Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

A strange notion has found purchase in progressive circles. It holds that nominally marginalized and oppressed groups, most notably Muslims and African Americans, cannot themselves espouse hateful views. According to this thinking, white people maintain a monopoly on hate, and every expression of hate by someone who is nonwhite is linked to some form of white or Western influence, whether colonialist, capitalist, or Christian.

This idea is also frequently embraced by those doing the hating. Consider the strain of anti-Semitism endemic to Palestinian society, where government-run television, media, textbooks, and mosques encourageviolence against Jews,praise Hitler, characterize Jews asapes and pigs,anddeny the Holocaust. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass Fatah movement, widely taken to be the most moderate wing of Palestinian politics and the best chance for a partner in peace with Israel, recently released a video claiming that Jews led the project to enslave humanity and that Jewish behavior is responsible for anti-Semitism.

To many on the hard left, this moral inversion fits comfortably with Marxist theories about class struggle and power. When a class of people is deemed to lack power, their misdeeds are recast as noble efforts to obtain that powereven when those misdeeds might include terrorist acts against innocent civilians.

Never mind that the historical record is wholly at odds with Fatahs explanation for Jew-hatred. Islamic anti-Semitism has been a fundamental part of Middle East culture for more than a millennium. Long before capitalism and Western colonialism, Jews were treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmis, under Islamic law, and they endured frequent pogroms, humiliation, and brutal oppression. Thus, denying the historical record is a necessity if one is set on absolving the wicked.

The lengths to which some will go in their denial is exemplified by a New Yorkbased progressive organization called Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ). Founded in 1990 by the academic and activist Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and the activist Donna Nevel, JFREJ claims it is inspired by Jewish tradition to dismantle racism and economic exploitation. On its website, the organization highlights its work with Black Lives Matter and its efforts to fight Islamophobia and dismantle ICE, among other things. JFREJ has published a guide called Understanding Anti-Semitism that takes readers through the leftist looking glass into a world where oppressor and oppressed bear little resemblance to their real-life counterparts. It is worth looking at this organizations rhetoric as it helps shine a light on the current pathways of anti-racist activism and how it acts as a cover for Jew-hatred.

The authors of Understanding Anti-Semitism blame Christian dogma and hierarchies for the creation of Jew-hatred while writing off centuries of anti-Semitism in the Arab-Muslim world. They even reframe the dhimmi status imposed on Jews, casting it as a protection of the sultan. And while they acknowledge that this protection was bought through heavy taxation and that it facilitated sporadic attacks, forced conversions and mass killings of Jews, they claim that no specific anti-Jewish ideology persisted in the Arab-Muslim world because, after all, other non-Muslims were also oppressed. How the presence of additional prejudices makes anti-Semitism less bigoted is unclear. What is clear, however, is that Muslim anti-Semitism culminated in nearly 1 million Jews of Araby ethnically cleansed, forcibly dispossessed, and expelled from their homes in the 20th century alone.

It is telling that the JFREJ guide discusses Islamophobia but omits mention of the persecution of Christians currently rampant in the Arab-Muslim world. It misleadingly blames white Christian nationalism for the vast majority of domestic terrorist attacks in the United States, conveniently ignoring that 2019 saw roughly an even number of casualties at the hands of white-nationalist terrorists and jihadists. JFREJ also doesnt mention that in 2017 alone, groups such as al-Shabab and the Taliban carried out nearly 11,000 Islamist attacks worldwide, resulting in 26,000 casualties.

Just as JFREJ exonerates Muslims wholesale for anti-Semitism, the group exempts racial minorities for it as well. In an interview with the Democracy Now radio show in late December, JFREJ executive director Audrey Sasson referred to New York Citys recent onslaught of anti-Semitic attacks as a manifestation of white nationalismdespite the fact that the majority of incidents were perpetrated by African Americans. In the December 28th stabbing attack on five Hasidic Jews at a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York, for example, the assailant was a 37-year-old black male who reportedly Googled topics such as Why did Hitler hate Jews, Zionist Temples in Staten Island, and Prominent companies founded by Jews in America.

Some leftist Democratic politicians have dabbled in similar scapegoating. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, claimed that the rash of hate crimes in New York City was a right-wing problem. On Twitter, Representative Rashida Tlaib blamed white supremacy for the Jersey City shooting at a kosher supermarket that took the lives of three Jews and a non-Jewish police officer, even though both perpetrators were African Americans and one was affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelitesa black supremacist and anti-Semitic hate group.

De Blasio later backtracked on his comments, and Tlaib deleted her tweet. But JFREJ has upheld the notion that there is no anti-Semitism apart from white supremacy, including retweeting an article from the socialist magazine Jacobin that claimed the best way to fight anti-Semitism is to reject the centrist idea that anti-Semitism transcends politics, and declared it was pernicious to point out that Jew-haters exist on the left and the right.

Yet every week, it seems, another video appears on social media, or in the news, showing a black American verbally or physically attacking a visibly Jewish victim. The attacks range from anti-Semitic tirades to throwing objects, spitting, beating, stabbing, and shooting. Indeed, one could rightly describe these frequent and vicious assaults on Jews as a slow-motion pogrom.

What is JFREJs solution to this problem? Apparently, the first step is to deny that it is happening at all. The groups website claims that the real issue is white Jews preoccupation with black anti-Semitism, stoked by a false narrativethat focuses on conflict between white Jews and black non-Jews. And who does the organization see as the true architects of this conflict? Get ready for it: Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South forcing African-Americans to flee to northern citiesKu Klux Klan terrorists, that is, who were last active a century ago.

The second part of the solution is no less confounding. In Sassons recent interview, she said: Our focus is to build solidarity with other groups targeted by anti-Semitism. Other groups targeted by anti-Semitism? The very formulation defies intelligibility.

But it is revealing nonetheless. Sassons true intention is to deny that anti-Semitismunderstood as a specific hatred against Jewseven exists. JFREJ subordinates the uniqueness of the Jewish plight to a larger narrative about racismone that ironically excludes the Jews. This explains why, at New York Citys January 5th March Against Anti-Semitism, JFREJ chose to publicize the event as a generalized rally against hate. In their promotional material, they even mentioned Islamophobia before saying a word about anti-Semitism.

What we see here are leftist Jews leveraging their Jewishness to perpetuate a logical and moral perversion. In a similar fashion, the November 2019 issue of Jewish Currents featured Vermont senator and Democratic candidate for president Bernie Sanders conflating the fight against anti-Semitism with Palestinian liberation: The forces fomenting anti-Semitism are the forces arrayed against oppressed people around the world, including Palestinians.The struggle against anti-Semitism is also the struggle for Palestinian freedom.

Once anti-Semitism is grouped with bigotry in general, it can be ignored in favor of more fashionable concerns: namely, systemic racism in the United States. In her interview, Sasson asserted that attacks on Jews, if committed by minorities, arise from rightful anger about real problems. Since black Americans are perceived to be a marginalized group, their hate crimes must be rationalized as an understandable, if misguided, rebellion against oppressionas opposed to the manifestation of anti-Semitism that they are.

By this reasoning, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhanwho famously compared Jews to termites, called Jews bloodsuckers, great and master deceivers, and the enemy of God and the enemy of the righteoushates Jews because of some misplaced grudge against the system. And so when Farrakhan refers to Hitler as a very great man and attributes gay marriage, abortion, and anal sex to the Satanic influence of the Talmudic Jews, he is merely reacting to the evil of the white, Christian West.

In actuality, what we know about the Nation of Islam and groups such as the Black Hebrew Israelites is that their members have been actively enlisting people of color for decades, setting up shop and drumming up hatred in local communities. They preach that Jews are to blame for the plight of African Americans and draw an equivalence between black suffering in the U.S. and Palestinian suffering in the Middle East. This line of anti-Semitism gained particular strength after the assassination of Martin Luther King, a Zionist and friend of the Jews. Kings tragic departure from the national conversation paved the way for his views to be overtaken by those in the tradition of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, who wedded his ideas on black power to a sci-fi version of Islam and made anti-Semitism an enduring feature of the Nation of Islam.

JFREJ has actually aligned itself with Farrakhan supporters. On its website, the group proudly states that it lets the priorities of the marginalized groups with which it partners guide [its] actions. Thus JFREJ has partnered with two former leaders of the Womens March: Tamika Mallory, an African American, and Linda Sarsour, a Muslim American. Both women have voiced admiration for Louis Farrakhan. And Sarsours record of anti-Semitic statements in the name of Palestinian activism is well-known. She has said, for example, that Israel is built on supremacy and on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else. She also tweeted: Nothing is creepier than Zionism. Sarsour earned an approving retweet from former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke when she tweeted: Israel should give free citizenship to US politicians. They are more loyal to Israel than they are to the American people. But, as one headline on JFREJs website says, JFREJ Stands with Linda Sarsour (Again, Always, with Love). If people like Sarsour guide JFREJs actions, its no wonder that the group whitewashes hate crimes against Jews.

Above all, JFREJ prizes its alliances and readily dismisses the sins of its allieseven when those sins run counter to the groups stated beliefs. In her interview, Sasson rightly described anti-Semitism as a tool that punches up against Jews, in that it portrays Jews as powerful. But this is precisely the conspiracist brand of anti-Semitism espoused by anti-Israel groups such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, with whom JFREJ partners. These outfits rely on an anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist framework that sees the Jewish collective (i.e., Israel) as the oppressive power and that equates Zionism with Palestinian suffering.

Either Sasson is displaying willful blindness or she has been corrupted by the very suggestion she claims to condemn: that Jews are the oppressor class, and Palestinians their hapless victims. The latter stance seems more convincing given the activist lefts penchant for pitting the powerful against the weak.As John-Paul Pagano has written, if Jews are perceived as the oppressor class, then overt anti-Semitism becomes easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation, and punching up at Jews becomes a form of speaking truth to power.

While it is true that abusers are often themselves the victims of abuse, and that a persons experience of oppression may contribute to the ways in which he oppresses other people, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is somehow exculpatory. And while it is laudable to condemn all forms of bigotry, there is something obscene about automatically holding up the perpetrator of a hate crime as a victim and subsequently elevating his grievances above the violence done to the actual injured party. Regarding such violence, Sassons vigilance is wanting. On Democracy Now, she argued against greater security measures for Jews and claimed that the answer to what is happening is not more policing.

Anti-Semitism has long been a feature of extreme left-wing and Islamist ideologiesfrom Soviet Communism to Hezbollahs exterminationist creed. As everyone knows, it has also been a feature of fascism and Nazism. It is incumbent on both the left and right to root out the Jew-haters in their midst. But some progressive groups have instead embraced themas a display of progressive virtue, no less. As is often the case when bigotry is given the gloss of victimhood, it is the Jews who will bear the brunt of the abuse.

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

In 2019, the third year of the Trump presidency, data gathered by the Intelligence Project of the SPLC documents a continued and rising threat to inclusive democracy: a surging white nationalist movement that has been linked to a series of racist and antisemitic terror attacks and has coincided with an increase in hate crime. The number of white nationalist groups identified by the SPLC rose for the second straight year, a 55 percent increase since 2017, when Donald Trumps campaign energized white nationalists who saw him as an avatar of their grievances and their anxiety over the countrys demographic changes.

White nationalism poses a serious threat to national security and pluralistic democracy. Its a virulent and profoundly authoritarian ideology that infects our political system with hate, fear and resentment. As this report demonstrates, the threat of increased violence is very real. A growing sector of white supremacists, who call themselves accelerationists, believe mass violence is necessary to bring about the collapse of our pluralistic society.

Like the year before, domestic terror attacks by white nationalists and other extremists, at home and abroad, delivered blow after blow in 2019. A synagogue in Poway, California. A rabbis home in a New York City suburb. A Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Beneath those headlines, underreported hate crimes added to the death toll and reinforced the climate of violence that threatens lives as well as the functioning of inclusive democracy.

Social media and the internet more generally have helped extremists extend the reach of racist ideologies and conspiracy theories. White supremacists, in fact, are increasingly congregating online, often not formally joining hate groups but networking, raising funds, recruiting and spreading propaganda that radicalizes young people and stokes violence against nonwhite immigrants, Jews, Muslims, Black people and others who belong to minority groups.

The man charged with the New Zealand massacre livestreamed part of the assault on Facebook. The El Paso suspect is believed to be the author of a manifesto that appeared online just minutes before the shooting began; in it, he praised the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto.

The year was also marked by a sharp expansion of anti-LGBTQ hate groups, which rose by nearly 43 percent. The Trump administration has demonstrated a clear willingness to embrace their leaders and their policy agenda.

Alongside the increase in white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ hate groups, 2019 saw the collapse of two neo-Nazi factions riven by leadership turmoil and community pressure. This contributed to a marginal decline in the overall number of hate groups operating across America after a 30 percent rise since 2015.

In California, authorities started a terrorism investigation after a man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at the Gilroy Garlic Festival (top), killing three people, on July 28, 2019. Earlier, on April 27, a man fired on participants in a Passover service at the Chabad of Poway synagogue (above) outside of San Diego. A woman was killed and three people injured, including the rabbi.

In 2019, the total number of hate groups tracked by SPLC dipped by about 8 percent940 compared to the record high of 1,020 in 2018. This decline does not reflect a significant diminishment of the radical right or a fundamental shift in the general trend of the last several years, given the increased activity among white nationalist hate groups.

As the country continues to experience white nationalist terror, extremist ideas long believed outside of the realm of legitimate politics are penetrating deeply into the mainstream, spawning public policies that target immigrants, LGBTQ people and Muslims. The Trump administration has installed members of hate groups into governmentparticularly those with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim or anti-LGBTQ animusand put in place highly punitive policies that seemed unthinkable just a few short years ago. These political moves will far outlast this administration, as Trump and his allies in the U.S. Senate have pushed through hundreds of new federal judges, many of whom are hostile to civil rights concerns and will serve for decades.

Fortunately, some are hearing the alarm bells that the data in this report should be setting off across the country. The FBI upgraded its assessment of the threat posed by racially motivated extremists to a national threat priority after Director Christopher Wray acknowledged that a majority of domestic terror attacks are fueled by some type of white supremacy, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a strategic shift toward countering racial hatred. Key arrests may have averted several white nationalist terror attacks.

A full defense of inclusive democracy will require not only appropriate federal action, but local responses by city, county and state governments; litigation strategies that hold hate groups accountable for the harm they cause; technology companies enforcing their own policies that restrict the ability of hate groups to operate online; and support for individuals and organizations willing to courageously reach out, neighbor to neighbor, to stand up for each others civil and human rights. This is what must constitute a national movement against organized hate and extremism in America.

Like the year before, 2019 saw a spate of domestic terror attacks, both at home and abroad. In Poway, California, a gunman attacked a synagogue, killing a 60-year-old woman and wounding a rabbi and two other people. Also in that state, a man wielding a semi-automatic rifle killed three at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. And three days before the end of the year, in a New York City suburb, a man burst into a rabbis home and began slashing people with a machete, wounding five, during a Hanukkah celebration.

By far, the worst carnage wrought by domestic extremists came on Aug. 3 at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso, Texas, a city that is nearly 80 percent Hispanic, when a man opened fire with an AK-47 just as parents and children were taking advantage of a tax-free shopping day before the beginning of the school year. Twenty-two people were killed and another 26 injured.

Mourners created a makeshift memorial (top) to the victims of the Aug. 3, 2019, massacre that left 22 people dead at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. A manifesto linked to the suspect said the attack was a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. Orthodox Jews gather (above) near the site of a home in New York where a man rushed into a Hanukkah celebration and stabbed five people on Dec.28, 2019.

Hate crimes added further to the toll, though the numbers of the dead and wounded are impossible to determine because of vast deficiencies in the way hate crime statistics are gathered and reported by the government. The victims in 2019 included two gay men and a transgender woman killed in a single shooting in Detroit, where prosecutors said they were targeted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy organization, also reported the names of 20 Black transgender women who were murdered in 2019.

In a shocking and gruesome demonstration of the transnational nature of the white nationalist movement, on March 15 in Christchurch, New Zealand, a man immersed in white supremacist ideology killed 51 people at two mosquesand livestreamed part of the assault on Facebook.

The alleged attackers in El Paso and Christchurch, as in other places, clearly shared a racist ideology and were linked by a central theme that animates the white nationalist movementthe false notion of white genocide, also called the great replacement conspiracy theory, the idea that white people of European descent are being systematically displaced in the Western world. Authorities believe the suspect in El Paso, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Texas, was the author of a 2,300-word manifesto that appeared online just minutes before the shooting began. In it, he warned that foreigners are replacing white people and outlined a plan to divide America by race. Tellingly, he nodded to the alleged mosque shooter in New Zealand, writing, In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. While Trump blamed the internet and social media for the racist hate that led to the attack, The Guardian newspaper pointed out that Trumps re-election campaign had used the word invasion to describe immigration in more than 2,000 Facebook ads in 2019.

In Poway, the attacker referred to a meticulously planned genocide of the European race and praised other shooters, including the one in Christchurch.

The number of people killed in white nationalist terror attacks might have been higher if not for several key arrests. In February, a Coast Guard lieutenantbased at the Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.was arrested with a stockpile of weapons and a hit list of Democratic politicians and media figures. The FBI said he was a self-identified white nationalist and an admirer of the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people during an anti-Muslim rampage in 2011. In addition, a Winter Park, Florida, man with a history of posting racist and antisemitic threats on social media was arrested for plotting to attack a Walmart just days after the mass killing in El Paso. Other white supremacists were arrested for bombing plots that targeted religious institutions, dams and other infrastructure, and law enforcement.

The Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, was one of two mosques attacked by a white supremacist on March 15, 2019. Fifty-one people were killed in the attacks, parts of which were livestreamed on Facebook.

The most powerful force animating todays radical rightand stoking the violent backlashis a deep fear of demographic change. This fear is encapsulated in the conspiratorial notion that a purposeful white genocide is underway and that its driving the great replacement of white people in their home countries by foreign, non-white populations. Antisemitism adds fuel to this fire; some white supremacists claim that Jewsas well as progressive politiciansare helping to facilitate this demographic change.

Since the turn of the millennium, when the Census Bureau first pointed out that white people in the United States would lose their majority status in the 2040s, American racists have fretted over what they fear will be the loss of their place of dominance in society. Now, those fears are shared across borders. The New Zealand mass murderer titled his manifesto The Great Replacement.

These extremists are not reluctant to voice their desire for mass violence to counter the demographic changes. Random violence is not detrimental to the cause, because we need to convince Americans that violence against nonwhites is desirable or at least not something worth opposing, wrote Andrew Weev Aurenheimer, a leading voice on the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, last August. Theres no way to remove a hundred million people without a massive element of violence.

Such talk might seem absurd. But a growing number of white supremacists are embracing the ideology of accelerationism. In their view, political activity is pointless, and escalating violence, on a broad scale, is the only way to bring down the pluralistic, democratic society they want to destroy. The suspect in New Zealand devoted a section of his manifesto to the concept, with the heading Destabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics for Victory.

The DHS, which for years has underplayed the threat of terrorism from far-right domestic extremists, in September announced a strategic shift toward countering racial hatred. Kevin McAleenan, then its acting head, said recent mass shootings had galvanized the Department of Homeland Security to expand its counterterrorism mission focus beyond terrorists operating abroad, to include those radicalized to violence within our borders by violent extremists of any ideology. Under the revised strategy, DHS would seek to better analyze the nature and extent of the domestic terror threat and share information with local law enforcement to help prevent attacks.

At an invitation-only meeting attended by the SPLC in September at the National Counterterrorism Center, leaders of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies emphasized the white supremacist threat as both a national and a transnational problem. One agency head remarked that it had been much easier, psychologically, to accept terrorism coming from the Middle East than to accept that the United States might soon become a net exporter of terrorism motivated by white supremacy.

Though the experts appear to understand the threat, they remain hamstrung by the Trump administration, which has hired members of hate groups into high-level positions and has on its staff people like Stephen Miller, the senior policy adviser in the White House who has long been allied with anti-immigrant hate groups. In November, the SPLC exposed hundreds of emails that Miller sent to editors at the far-right Breitbart News during 2015 and 2016including the time he worked on the Trump campaignthat revealed he was steeped in white nationalist literature and ideas. Among other things, he promoted the racist novel The Camp of the Saints and explicitly white nationalist websites like American Renaissance and VDARE.

Trump himself has made light of Americas white nationalist problemequivocating, at best. After the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the president declared there were some very fine people on both sides, apparently including the racists who were marching and shouting Nazi slogans at night and clashing with anti-racist activists in the daylight hours. After the New Zealand massacre in 2019, Trump said of white nationalists, I think its a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.

Trumps allies in the media also stoke fear of demographic and cultural change among Trumps base of mostly white supporters. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has a cable news audience in the millions, spent considerable time in 2019 bashing immigrants and warning of demographic change. He has told his viewers that the worlds poormeaning immigrantsmake this country dirtier and more divided and that litter is left almost exclusively by immigrants. Carlson said that U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesotaone of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congresshates the United States and is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country. Other Fox hosts engaged in similar reactionary rhetoric. Jeanine Pirro was briefly suspended after saying Omars religious beliefs were antithetical to the U.S. Constitution. The networks hosts repeatedly used the words invaders and invasion when speaking of immigration.

This type of rhetoric is not without consequence. After the Walmart massacre, a New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms identified what it described as hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killers written statementa shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color.

The overall number of hate groups active in 2019 dropped from the previous year, from 1,020 to 940a decrease explained by the loss of two major groups, and their individual chapters, rather than from a reduction in overall white supremacist activity. Meanwhile, organizing continues to move online. Major hate sites like the Daily Stormer have more than 1 million monthly readers. And Gab, the social media network established in 2017 after mainstream social media sites began to remove some bigots from their platforms in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, has reached nearly 1 million users.

Certain sectors of the white supremacist movement did grow in 2019. The number of white nationalist groups was up slightly to 155 from 148 in 2018. Most notably, some are advocating violence and encouraging their foot soldiers to prepare for (and precipitate) a race war or mass civil conflict.

The movements followers are breaking into two major strategic camps: so-called accelerationists who wholeheartedly embrace violence as a political tool and mainstreamers (or the dissident right, as they often call themselves) who are attempting, with a degree of success, to bend the mainstream political right toward white nationalist ideas. Much of the movements energy lies in the growing accelerationist wing, which, for the most part, is organized in informal online communities rather than formal groups.

The number of neo-Nazi groups declined from 112 to 59, and activism moved online. Two of the biggest factions (comprising multiple chapters) fell apart in 2019. The Traditionalist Worker Party, which had 12 chapters in 2018, shrank to zero last year, after its leader, Matthew Heimbach, was arrested in a domestic violence incident the year before. And the National Socialist Movement (NSM), long the biggest Nazi formation of all, collapsed after its leader, Jeff Schoep, renounced the movement and reportedly signed papers transferring its assets to James Stern, a Black preacher in California who said he would shut down the group. Sterns death in October threw the NSM further into chaos. Now, longtime member Burt Colucci, the groups former chief of staff, claims that he has control.

Groups that openly advocate violence, including Feuerkrieg Division and the Base, grew in 2019. Perhaps more importantly, neo-Nazi activity is growing fastest in online forums. Fascist Forge, built in the mold of the forum Iron March (which spawned the group Atomwaffen), saw a large influx of registered users in the past year. The forum gained more than 1,000 registered users from October 2018 to October 2019. Despite disappearing from the web for a short period and changing domains, Fascist Forge had nearly 1,500 members at years end. The activity online is much larger than this, and often hidden. The accelerationist groups have moved much of their private communications and recruitment to encrypted web chats and apps.

The Ku Klux Klan, already largely rejected as outmoded by most white supremacists, continued to decline in numbers, though more slowly, with 47 chapters in 2019, down from 51 the year prior. With the exception of the American Christian Dixie Knights, most Klan groups stayed about the same size and held few, poorly attended public events. For example, the Honorable Sacred Knights of Madison, Indiana, held a Memorial Day Weekend rally in Dayton, Ohio, where only nine Klansmen showed up. They were confronted by approximately 1,000 peaceful protesters, and the city held a concurrent peace rally several miles away to divert attention from the Klan event. Such rallies demonstrate the groups relative inability to break with their rigid traditions, thus limiting the Klans appeal to younger generations of tech-savvy white nationalists.

The same can be said, to some extent, of racist skinheads, who are known for their shaved heads, red suspenders and Doc Martens boots, and whose ranks also continue to fall. There were 63 such groups in 2018 and 48 in 2019.

Other parts of the white supremacist movement have been stagnant or in decline. 2019 had about the same number of Holocaust-denial groups and hate music sellers. Christian Identity churches dropped from 17 in 2018 to 11 in 2019.

Black separatist hate groups declined to 255 chapters in 2019, from 264 the prior year. These groups lag far behind the hate groups fueled by various forms of white supremacy. Typically holding views that are antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ and anti-white, they had been expanding in recent years, perhaps in reaction to rising white supremacy and Trumps abandonment of police reform and civil rights. Even though they have little to no impact on mainstream politics and no high-level defenders in the media, the two antisemitic terror attacks in the New York City area in 2019 demonstrate that this ideology can influence individuals behavior.

President Trump addressed the Values Voter Summit, hosted by the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council, in October 2019. FRC President Tony Perkins (left) boasted to attendees that, with Trump in the White House, Were not on the outside looking in; were on the inside working out.

Anti-LGBTQ groups have become intertwined with the Trump administration, andafter years of civil rights progress and growing acceptance among the broader American publicanti-LGBTQ sentiment within the Republican Party is rising.

Groups that vilify the LGBTQ community, in fact, represented the fastest-growing sector among hate groups in 2019expanding from 49 in 2018 to 70 in 2019, a nearly 43% increase.

Much of this growth has taken place among groups at the grassroots level, a surge possibly fueled by continued anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policy emanating from government officials. They include a network of churches led by Steven Anderson, who once called for President Obamas assassination and is pastor and head of the Faithful Word Baptist Churcha hate group in Tempe, Arizonaas well as several new chapters of Mass Resistance, based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Though Trump promised during his campaign to be a real friend to the LGBTQ community, he has fully embraced anti-LGBTQ hate groups and their agenda of dismantling federal protections and resources for LGBTQ people, while his Department of Justice has filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in support of anti-LGBTQ lawsuits, some of which were brought by the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. In October 2019, Trump once again spoke in person to the Values Voter Summit, a gathering of religious-right organizations hosted by the hate group Family Research Council. In May, he announced his opposition to the Federal Equality Amendment, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act as protected categories regarding employment and housing discrimination.

Staffers from organizations that vilify the LGBTQ community have been hired by the Trump administration and have influenced and written its policies. Numerous protections for LGBTQ people have been removed through executive action, as when the Interior Department stripped sexual orientation from its anti-discrimination guidelines this year. In addition, the administration has consistently claimed that laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex do not apply to LGBTQ people and has worked to install religious exemptions to civil rights laws.

According to a report by Lambda Legal, a third of the more than 50 U.S. circuit court judges nominated by Trump have a demonstrated history of anti-LGBTQ bias. Lambda argues that the justice system is now indisputably in a state of crisis.

Anti-immigrant hate groups notched a small increase in their numbers in 2019from 17 groups in 2018 to 20 in 2019. But their numbers, relative to other categories of hate groups, belie their vast influence and success in bringing what is essentially a white nationalist ideology into the mainstream of politics and policy.

Though Michigan ophthalmologist John Tanton, a white nationalist and the architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement, died in 2019, his ideas are now deeply entrenched in the Trump administration, which has installed numerous people from the network he fathered in key government positions and adopted myriad harsh policies that seek to carry out Tantons goal of dramatically curtailing the influx of nonwhite immigrants.

In the third year of the Trump presidency, the movement enjoyed unprecedented access to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Nowhere was that more evident than in the White House itself, where senior policy adviser Stephen Miller reigns as the de facto czar of immigration policy. Previously a Senate aide to Jeff Sessions, Trumps first attorney general, Miller has long been known as a key bridge connecting policy-oriented, anti-immigrant hate groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) to their allies in Congress. But 2019 brought new revelations. The SPLC exposed hundreds of emails he wrote to editors at the far-right website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016including some while he worked for the Trump campaignthat revealed he was steeped in the language, literature and ideology of the white nationalist movement.

As Miller attempted, with great success, to influence Breitbarts coverage of immigration issues, he frequently forwarded materials from white nationalist websites. He blamed immigrants for bringing violent crime into this country and suggested that Breitbart write an article comparing remarks the Pope made about open borders to the virulently racist French novel The Camp of the Saints.

Stephen Miller, the senior White House adviser who oversees immigration policy, has longstanding ties to anti-immigrant hate groups.

The apocalyptic fantasy, beloved by white supremacists, luridly illustrates the great replacement theory by depicting a European continent overrun by hordes of disease-ridden, feces-eating Indian migrants. It was published in English by the Tanton-founded hate group Social Contract Press.

To close observers of Trump administration policy, Millers animus toward nonwhite people came as little surprise. But it was confirmation that Trumps policies are rooted in white nationalist ideology. More than two dozen senators, all Democrats, demanded Millers removal in a letter to the White House. Among them was Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who called Miller a cancer at the very heart of the values of this administration.

Miller is just one of many Trump officials who have connections with anti-immigrant hate groups. Robert Law and John Zadrozny, two former FAIR staffers, were promoted within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to acting chief of policy and acting chief of staff, respectively. Former FAIR lobbyist Elizabeth Jacobs is also at USCIS, working as a senior adviser.

In November, FAIR President Dan Stein told CBS News, It certainly is delightful to see folks that weve worked with in the past advance and contribute to the various efforts of the administration, most of which we support.

Another FAIR ally, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, was named in June to head USCIS after former director Lee Francis Cissna was pushed out of the agency. In November, Cuccinelli was named as acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security. He attended FAIRs annual Hold Their Feet to the Fire media conference in September and did a number of interviews with right-wing radio hosts broadcasting from the event. That same week, he spoke at the Immigration Newsmaker hosted by the CIS, another hate group founded by Tanton. Other anti-immigrant hate groups have gloated about their influence. ProEnglish announced in fundraising emails that it had met with White House aides six times over the past three years, most recently in July 2019. CIS staff testified at multiple congressional hearings in 2019. Also in July, nativist hardliner, Trump adviser and former FAIR lawyer Kris Kobach announced he was running for U.S. Senate in Kansas. Earlier in the year, Kobach joined the board of We Build the Wall, the GoFundMe campaign to raise private donations for Trumps border wall.

FAIR and other anti-immigrant groups continued to court local law enforcement. Nearly 200 sheriffs from across the country attended Hold Their Feet to the Fire. In October, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland, spoke at the Social Contract Presss annual writers workshop event.

Shake-ups left anti-Muslim groups with fewer allies in the Trump administration. One powerful friend remained: CIA Director Mike Pompeo (left). Ken Cuccinelli (center), who has close ties to anti-immigrant groups, was named deputy secretary of Homeland Security. Nativist hardliner and Trump ally Kris Kobach (right) announced a Senate bid.

While anti-Muslim sentiment remains strong on the radical rightas well as within the Trump administrationthe number of anti-Muslim hate groups fell from 100 in 2018 to 84 in 2019, and shake-ups at the White House left the movement with far fewer allies in the halls of power. In August, John Bolton, an ally to anti-Muslim groups, was ousted as national security adviser. Charles M. Kupperman, a top aide to Bolton who previously served on the board of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), was tapped to serve as acting national security adviser but was replaced just eight days later. CSP is known for its conspiratorial warnings that Muslims are trying to overthrow the U.S. government from within and that Shariah law is overriding U.S. law in the courts.

Katharine Gorka, the wife of former White House aide Sebastian Gorka who is also known for her Islamophobic views, left the DHS to take a job as a spokesperson at U.S. Customs and Border Protection but stepped down from that role in August. Frank Wuco, a former radio host who has associated with anti-Muslim figures and peddled Islamophobic conspiracy theories, left a short-lived post as a senior adviser on arms issues at the State Department after previous stints at the White House and DHS.

The movement did retain one powerful friend in Washington: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who the hate group ACT for America has called a steadfast ally.

President Trumps campaign rallies are polarizing affairs. In Manchester, N.H., on February 10, 2020, Trump supporters began chanting lock her up when Trump mocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Anxiety over the countrys changing demographics will continue to be the No. 1 factor animating far-right extremists in the year ahead. Trump didnt create the fear of nonwhite immigrants but rather harnessed it to win the White House in 2016 and continues to nurture it by fanning the flames of resentment within the most extreme elements of the Republican base. Two years after his election, extremist fears were crystallized by the Democratic wave in the midterms, when women of colorincluding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaibmade historic gains in the House of Representatives.

In the month surrounding the 2018 midterms, there were four domestic terrorist attacks, including a series of malfunctioning pipe bombs mailed to Trump critics by a supporter of the president.

Now, as the 2020 election approaches, many white supremacists see Trumps re-election as a last stand to stop the impending erosion of a white majority. And there is little doubt that Trump will ratchet up his rhetoric by not only demonizing immigrants but portraying Democrats and progressives as existential threats to America. In what may be a preview of what lies ahead, last July he tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib should go back to where they came from (all but Omar were born in the U.S.).

There is little to suggest that the violence that has accompanied the surge in white nationalism in recent years will abate. Last July, a Pew Research Center poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe that aggressive language by politicians makes violence more likely. And in recent months, as the campaign has ramped up, news reports have been replete with referencesif not outright threatsof violence by nervous Trump supporters, who have been warned repeatedly by the president of massive voter fraud.

At Trumpstock in Golden Valley, Arizona, last October, an attendee told The New York Times he had been stockpiling weapons just in case Trump loses. Nothing less than a civil war would happen, he said, reaching for a handgun. I dont believe in violence, but Ill do what I got to do.

Others might, as well.

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The Year in Hate and Extremism 2019 - Southern Poverty Law Center

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

HBOs The Plot Against America takes place in an alternate history where Charles Lindbergh ran for President in 1940, and won. We see how Lindberghs rise to power affects history through the eyes of one Jewish family, the Levins from Newark, New Jersey. Instead of supporting the Allies in World War II, Lindberghs government favors the Nazis. And because Lindbergh himself is an anti-semite, he gives others in the country the free rein to lash out against their Jewish neighbors.

Thats the basic concept behind David Simons The Plot Against America, but who was the real Charles Lindbergh? Was he a fascist? Was he a hero? And did he really run for President of the United States against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940? Heres everything you need to know about the real Charles Lindbergh.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit in 1902. He is most famous for winning the Orteig Prize, an honor promised to the first pilot who could make a transatlantic flight from New York City to Paris, or the reverse. Many pilots attempted the challenge, but Lindbergh was the first one to complete it in 1927. He also flew solo, which meant he had to be alert for the 30+ hour flight. Lindbergh accomplished this feat in a single engined aircraft called The Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh became an international hero and was awarded the Medal of Honor.

In 1932, Lindbergh made headlines again, but for an awful reason: his 20-month-old son was kidnapped from his cradle. The Lindberghs paid a $50,000 cash ransom for the baby, but the child was still murdered. His remains were found not far from the familys home. The Lindbergh babys kidnapping and murder were called the Crime of the Century. The trial that ensued became a media circus, and Lindbergh, and his wife, Anne Morrow, left the States and lived in Europe for a few years.

In The Plot Against America, Lindberghs background is much the same. However, HBOs series suggests that upon returning from a self-imposed exile in Europe in 1939, the Nazi-sympathizing Lindbergh (played by Ben Cole) decided to run for President against FDR.

Privately, Lindbergh expressed anti-semitism in his diaries and reportedly waffled on moving into a house in Berlin because Nazi friends told him it had been previously owned by Jews. He supported the America First Committee, and even FDR himself suspected Lindbergh of being pro-Nazi.

If Charles Lindbergh had run for President in 1940, and if he had beaten FDR in real life, there is no doubt that his politics would have had disastrous repercussions for the Jewish population in America and the outcome of World War II.

Where to stream The Plot Against America

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'The Plot Against America' on HBO: Who Was the Real Charles Lindbergh? - Decider

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

This is a comprehensive list of closures, cancellations and rescheduled events due to the coronavirus for Northeast Florida: Duval, St. Johns, Nassau, Clay, Baker counties

The Florida Times-Union is tracking closings, cancellations and rescheduling of events announced for Jacksonville and the surrounding area.

If additional details are known about an event, a link will be included below. Other changes will be added when we have confirmation from officials or organizers.)

COMPLETE COVERAGE | Coronavirus in Florida

SCHOOLS

Duval County Public Schools have extended Spring Break through March 22. Students had been scheduled to return Monday.

Clay County schools will be closed this week. The following week is the school districts spring break. Classes will resume on March 31.

St Johns County schools have extended spring break by a week, with students to return March 30.

Nassau County schools have spring break March 16-20 and will remain closed the following week, March 2327.

Camden County (Ga.) has closed schools indefinitely, effective March 17.

The University of North Florida and Jacksonville University will host all classes online through the end of the spring semester. The schools also suspended spring and summer study abroad programs.

Florida State College at Jacksonvilles spring break is extended for one week through March 22. The school is working on plans to move toward a more fully online learning environment.

The Bolles School closes its four campuses to all but boarding students. Students will take classes online beginning March 25. The campus will be closed until at least April 6.

When Episcopal School of Jacksonville students return from Spring Break on March 23, the school will begin a remote learning protocol.

* Providence School will be shifting to a "virtual classroom" until March 31.

The Discovery School will be closed until March 30.

Riverside Presbyterian Day School closed until March 30.

CHURCHES/PLACES OF WORSHIP

Many places of worship, including some of the largest churches in Northeast Florida announced they would be closed Sunday. Check with your church before heading out Sunday. Some churches were offering streaming services to congregations.

CLAY

The 2020 Clay County Fair, which was to run April 2-11 in Green Cove Springs, has been canceled. Ticket holders who paid with cash will receive a refund request forms are by April 12 or can keep their tickets for the 2021 fair. Credit card customers will received refunds automatically within the next few days.

The Clay County Commission has canceled all "non-essential county-sponsored public gatherings" through April 1. The order includes scheduled programs and events at the five county library branches and educational outreach events conducted by UF/IFAS Extension staff at the extension office in Green Cove Springs and in the community.

The Town of Orange Park has canceled all non-essential meetings and events through April 1, including the Town Council meeting Monday.

The Thrasher-Horne Center in Orange Park has postponed all events through March 27.

The Clay SafetyNet Alliance will hold its March 19 meeting via teleconference.

Clay County libraries are closed until further notice.

Clay County parks remain open for recreational use, but county-sponsored events in the parks are canceled for the rest of March.

Penney Farms has canceled its April 18 Old Fashioned Farm Day.

CareerSource Northeast Florida has cancelled all group events, including job fairs, company recruitments, workshops and meetings.

The Clay Humane animal clinic in Orange Park postponing the April 21 Hogs for Dogs fundraiser.

Green Cove Springs has canceled the police department-sponsored Easter egg hunt on April 4.

All red-light camera hearings for March and April in Green Cove Springs are canceled.

The Thomas Hogans Memorial Gym in Green Cove Springs will be closed until at least March 30, and the Green Cove Springs Community Action Program is canceled during the same period.

First Coast YMCA branches in Clay will close at 5 p.m. Monday. Spring Break child care will be offered in a very limited capacity.

The Alzheimers Association Brain Bus visits planned in Clay this week will be rescheduled.

Beginning Tuesday, Clay County Animal Services will only allow visitors to its shelter by appointment until further notice. Stray drop-off and Trap, Neuter and Release (TNR) services are suspended.

Clay County Senior Centers have suspended programming and activities for at least 30 days.

The Clay Humane nonprofit animal hospital in Orange Park has canceled scheduled surgical procedures for the next two weeks, except for essential and life-saving surgeries. The hospital will be operating with limited personnel and supplies.

DUVAL

The Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach city venues are closed and government meetings canceled until further notice. The beaches themselves remain open.

Duval County Courthouse is open. Jury trials are canceled.

Jacksonvilles Museum of Science and History (MOSH) is closing through the end of March.

MOCA Jacksonville is closing through March 30.

Sun-Ray Cinemas is closed. The Pizza Cave remains open.

Jacksonville Arboretum & Gardens is closed and all events inside canceled until further notice.

Collective Con, scheduled for March 20-22 at the Jax Expo Center, has been rescheduled to July 17-19.

The Garden Club of Jacksonville is closed through March.

The University of Florida vs. Florida State University scheduled for March 24 at 121 Financial Ballpark has been canceled and will not be rescheduled.

The San Marco Chamber Music Society has postponed the Kayo Ishimaru concert scheduled for Sunday, March 15. The event will now be held June 7.

Jax Chamber is suspending all activities until at least March 27, including all Chamber Council events, ImpactJAX events and the Board of Directors meeting scheduled for March 21.

The Beaches Museum in Jacksonville Beach will be closed through the end of the month. The Ritz Chamber Players concert Wednesday and March 27 exhibit opening are also canceled.

The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens will remain closed through Friday, April 3.

All activities at Hemming Park in downtown Jacksonville, including food trucks, festivals and live music, are canceled through the end of March.

UniverSoul Circus has rescheduled its performances scheduled for March 14 and 15 to May.

Disney on Ice shows scheduled for April 2-5 at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena have been canceled.

The Riverside Arts Market is closed for at least three weeks.

Hamilton, scheduled for March 17 through March 29 at the Times-Union Centers Moran Theater, has been canceled. Efforts are being made to bring Hamilton to Jacksonville at a later date.

The Jacksonville Symphony has canceled all performances through March 29 and will no longer play at the SHIFT Festival in Washington, D.C.

All events at Jacksonville city venues are closed.

The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is closed.

Generation W womens conference postponed

Singer Michael Bubl cancels Jacksonville show

The Museum of Contemporary Art-Jacksonville is closed through the end of the month.

The Brumos Collection in Jacksonville, Northeast Florida's only car museum, will close until April 16.

Events at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center have been canceled through April 11.

The Sons of the American Revolutions annual commemoration of the Battle of Thomas Creek, scheduled for March 28, has been canceled.

The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp Baseball Club has postponed game-day job fair scheduled for Tuesday.

Theatre Jacksonville has canceled its 100-Year Big Hat & Jazz Birthday Brunch, which was to be held March 22 in San Marco.

Jewish Family & Community Services has postponed "Impacting Today Transforming Tomorrows," the nonprofits annual fundraising event tentatively scheduled June 4.

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp season delayed

The East Coast Hockey League, which includes the Jacksonville Icemen, has suspended its season.

Brunch Fest, Jacksonvilles Brunch & Bloody Mary Festival, has been postponed. The event was to be March 22 in Riverside.

Catholic Charities Jacksonville has postponed its March 21 Black & White Ball fundraiser.

The Florida Theatre has postponed all performances through April 1.

St. Pauls Catholic School carnival, scheduled for March 19-22, has been canceled.

The Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida has suspended all "Members-Only Convenings" for the remainder of March and April. The CEO Confidential session for March will be held virtually, the April one. All other events In March and April will be held virtually.

The First Coast Parkinsons Run on April 11 has been postponed until later this year.

Kids Hope Alliances March meetings have been canceled.

The Salvation Armys Womens Auxiliary has canceled its 34th Annual Celebrity Chefs event, scheduled for March 26.

The Retired Employees Association of Jacksonville has canceled its March 19 quarterly membership meeting.

The 2020 Jacksonville In-Water Boat Show planned April 3-5 at TIAA Bank Field and Metropolitan Park Marina has been canceled.

The Ritz Chamber Players have suspended events planned for March.

The Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry has postponed the March 29 Tour De Farm.

The Garden Club of Jacksonville is now closed to the public through the end of March.

The Epping Forest Yacht & Country Club fitness center is temporarily closed for cleaning due to a possible COVID-19 exposure.

Cathedral District Jacksonville has canceled its inaugural spring event, Spring into the Cathedral District, which was to be held April 2-5.

Angelwood has suspended visitation to its group homes and Career Development and Education Center.

The Heart of Jacksonville African Violet Society has canceled its juried show and sale to be held March 27-28.

The I'm A Star Foundation has postponed its 2020 Leader to Leader Summit set for March 28.

The Mandarin Museum has canceled Michele Navakas lecture scheduled for March 28.

Alhambra Theatre and Dining has canceled all performances until April 1.

First Coast YMCA branches in Jacksonville will close at 5 p.m. Monday. until further notice.

The Alzheimers Association Brain Bus visits planned in Jacksonville this week will be rescheduled.

Yoga 4 Change has postponed all community classes and events.

Beginning Wednesday, VyStar Credit Union will serve members through drive-thru tellers only at all branch locations except for Springfield and Downtown Jacksonville, which do not offer a drive-thru option. Members who frequently conduct business at those two branches can visit VyStars nearest drive-thru locations in San Marco or Riverside.

The North Florida School of Special Education has rescheduled its April 3-5 Berry Good Farms Weekend Festival to May 29-31.

Friday Musicale has postponed the March 26-27 concert of Antonio Meneses and Paul Galbraith because of European travel restrictions. Also, the April 10 concert of Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedro Martinez has been relocated to Havana JAX at Cuba Libre.

Beginning Wednesday, CareerSource Northeast Florida career centers will be closed until April 3. Call (904) 356-JOBS (5627) for virtual assistance.

The Riverdance 25th Anniversary Tour, originally planned for April 14-15 at the Moran Theater inside the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, has been postponed.

The Limelight Theatre has suspended all programming and closed its facility, with staff working remotely.

Continued here:
Coronavirus: Updated closings, cancellations in Jacksonville and Northeast Florida - The Florida Times-Union

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) As the sun set Friday in Jewish homes across the world, the faithful lit Sabbath candles to participate once again in Gods first creative act to bring light into the world.

The world was filled with darkness and chaos when, as written in the Torah, God spoke the first words, Let there be light.

Every human beings responsibility, regardless of faith, is to imitate God, Congregation Agudath Sholom Rabbi Daniel Cohen said. To shine light into the darkness and bring order to chaos.

In ordinary circumstances, about 500 faithful Jewish people gather on Saturdays for shabbat services at Congregation Agudath Sholom. But for the first time, the synagogue or shul stood empty Saturday; the synagogue is closed to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In response to the crisis, Cohen and leaders of all Stamfords synagogues have banded together to live out the mission to vanquish darkness and order chaos caused by the spread of the COVID-19 virus. One way they are doing so is by live-streaming remarks and music that they hope will put people in the right frame of mind for shabbat, when they cannot use technology.

God works in mysterious ways, and there are opportunities with people hunkered down as families to find renewed hope and deeper friendship, Cohen said. This is something we didnt plan for, and it is important to turn moments of hurt into moments of hope and find light in the darkness.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed thousands, quarantined hundreds of thousands, shut down countries and crashed markets. An air of anxiety and fear hangs over people worldwide as they stock up on supplies, retreat into their homes and forego the gatherings that once punctuated daily life.

Frequent community gatherings in particular characterize the faith life of Jewish communities in Westchester and Fairfield counties. Time together for mitzvahs, funerals, shabbat services, holy days and classes forms the backbone of their shared religious life. But these gatherings also exposed about 1,000 people to the novel coronavirus in late February in New Rochelle, the epicenter of New York states largest outbreak.

Part of the reason why this hit the Jewish community so hard is that we share so many social spaces, Cohen said. All those interactions make the community beautiful, but it created challenges with the current situation.

To follow the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions guideline to encourage social-distancing, Congregation Agudath Sholom is closing for the next several weeks, canceling all planned events and asking its congregants to self-worship and pray.

Synagogue president Simeon Wohlberg suggested Cohen move the classes taught at the synagogue online. Cohen took it and ran with it, Wohlberg said.

All the Jewish clergy in the Stamford area - representing orthodox, reform, Chabad, conservative and reconstructionist denominations - have put together a calendar so worshippers have a daily opportunity to learn about topics from Jewish history and scripture.

Congregants are frustrated because the communal aspect of the sabbath, not just prayer but socializing, is taken away, Wohlberg said.

But, people are excited to have opportunities to learn with clergy from whom they might not have learned in the past, he said.

It takes your individual community of the physical building youre in, and opens it up to the whole community, he said. As this crisis hopefully soon goes away, we continue to find opportunities to continue to work together as a whole Jewish community and not just as individual units within the Jewish community.

Rabbi Jeremy Wiederhorn of TCS Westport also announced that shabbat services will be canceled, as well as Sunday morning minyan.

He said in times of struggle, as after the shooting at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, and after 9-11, when people need strength and inspiration, they naturally want to find ways to come together.

But this is different, he said. Today, staying away from community could potentially save lives and help us get through this difficult and scary time together.

Wiederhorn and the synagogues cantor sent out Shabbat melodies, thoughts and prayers for solace and inspiration.

Online: https://bit.ly/2wc2LIK

___

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Jewish communities join online for inspiration, fellowship - New Haven Register

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

The Jewish community rallied to support isolated individuals through volunteering initiatives this week amid government advice on social distancing to lessen the chances of catching coronavirus.

The United Synagogue set up a helpline operating between 9am and 5pm Monday to Thursday and 9-1pm on Fridays, while several shuls have set up live-streaming for those who cannot get to synagogue to watch and listen to Shabbat services.

The Board of Deputies sent out Can I Help? cards for those offering to help others who are self-isolating. The cards are filled out and posted through letterboxes, alerting the occupants to the volunteers name, address and what they are offering to do, such as help collect groceries or simply to talk by phone.

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The Jewish Volunteering Network said there would be new opportunities specifically related to Covid-19 such as running errands, food shopping, and collecting medicine for the elderly, vulnerable and lonely.

At Golders Green Synagogue (GGS), Rabbi Dr Harvey Belovski set up a Self-Isolating Support Scheme run by the shuls welfare team.

The synagogue already runs a meal rota to support congregants who have new babies or are sitting shiva, and this will now be expanded, with volunteers phoning regularly to check in with those in isolation, particularly the elderly.

The synagogue said its support scheme had already resulted in an influx of new volunteers while the rabbinic team was preparing to deliver sermons, educational programmes and Pesach guidance using both recorded media and live link-ups.

Its more important than ever to support those in our community who are isolated or anxious at this difficult time, said Belovski. Im delighted that our volunteers have developed this wonderful initiative to ensure that the pastoral and religious needs of everyone are met, even if they are not able to join community events in person.

In Leeds, Jewish MP Alex Sobel established a database of local volunteers to ready our community for quarantine, to help people isolated by the coronavirus outbreak.

More than 1,200 responded in the appeal to help vulnerable residents get the supplies they need at home, including food, medicine and other essentials.

The Government isnt doing enough to ensure that vital supplies make it to vulnerable people, he said. So it falls to local community groups to take the initiative. I am delighted that so many people have signed up to do their bit.

Board president Marie van der Zyl said the Jewish community must find coping mechanisms to deal with the scale of challenge [It] has always been resourceful and giving to those both inside and outside our community and will continue to do so. We need to stick together even though we may be physically apart.

She said she was calling on Deputies to support volunteering, adding: We all need to dig deep and play our part.

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Community rallies round to support those most in need - The Australian Jewish News

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

We live in a nice house on a pleasant street. What we particularly like about our neighbourhood is the eclecticism in the demographic. There is no uniformity in the house sizes, so there are cozy empty-nesters like us living cheek by jowl with large families. Young, middle-aged and old are equally represented on my block.

When we moved to this retirement downsizer, we only got to know our immediate neighbours. Last year, a couple down the street decided it would be a good thing to have a block association (BA). They put flyers through everyones letterboxes asking what we all thought about it, and if we liked the idea, to please send them our email so we could organize a block party to seal the deal.

We signed up immediately, and so did everyone else, and eventually, after much consultation, an end-of-summer date was chosen, and a lively afternoon street party was held to the delight of all who attended.

Young, middle-aged and old are equally represented on my block

The other day, we received a BA email asking if anyone needed help during the COVID-19 period of self-isolation, especially us oldies and if anyone was willing to donate their time for tasks. Immediately, offers poured in to shop, dog walk or chauffeur for anyone in need of such services. That was heartwarming. My two-doors-over neighbour responded: We are over 70 so are experiencing isolation for our own good. Now we dont feel so alone! We moved here in 1982 and worked on the stop sign and speed bump projects. Evidently good neighbours are alive and well on (our street).

Another neighbour asked the BA: Anyone have an old charger for a MacBook Pro/Air (from 2011) to lend? We have pulled out old laptops for the kids online learning and our old charger is busted! I can order one online but wont arrive for a few weeks. Within minutes, they had a response: a yes and the donors street number. Problem solved. Suddenly the BA isnt just an annual block party and a nice idea. Were activated. On our street, were not bowling alone through this coronavirus thing.

Then the other night I had a call from a volunteer at our synagogue who wanted to know if we were OK and if there was anything we needed. Did we want groceries delivered? Freshly made hot meals? Did we wish to avail ourselves of pastoral support? Every single member of our large congregation over the age of 70 got a similar call. That was heartwarming, too.

The other night I had a call from a volunteer at our synagogue who wanted to know if we were OK

Were lucky. Many people in my peer group have no children in our city and/or live alone and/or have health issues. We still have each other and we are in pretty good health, so we can take walks and do quick shopping forays ourselves. Our daughter and her husband are only blocks away, a thought that is reassuring as we silently contemplate worst-case scenarios.

If I found those gestures of outreach touching, I can imagine how exponentially more welcome they were to those not so lucky as us. We are so glad our names and emails are on the list of that tiny, virtual institution, the BA, and of that big, brick-and-mortar one, our synagogue. Both evoked in us a strong sense of gratitude for where and how we are privileged to live. For others, I imagine it may evoke more than gratitude, perhaps a feeling of being pulled from a rip tide of fear into the shallows of mere concern.

As we all know, affiliation with institutions like churches and unions and service clubs has dropped off dramatically in the past 50 years. But thats who shines in a crisis like this.

Young people think they dont need to affiliate themselves with institutions. They have their vigour and their independence and their so-busy lives and of course social media for socializing.

But when youre old, and the activities and purposes that gave structure and automatic social connection to your life arent there any more, you cherish such associations. Its a good plan for young families to affiliate when their children are impressionable, because the more people who consider community institutions a natural second home and pass along that assumption to the next generation, the stronger we are as a society. Building a habit of contribution to a church or synagogue or service organization is a good hedge against the day like today when you may need the kind of comfort only organized community-building can provide.

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Barbara Kay: Our small community, united, is getting through this as best we can - National Post

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

The Jewish mind loves to read every sentence four times, to dig for meaning deep underground, too bad viruses cant learn Talmud.

A virus doesnt act according to any Talmudic law. On the contrary, a virus just spreads, a fact that makes the indifference of the religious and ultra-Orthodox population to the virus all the more vexing and worrying.

Meir Yeshiva in Jerusalem breaching directives to fight coronavirus, March 15, 2020

(Photo: Gil Yohanan)

While Israels students are in quarantine, yeshiva students continue to study in large groups; while the streets are supposed to be empty of people, the streets of Bnei Brak are buzzing with people as if everything were normal.

The insistence on keeping the ultra-Orthodox education institutions open at a time like this is pure anarchism.

The main principle driving these students to continue to study is their resolve to not cancel the Torah, an undoubtedly important Talmudic principle, which as of right now contradicts two even more important Talmudic principles, do not commit sacrilege and save a life.

There is a very real danger that packed crowds could cause an outbreak that will end in disaster. Furthermore any protection from the virus spread is based on mutual responsibility towards one another, where the majority gets together to help protect the few.

When a group takes itself out of the equation, for the sake of God, all they do is give a bad name to the Torah and the commandments. It is up to Health Minister Yaakov Litzman to use his connections in the ultra-Orthodox sector in order to stop any gatherings and not to cut corners.

We need leadership, we need leaders to use their entire political weight and gravitas to make the most influential rabbis see the severity of the situation, and they in turn could influence dozens of people in their community.

There are also other problems in other areas, for we will soon bear witness to how many people contracted the virus at Purim readings and parties.

Reading Megillat Esther at Purim in Bnei Brak

(Photo: TPS)

We can already see that some coronavirus cases visited synagogues, and women and men both breaking quarantine to bathe in the mikveh - turning a place of spiritual purity into a site of death and disease.

For me, like many others, a locked synagogue is an unpleasant image. Yes, it is hard both spiritually and mentally, but these are unusual times that requires us to to take unusual steps.

This is the time for rabbis of all streams of Judaism to take control and stop any gatherings. Consult with the professionals, dont act wise, dont pray, just save lives.

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Obeying the Talmud in coronavirus crisis - Ynetnews

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

Why the Jews? By a liberal definition of tribal membership (meaning those with at least one Jewish parent), there are around 17 million Jews in the worldabout the population of Kazakhstan. An ancient civilization, Kazakhstan boasts a 99.5 percent literacy rate, but while it has produced writers and scientists, their names are not exactly household words.

Contrast this with the Jews. They invented monotheism, Hollywood, gefilte fish, relativity, and free will (Adam chose to eat the apple). Over the centuries, Jewish ber-achievers range from Marx, Freud, Proust, Kafka, and Einstein to Mahler, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Gershwin, and Dylan; to Disraeli and Leon Blum; to Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) and Paul Ehrlich (chemotherapy); to Silicon Valley titans such as Sergei Brin and Larry Ellison; to Kirk Douglas, Steven Spielberg, and Seinfeld. Not to mention Groucho. Or Helena Rubinstein and Este Lauder, who cooked up modern cosmetics.

So how did the Jews, who make up .2 percent of mankind, change the world? This is the question Norman Lebrecht asks in the subtitle of his new book, Genius and Anxiety. I am not about to make a case for Jewish exceptionalism, he answers, nor do I believe that Jews are genetically gifted above the average. Instead, he ascribes Jewish seichel to culture and experience rather than DNA. Its all due to numeracy, literacy, and critical reasoningthe stuff of Talmudic study.

Lebrecht keeps referring to the causal role of the Talmud throughout his book, suggesting that even Freud and Einstein, who had never set foot in a yeshiva, were somehow formed by Talmudic sages who kept arguing ad infinitum for some 300 years at the beginning of the first millennium following the destruction of the Temple. But it is a long trip from Babylon and Jerusalem to Vienna and Berlin, from the Talmudic giants to the secularized, even areligious Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom (or their parents) had converted to Christianity.

So lets posit, as Lebrecht suggests we should, that somehow the ancient masters of pilpul handed the art of disputation down through the generations. After all, Freuds father, Jacob, a wool merchant, was a Torah scholar.

But if like father, like son is the transmission belt, there are two problems.

One is conceptual. The Talmud, a commentary on the law spanning some 2,700 pages, amounts to a closed system. Talmudic thinking may be summed up as turn and turn the Torah. Its scholars demonstrated their brilliance by construing ever finer distinctions, skewering the arguments of their colleagues, or invoking the authority of the masters. Cracking paradigms was not their business. Subversive thoughtsay, placing sex at the center of the human condition, as did Freud, or confronting the ear, as Arnold Schnbergs painful atonality didwas not the Talmudic way. Both Freud and Schnberg play starring roles in Genius and Anxiety, along with Einstein, because they overturned ancient dispensations rather than delving into Mishna and Gemara.

The second is a logical problem. If the Talmud is the ur-cause, Jewish worldly success and attainment should have been the story of the Hebrews throughout the ages. Yet Lebrecht situates his account in the hundred years between 1847 and 1947, and rightly so. Apart from rare titans such as Maimonides, Jews did not excel in world-historical terms in the centuries before, nor did they break the mold. The question why the Jews? should therefore be amended to Why the Jews in those hundred years, in the midst of modernity?

Sheer smarts is not enough; the conditions had to be right as well. In the 19th century, the Jews were released from the ghetto, gaining full civic rights throughout Europe. Add to that circumstance historical serendipity in the forms of urbanization, industrialization, and globalization. With their literacy, occupational flexibility, and lust for learning, the Jews were perfectly prepared for this new world. An age-old order based on working the land and plying the trades, from which Jews were excluded, began to give way to a knowledge-based economy.

It was tailor-made for eternal outsiders with their pent-up ambitions and energies. Lebrecht quotes Gustav Mahler: A Jew is like a swimmer with a short arm. He has to swim twice as hard to reach the shore. But now, the water was a lot warmer.

In a revolutionary economythink chemistry and physics, plastics and pharmaceuticals, aviation and telephonythe future beats the past while talent and drive dwarf the wrong faith and ancestry. The exclusion of the Jews had held them back throughout the ages, as had insider networks, guild power, and xenophobia. Suddenly, a wondrous market opened up in which growing demand for new skills and perspectives met an ample supply. The victims of hatred and persecution embodied modernity unleashed.

Modernity, in fact, was the new Promised Land for the outsider pushing in. As the Jew could bring new tools and thoughts to bear on old ways, he could leave Torah and Talmud and move into science, technology, literature, and the arts. Just one statistic: One-third of Germanys Nobel Prizes up to 1932 went to Jews. Where they were still barred from banks and corporations, as they were in America, Jews went off to Hollywood, where Laemmle, Goldwyn, and the Warner Brothers revolutionized mass entertainment. It was these outsiders who grasped the globe-spanning power of celluloid and then went on to interpret the American Dream for the rest of the world. Alienation and anxiety have never spelled a greater advantage.

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As Lebrecht chronicles the rise of the modern Jew and his triumphs, he never ignores the dark side. For instance, he invites us to listen to the heartbreaking confrontation between Arnold Schnberg and his friend Wassily Kandinsky, the painter, who had ascribed only evil to the actions of the Jews. Ending the friendship, the composer thunders: What is anti-Semitism to lead to if not acts of violence.You are perhaps satisfied with depriving Jews of their civil rights. Then certainly Einstein, Mahler, I, and so many others will have been gotten rid of. And it would be to no avail, Schnberg assures him: Jewry has maintained itself unaided against the whole of mankind for 20 centuries. For Jews are evidently so constituted that they can accomplish the task that their God has imposed on them: to survive in exile, uncorrupted and unbroken, until the hour of salvation comes!

So Schnberg sets off to compose Moses and Aron a 12-tone opera that celebrates Jewish moxie and revolutionizes Western music, to boot. In America, heroic resistance comes in a comic strip, crafted by two Depression-era kids, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Superman is still a hit around the world, having spawned innumerable movies and series. What made them do it? Siegel answers: Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helplessJews in Germany. A year behind Superman, two Jews created Batman, the avenger of the innocents.

Note that both superheroes go by perfectly WASP names: Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. Neither has ever been near a Torah or a Talmud. But both are Jewish characters, as Goebbels fumed in 1940. In the age of emancipation, as covered by Lebrecht, Jews had quickly figured out that they could flourish only if they defined their particularist interest in freedom, equality, and justice as universal goods. So, Jews were the first universal nation, which delivered to them a tidy edge. The message ran: We dont want this for us, but for all of mankind.

This ethos helped to speed their rise but did not bring about salvation. Indeed, the price of success was deadlythe near-extinction of European Jewry in the Shoah. Lebrecht, a storyteller par excellence, brilliantly chronicles a Golden Century. Each chapter is a gem, sparkling with historical insight and finely drawn portraits of famous and less-well-known Jews. It is a book not just about Jews and their achievements but also about modernityhow Jews transformed Western ways of thinking and doing. It is intellectual history at its best.

Is The Jewish Century, to recall Yuri Slezkines pathbreaking oeuvre, over? After a post-Shoah pause, anti-Semitism is again forging ahead. In his penultimate paragraph, Lebrecht strikes a wistful note: The sense of otherness is back. Jews, we are told, are different. They havea divided loyalty. The Jewish Question reopenswhat is to be done about the JewsThe story is not over yet. Neither is modernity, a natural habitat for the Jews once ghetto walls had crumbled.

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Freeing the Captives - Commentary - Commentary Magazine

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Posted By admin on March 18, 2020

As we as a society take steps to stem the novel coronavirus outbreak, we have plenty of enforced time at home. But although your body may be stuck inside, your mind can still roam the universe.

This is a time to read: long books youve never gotten to, or new kinds of books you never tried. Try classic Jewish texts, available on Sefaria online: Talmud, midrash, responsa. Or revisit the Bible, particularly Genesis, the stories in which are among the deepest and most important in all of human history. In addition to those evergreen options, here is a very partial list of recommendations, culled from a lifetime of intensive reading. Ive left off a slew of favorites Emersons Essays, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, the works of British humorist P.G.Wodehouse but there are more books than one can read in many lifetimes. So here is my hopefully helpful sampling.

Middlemarch by George Eliot: My favorite novel. Eliot creates a whole world within it. Her intelligence shines through on every page, and her statements about the struggles of women and men are as prescient as ever.

City of Thieves by David Benioff: Short, but rich in history and drama, from the creator of HBOs Game of Thrones.

Herzog by Saul Bellow: A masterpiece that should be read for Bellows coruscating thoughts and unique voice.

The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott: An indelible portrait of India under British colonial rule, best balanced with Rohinton Mistrys A Fine Balance and Vikram Seths A Suitable Boy.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Doestoevsky: No explanation needed. Dostoevskys The Devils is also powerfully topical.

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley: According to the mystery maven Otto Penzler, this is the best mystery of the 20th century. He may well be right.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton: There are many wonderful series about singular detectives who are intensely pleasurable company, by Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Michael Connolley and many others. This book, the start of one such superlative series, is one of my favorites.

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler: One of the greatest spy stories ever penned.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer: Heyer is reliably witty, historically scrupulous and, most importantly, a whole lot of fun.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: The book has more than its share of racist stereotypes. But with all its flaws, the story remains a classic, with important messages about how to understand our country and the attitudes that shaped it.

The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon: A fantasy historical fiction that starts out just great. (A warning: it does weaken as the series proceeds.)

The Thornbirds by Collen McCollaugh: Love, faith, and intelligent writing. What more can one ask?

Enders Game by Orson Scott Card: A riveting and surprising book that asks consistently deep questions.

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov: An imaginative achievement in which Asimov invents a truly remarkable world. (Those who know the story of Yohanan Ben Zakkais salvation of Judaism, see if you can spot an analogy.)

Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: A book every human being should read in his or her lifetime.

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel: Heschels poetry and depth come together to create this brief classic on the meaning of the Sabbath in a modern world.

Lonely Man of Faith by Rav Soloveitchik: A short, penetrating classic by the premier orthodox thinker of the 20th century.

The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Adin Steinsaltz: Ready to apply some brain power to the study of kabbalah? This is your best pick. Steinsaltzs volumes of Talmud and Tanya in English are also fairly accessible.

Wanderings by Chaim Potok: A popular and captivating history of the Jewish people by the author of the classic novel The Chosen.

Churchill: Walking with Destiny and Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts, The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell: Three striking biographies of men living through unprecedented times.

The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan: My favorite history of World War I.

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea by Claudio Magris: A lyrical, evocative and wide-ranging work of travel writing.

Watership Down by Robert Adams: A book about rabbits? Yes, absolutely, but also a masterpiece of examining human behavior not to mention drama, war, tragedy and escape.

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling: Yes, the books really are that wonderful. If you or your children have yet to discover them, nows the time.

The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis: Read it for the adventure and memorable characters, and dont pay attention to the imagery that recalls Christianity. Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy is a fantastic, non-religious alternative.

Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer: A classic for a reason. Singers collected stories for children and adults are charm-filled masterpieces.

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Im a rabbi and a lifelong reader. These are the books Im turning to for comfort. - Forward

Category: Talmud | Comments Off on Im a rabbi and a lifelong reader. These are the books Im turning to for comfort. – Forward
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