Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

One person was killed, and two others injured, in a shooting near a Copenhagen synagogue early Sunday, just hours after a gunman with an automatic rifle opened fire on a cafe hosting a free speech event organized by a controversial Swedish artist who has faced threats for his caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Police spokesman Allan Wadsworth-Hansen says it's still not clear whether that shooting is linked to an earlier shooting that killed one person and wounded three police officers in a suspected terror attack on a free speech event.

Wadsworth-Hansen says two police officers were wounded in their arms and legs in the shooting near the synagogue, while a civilian man was killed. The suspect fled on foot.

Police said the suspect in the earlier shooting at the Krudttoenden cafe drove away in a dark Volkswagen Polo after he sprayed the cafe with some 30 bullets. A 40-year-old Danish man attending the event was killed and three police officers were slightly wounded. Denmark's security service declared the shooting an apparent terror attack.

Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who has faced numerous death threats for caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad, was one of the main speakers at Saturday's panel discussion, titled "Art, blasphemy and freedom of expression." He was whisked away by his bodyguards unharmed as the shooting began.

Vilks, 68, later told The Associated Press he believed he was the intended target of the shooting.

"What other motive could there be? It's possible it was inspired by Charlie Hebdo," he said, referring to the Jan. 7 attack by Islamic extremists on the French newspaper in Paris. He spoke from an undisclosed location for his own security.

"At first there was panic. People crawled down under tables," Vilks said. "My bodyguards quickly pulled me away."

The cultural center had a lecture hall as well as a cafe. Vilks said no one in the hall was wounded.

The PET agency said in a statement the circumstances surrounding the shooting "indicate that we are talking about a terror attack."

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TERROR IN DENMARK 3 shot near Copenhagen synagogue, hours after deadly attack on cafe

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

A leading child protection expert has criticised a Melbourne orthodox Jewish synagogue for not reporting child sexual abuse allegations to police.

Monash University adjunct professor Chris Goddard said the St Kilda Hebrew Congregation had a responsibility to alert police when it was informed two years ago of credible abuse allegations against two minors, dating back several decades.

"The synagogue should have filed an official report because the police may know of other victims (of this alleged perpetrator)," Professor Goddard said. "It should not have left the responsibility to a third party."

The allegations, never publicly aired, were made in 2011 and 2012 by two separate individuals to a third party, victims advocate Manny Waks. During a meeting in January 2013, Waks relayed the details to St Kilda president Anton Block, St Kilda's Rabbi Yaakov Glasman and then-president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant.

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Mr Waks informed Victoria Police by email but police said they could not investigate unless the alleged victims were willing to report it. Both alleged victims were prominent community members and neither of them, now older men, wanted to file a police report because of possible impacts on themselves and their families.

Because of this, Fairfax Media has chosen not to report any details of the individuals involved, the alleged abuse or the alleged perpetrator.

ProfessorGoddard, from Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia at the Monash Injury Research Institute, said the synagogue should have also told its congregation. "The community that the synagogue serves also has a right to know. There may be other victims who have yet to come forward."

Mr Block told Fairfax Media that he stood by the organisation's response.

"When we were informed about the general nature of the allegations, we were also informed that the allegations had already been reported to the police (although not by the alleged victims)," Mr Block said. "Our investigation did not uncover any further facts, so it seemed pointless to report the same matters again."

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St Kilda Hebrew Congregation: Abuse allegations went back decades

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

Your favorite all-women, Hasidic Jewish rock band from Brooklyn needs your help.

Throughout the last few years, Bulletproof Stockings have captured headlines, playing packed, women-only shows at some of New Yorks marquee rock venues, including Arlenes Grocery, Bar Matchless, and the Bitter End.

And while the two founding members of the band, Dalia Shusterman and Perl Wolf, have enjoyed the spotlight, they say its time for the next challenge: recording their first full-length album.

Shusterman and Wolf launched a Kickstarter page last week on the first day of Purim, a Jewish holiday, asking fans to help them raise $36,000.

We ran the numbers, and that's the amount of money we need to make the album, the duo explained on the Kickstarter page, pointing to the costs of renting studio space, hiring a producer and an engineer, among other expenses. But they also chose $36,000 for a more spiritual reason.

In Judaism, the number 18 is the numerical value of the word "chai" which means life," they wrote. Because of this, many Jews give charity in multiples of 18. 36 is two times 18 - double life!

In a video on the page, Shusterman explains that while their music and lyrics are definitely based in the Torah, Hasidic concepts -- even some of the imagery is related to stories within the Torah, the overall theme is a universal message of just life, triumph and struggle and questioning and getting back on your feet.

The pair formed Bulletproof Stockings -- named for the tights traditionally worn by observant Hasidic Jewish women -- during a tumultuous time in both of their lives. Wolfe was going through a divorce, and Shustermans husband, with whom she had four children, suddenly died.

It was the fruition of two paths coming together, Shusterman told The Huffington Post in August.

In addition to singing, Shusterman plays the drums and Wolfe plays the keyboard. Theyve since added a cellist and a violinist.

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This All-Women Hasidic Rock Band Wants Your Help For Its ...

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

WASHINGTON --

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito channeled his inner stand-up comic Wednesday in indicating that he and most of the court would side with a Muslim woman who showed up for a job interview with Abercrombie & Fitch wearing a black headscarf. She didn't get hired.

Samantha Elauf, the woman at the center of the case about religious discrimination in hiring, was in the courtroom Wednesday. The case turns on how an employer is supposed to know that a worker or applicant has religious beliefs that need to be accommodated.

The clothing retailer said Elauf can't claim discrimination because she didn't say anything about religion during her interview.

Alito acknowledged that it sounded like he was making a joke in describing interviews with "a Sikh man wearing a turban," "a Hasidic man wearing a hat," ''a Muslim woman wearing a hijab" and "a Catholic nun in a habit." But his point was that employers can't feign ignorance when people appear before them in religious clothing.

"Now, do you think ... that those people have to say, we just want to tell you, we're dressed this way for a religious reason. We're not just trying to make a fashion statement," Alito said.

Pressed by both conservative and liberal justices, Abercrombie lawyer Shay Dvoretzky said employers would get into trouble if they started making assumptions about people. "What we want to avoid is a rule that leads employers, in order to avoid liability, to start stereotyping about whether they think, guess or suspect that somebody is doing something for religious reasons," Dvoretzky said.

Only Justice Antonin Scalia seemed open to the company's argument.

Several of Scalia's colleagues said there's an easy way to avoid stereotyping. Tell job applicants what the rules are and ask them, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "You have a problem with that?"

Those conversations sometimes might be awkward, Justice Elena Kagan said. But far better the awkward moments than a situation that leads to stereotyping anyway, Kagan said.

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Justices appear to favor Muslim denied job over headscarf

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

WASHINGTON Have you heard the one about the Sikh, the Hasidic Jew, the Muslim and the nun who walked into a job interview?

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito channeled his inner stand-up comic Wednesday in indicating that he and most of the court would side with a Muslim woman who showed up for a job interview with Abercrombie & Fitch wearing a black headscarf. She didn't get hired.

Samantha Elauf, the woman at the center of the case about religious discrimination in hiring, was in the courtroom Wednesday. The case turns on how an employer is supposed to know that a worker or applicant has religious beliefs that need to be accommodated.

The clothing retailer said Elauf can't claim discrimination because she didn't say anything about religion during her interview.

Alito acknowledged that it sounded like he was making a joke in describing interviews with "a Sikh man wearing a turban," "a Hasidic man wearing a hat," ''a Muslim woman wearing a hijab" and "a Catholic nun in a habit." But his point was that employers can't feign ignorance when people appear before them in religious clothing.

"Now, do you think ... that those people have to say, we just want to tell you, we're dressed this way for a religious reason. We're not just trying to make a fashion statement," Alito said.

Pressed by both conservative and liberal justices, Abercrombie lawyer Shay Dvoretzky said employers would get into trouble if they started making assumptions about people. "What we want to avoid is a rule that leads employers, in order to avoid liability, to start stereotyping about whether they think, guess or suspect that somebody is doing something for religious reasons," Dvoretzky said.

Only Justice Antonin Scalia seemed open to the company's argument.

Several of Scalia's colleagues said there's an easy way to avoid stereotyping. Tell job applicants what the rules are and ask them, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "You have a problem with that?"

Those conversations sometimes might be awkward, Justice Elena Kagan said. But far better the awkward moments than a situation that leads to stereotyping anyway, Kagan said.

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Supreme Court weighs hijab wearer's religious discrimination claim against Abercrombie & Fitch

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) Have you heard the one about the Sikh, the Hasidic Jew, the Muslim and the nun who walked into a job interview?

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito channeled his inner stand-up comic Wednesday in indicating that he and most of the court would side with a Muslim woman who showed up for a job interview with Abercrombie & Fitch wearing a black headscarf. She didn't get hired.

Samantha Elauf, the woman at the center of the case about religious discrimination in hiring, was in the courtroom Wednesday. The case turns on how an employer is supposed to know that a worker or applicant has religious beliefs that need to be accommodated.

The clothing retailer said Elauf can't claim discrimination because she didn't say anything about religion during her interview.

Alito acknowledged that it sounded like he was making a joke in describing interviews with "a Sikh man wearing a turban," "a Hasidic man wearing a hat," ''a Muslim woman wearing a hijab" and "a Catholic nun in a habit." But his point was that employers can't feign ignorance when people appear before them in religious clothing.

"Now, do you think ... that those people have to say, we just want to tell you, we're dressed this way for a religious reason. We're not just trying to make a fashion statement," Alito said.

Pressed by both conservative and liberal justices, Abercrombie lawyer Shay Dvoretzky said employers would get into trouble if they started making assumptions about people. "What we want to avoid is a rule that leads employers, in order to avoid liability, to start stereotyping about whether they think, guess or suspect that somebody is doing something for religious reasons," Dvoretzky said.

Only Justice Antonin Scalia seemed open to the company's argument.

Several of Scalia's colleagues said there's an easy way to avoid stereotyping. Tell job applicants what the rules are and ask them, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "You have a problem with that?"

Those conversations sometimes might be awkward, Justice Elena Kagan said. But far better the awkward moments than a situation that leads to stereotyping anyway, Kagan said.

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Justices weigh case of Muslim denied job over headscarf

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Posted By richards on March 10, 2015

When the birth announcement of Athene, daughter of my Parisian college boyfriend, arrived by e-mail, I excitedly showed la bb's picture to my 16-year-old. My husband and I are perilously close to becoming empty nesters, which is suddenly making babies irresistibly appealing.

"Isn't she adorable?" I gushed. "You know what? We should go to Paris and see her!"

"Well, I'm not going to Paris any time soon," my son announced. "I don't want to be 'Je suis Ezra.'"

To hear him say this was surprising. He appears somnambulant during our morning carpool, but it turns out he's been attentive to the news on the radio. It had not occurred to me that Ezra might consider himself a target in the growing climate of anti-Semitism in Western Europe.

With his green eyes and fair complexion, inherited from his Ashkenazi ancestors; his tendency to over-use the word Oy, a habit he picked up from me; and the surname he shares with his father, he believes he's easily recognizable as being of Jewish descent. But he's Jewish with an emphasis on the -ish.

Like many non-congregational Jews in America, we barely qualify as holiday Jews. Ezra's bar mitzvah took place in the community room of his Episcopal school. We attend Passover Seders except when we don't and celebrate what we affectionately call the three days of Hanukkah. By the third night, I've got to work late, the math tutor is coming, or we've just forgotten. The upside is that a box of candles lasts us several years.

I am a second-generation American, and a kind of cultural identification of Judaism, if not the religious imprinting, has stayed with me. My grandmother's Yiddish creeps into my vocabulary. I buy challah for Shabbat white chocolate challah, but still.

My son, on the other hand, claims membership in the nones, the one-third of Americans under 30, who, according to the Pew Research Center, have no religious affiliation. I know I fostered this secular humanism, and I see his weekly volunteering with children on the autism spectrum as confirmation that community service doesn't require a religious mandate. My son's social circle is more ethnically and economically diverse than mine was, another positive hallmark of the nones.

But with each new hateful incident, I lament his waning connection to the tribe. In some feverish Fiddler on the Roof frenzy, I've started Googling birthright trips to Israel and replaced his bedside copy of Sam Harris' Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion with Primo Levi's If Not Now, When? This has been met with eye-rolling on his part, but teenagers know how the world categorizes people by their look, their background, their name.

My son's last name, like my husband's, is Kahn, commonly understood to be a German variation of Cohen. Ironically, a persistent spelling error has led to his being confused with his ethnic opposite, Ezra Khan, a popular name among Pakistani Muslims.

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Part 'none,' part Jewish, all teenager -- and leery about anti-Semitism in Europe

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Posted By simmons on March 10, 2015

ethiopian best -wedding 2015-gonder -israel By: The count of monte cristo xx

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ethiopian best -wedding 2015-gonder -israel - Video

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Posted By simmons on March 10, 2015

Israel in Eurovision Song Contest 1973-2014 By: sajmonh

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Israel in Eurovision Song Contest 1973-2014 - Video

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Posted By simmons on March 10, 2015

Everlast - Stone In My Hand - Free Palestine By: Indo Resistance

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Everlast - Stone In My Hand - Free Palestine - Video

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