Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 1, 2021

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A week after people in Coronado threw tortillas at a high school basketball game upon the defeat of a team from a largely Latino Escondido high school, the specters of cultural insensitivity and racism arose at San Diego State University last Friday when two women vandalized the Chabad House, a center for Jewish student life and community.

Security video shows one vandal shaking the frame of a large menorah by the building so hard one of its branches broke off and the other holding a piece of a banner torn near the buildings entrance.

Rabbi Chalom Boudjnah told a reporter with The San Diego Union-Tribune, The hard part was seeing that people really wanted to attack it, and in a way to attack us and our beliefs and what a menorah represents to us. That was really painful.

So many national conversations have been about pain over the past year, particularly related to racism. Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation after George Floyds murder 13 months ago. Stop AAPI Hate documented more than 6,600 reports of violence or discrimination against Asian American and Pacific Islanders between March 2020 and March 2021. And the Anti-Defamation League reported more than 17,000 tweets using variations of the phrase Hitler was right over one week in May.

Now, twice since April, SDSUs Chabad House has been targeted. A GoFundMe page is raising funds for repairs and an SDSU statement struck the right note of anger and support for the Jewish community. But SDSU needs to do more to combat antisemitism and show intolerance is unacceptable.

Continue reading here:
Opinion: Antisemitism must not be tolerated at SDSU or anywhere - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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