Last week\’s attack by a white supremacist on the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills has raised concern among American Jews about security at synagogues and other Jewish institutions in the United States.
Nevertheless, Los Angeles Police Department sources insist that anti-Semitic crime in the city is low. \”We\’ve had one very tragic incident, but this kind of hate crime is not an epidemic,\” says Cmdr. Margaret York, LAPD hate crimes coordinator. \”In fact, just the opposite is true.\”
For Lois Weinsaft, the Aug. 10 shooting spree at the North Valley Jewish Community Center (NVJCC) hit close to home.
Shoshana, a preschool teacher at the North Valley JCC, looked down a hallway into the barrel of Buford Furrow\’s submachine gun.
\”As a Jew, I felt an extreme amount of anger and outrage that Jews had been attacked,\” says Kalish, 46. \”I also felt frustration, as a police officer, that we knew the identity of the suspect, but we hadn\’t yet caught up with him. Yet I did feel a certain amount of optimism and relief that so many people had come together to address the issue.\”
The rally brought together national, state and local officials to honor the heroes and victims of last week\’s shooting rampage in Granada Hills.
In recognition of some of the year\’s bizarre antics from around the Jewish world, here\’s a gaggle of awards and observations.
The Sephardic Shas Party, which had threatened to pull its 17 Knesset members out of the coalition if the turbine rolled, was left spluttering with indignation. National Infrastructure Minister Eli Suissa, who spearheaded resistance to the move, branded it \”unprecedented chutzpah.\”
We currently seem more perplexed than ever by the challenge of child rearing, by the dynamics involved in the \”generation gap\” that has led to the current gory headlines.
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