said in a statement that “Trump’s executive order is a cynical, harmful measure designed to suppress free speech on college campuses, not fight anti-Semitism. 

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“The global surge in Jew-hatred barely registers in the West”

Posted on December 8, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
Inconvenient Murders
by Bari Weiss
December 5, 2019

Two years ago, a 27-year-old man named Kobili Traoré walked into the Paris apartment of a 65-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah Halimi. Mr. Traoré beat Ms. Halimi and stabbed her. According to witnesses, he called her a demon and a dirty Jew. He shouted, “Allahu akbar,” then threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window…If France’s betrayal of Sarah Halimi is shocking to you, perhaps you haven’t been paying much attention to what by now can be described as a moral calamity sweeping the West of which her story is only the clearest example. A crisis, I hasten to add, that’s perhaps less known because it has been largely overlooked by the mainstream press. READ MORE

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