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Jewish Journal

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June 17, 2015

Fundraising program for day schools meets goal

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

Five local day schools have collected more than 21 million ways to make Jewish education more affordable in Los Angeles.

A multiyear program to raise cash endowments and focus on tuition assistance called the Los Angeles High School Affordability Initiative finally met its goal last month. That’s when New Community Jewish High School, Milken Community Schools, Shalhevet High School, YULA Girls High School and YULA Boys High School announced they had collectively raised $17 million, a sum to which the Simha & Sara Lainer Day School Endowment Fund added $4.25 million.

The initiative was kick-started by the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation in 2008, with help from Builders of Jewish Education (BJE) and The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, to help connect more youths with local schools and — it is hoped — Jewish futures. 

“Research tells us that day school education, successive summers of residential summer camping and immersive Israel experience lead to a commitment to Jewish life individually and communally,” explained Chip Edelsberg, Jim Joseph executive director. “It was a natural fit for us.” 

Bruce Powell, head of school of New Community Jewish High School, said the $4 million his school raised for its endowment is going to be matched by Lainer with $1 million. With the 5 percent interest it expects to make on the fund, the school will be able to award $250,000 in tuition assistance to the middle-income families who need it. 

Shalhevet raised an equal amount, and received $1 million from the Lainer fund. Milken collected $5 million and got an additional $1.25 million from the Lainer fund, while each of the YULA schools raised $2 million, plus $500,000 from the Lainer fund.

To help middle-income families with this money, officials first had to define the group. Miriam Prum Hess, director of donor and community relations at BJE, said that she and her team found research from the California Budget & Policy Center indicating how much money it took to support two working parents and two children in Los Angeles (more than $70,000 at the time). Then they factored in the additional expenses of Jewish life.

These families were the ones who needed the most help in making the transition from Jewish middle schools to Jewish high schools, which can come with a 40 percent jump in cost. Higher-earning families could afford the tuition, and lower-earning families were already receiving assistance.

“The jump from middle to high school tuition was about 40 percent, and often families were not able to pay that extra amount,” Prum Hess said. “We wanted this to be a way to retain families that were in day school.”

Edelsberg said one of the reasons that the Jim Joseph Foundation supported the initiative was because “families in the middle get cut out. That’s what Los Angeles demonstrated to us. That’s not healthy, and it’s not the kind of student body you want.”

The initial program began in 2008, when Jim Joseph granted $12.7 million to BJE through Federation. That money was used mostly for tuition assistance for 600 families; the rest went toward funding the ability for schools to strengthen development staff, retrieve marketing materials, and train staff and school leaders about endowments and fundraising. BJE oversight was also factored into the grant. 

Typically, Jewish day schools do not have significant endowments, according to Edelsberg. Through the Los Angeles High School Affordability Initiative, Jim Joseph hoped to modify that, as well as teach these schools about the importance of endowments and having funds for tuition assistance. 

“For at least six years, those [$12.7 million in] funds can be used to continue to support the enrollment of high school-aged young men and women in middle-income families. All the schools are moving toward taking that term of six years and making it permanent.” 

Now that the schools expect the funds to be there, Edelsberg said, they will continue to raise money on their own. 

“The effort was one of changing the culture of the schools. We wanted to give them the support to secure endowment money within their own micro-communities at the schools.” 

The official website for the initiative ( Fundraising program for day schools meets goal Read More »

Father’s Day: Down-to-Earth role model rabbi

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Rabbi David Vorspan is the founding rabbi of Congregation Shir Ami in Woodland Hills, and rabbi-in-residence of New Community Jewish High School in West Hills. His father, Rabbi Max Vorspan, was a scholar, historian and community leader, and vice president at the former University of Judaism (now American Jewish University). 

“The most outstanding memory I have of my father is the way he greeted people. He was so warm and outgoing and ready with a quick smile. People felt good being around him because he let them know that he was happy to be with them as well.

For my first five years, he was a congregational rabbi in Pasadena. After he joined the University of Judaism, he would lead High Holy Days services at Adat Ari El. I still recall the splendor of the white robes, the choir, the setting and his lovely voice, piercing through all of the pomp and circumstance. 

When he gave his sermons, he did not pontificate. He always had something new to say, but he said it in such a down-to-earth manner that it resonated with people. That made him unique in those days because most rabbis typically became a different person — austere and distant — on the pulpit. My father was the same warm and authentic person on the pulpit as he was off.  

As a teenager, I recall friends saying that our parents didn’t understand us. One night, I said to my father, ‘You don’t really know me!’ I was expecting him to say, ‘Of course I know you. You’re my son. I raised you.’ But he said, ‘You’re right. I don’t know you. Let me learn.’ I was totally disarmed by his response.  

When my father retired, he came to my services and loved ‘the view from the pew,’ as he called it. One year, I gave a sermon about the binding of Isaac. When I finished, my father jumped up and grabbed the microphone and said, ‘I want to share some thoughts, too,’ and he gave us his unique view on the binding of Isaac. I didn’t feel upstaged, even though he upstaged me. We always had so much fun learning from each other. This was just a lovely, natural moment. 

I miss being able to discuss my pulpit rabbinate and my teaching with him. I miss asking him what his take would be on issues we’re confronting today. He was way ahead of his time, whether it was about gay rights or proselytizing or Israel.

Sadly, in his last years, he had Alzheimer’s. But, even when he didn’t know me, he still greeted me with that same warm smile and light in his eyes.

Read more Father's Day stories.

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Father’s Day: Sending love from the bimah

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Australian-born Janine Lowy is the mother of three daughters and one son. Her father, Chazzan Andre Winkler, was born in Hungary in 1923, and his father, Chazzan Pinchas Winkler, was a protégé of the famous Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. Andre’s parents, three sisters and their children all perished in Auschwitz, while Andre worked in forced labor. When he could leave Europe, he immigrated to Sydney, Australia, where he became a highly respected cantor. He and his wife, Maisie, raised their two daughters, Charmaine and Janine, in Sydney. Andre lived there until he died in 2009 at 85. 

“I didn’t have the same kind of childhood that my friends had. My father was young when he was taken from his parents and sent into forced labor during the Shoah, leaving an indelible impact on him his entire life. My mother died after a long illness when I was still a teenager. Dad became both mother and father, wanting to provide us with a family structure that he himself lost. Despite his giving us a lot of love and affection, there existed an underlying melancholy and heaviness in our home. 

Each year on Yom Kippur, after the conclusion of Neilah, Dad would leave the bimah in tears. We knew the source of his sadness — he missed his family and the traditions of his youth. 

On the bimah, Dad’s beautiful baritone voice and his movie-star looks and charisma made him a presence in the community. I was always proud to witness the congregation being so moved by his rendition of the liturgy. Dad was a shaliach tzibbur [cantor and leader] in the truest sense of the meaning, particularly during Yizkor services, when he sang from the heart and his painful life experiences. 

After my husband, Peter, and I moved from Sydney to Los Angeles in 1990, Dad spent the High Holy Days with us every year. When he was in town, he conducted  services at the Beverly Hills Jewish Community Synagogue — this was fantastic for my kids to experience. 

Many Holocaust survivors understandably moved away from Jewish traditions and observance, but my father fortunately didn’t. Most of my childhood memories center on the seder, Shabbat and observance of all the traditions, especially the songs, which I’ve taught my children. 

Dad was very open about the changing face of traditional Judaism. He took great pleasure in teaching his granddaughters to read from the Torah, learning new liturgical renditions by the likes of Shlomo Carlebach, and listening to new pieces sung in the soprano voices of women cantors.

He was still vital and involved with the lives of all his children and grandchildren until the day he passed away, in 2009. My sister and I talk about Dad every single day. “

Read more Father's Day stories.

Father’s Day: Sending love from the bimah Read More »

Father’s Day: A model of involvement

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Marcia Berman grew up in Boyle Heights, as did her father, Isadore Berman. Although he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from Caltech, the Depression prevented him from having a career in that field. So, with his brother and father, he opened and ran a chain of movie theaters in Boyle Heights.  Marcia, who now lives in Eugene, Ore., was for many decades a nationally known and beloved singer/songwriter and teacher in Los Angeles. Isadore Berman died in 1997 at 89.

“My father was always very kind and connected to his family.  Whenever we went on an outing or trip, he included his parents and any nieces and nephews that we could squeeze into the car.

He was also very playful. We lived in a duplex, and my aunt and uncle lived on the other side, so my mother was often there visiting. When my father came home from work, he’d sit down at our piano and bang out a particular song, announcing, ‘I’m here!’ Mom would hear the song through the wall, and she’d come running home.

Our family was very close — literally. My grandparents lived on Breed Street, across from the Breed Street Shul, and my dad and his four siblings and their families all lived nearby on Stone Street. When we moved to the Westside, we all lived on Orange Drive.

The relatives did a lot together — Jewish holidays and picnics and weekly lunches. We’d entertain each other with singing and making up skits, which continued into our adulthood. For instance, when my Aunt Sylvia had a birthday, we wrote and put on a musical, ‘My Fair Sylvia,’ and everyone sang and danced. 

My grandparents and my parents modeled the importance of being involved in the local and world community. They helped Jews get out of Germany in the 1930s. I remember the whole Boyle Heights Jewish community pulled together after Kristallnacht. One day, there was a march down Brooklyn Avenue to raise money for buying two bombers for our Air Force. One of our theaters, the National, was closed that day and the marquee read, ‘Protest Nazi Horror.’

I learned from my father that kindness, fairness and justice are very important. He inspires me, even today. When I have something I need to do, I think to myself, ‘How would Dad have done it?’ 

My father died when he was almost 90. I miss just spending time with him, sitting in the same room with him, holding his hand. I dream about my dad, and it feels so real, which is a wonderful gift.”

Read more Father's Day stories.

Father’s Day: A model of involvement Read More »

A father’s love: Stories for Father’s Day

Leave a Comment / Culture /

My father, Bob Goldhamer, passed away two years ago, a week after his 94th birthday. When he died, my sister, Sue, and I each inherited a large box containing all of our childhood drawings and every letter we sent to Dad from camp or college. 

Dad had apparently lugged these boxes from one apartment or house (or marriage) to the next. He was not a hoarder. This was just evidence of how much he treasured us — and anything we created. Sue and I both idolized and idealized Dad — until we matured enough to notice how controlling and irritating he could be. (Like the time he felt compelled to stop and give unsolicited advice to four women playing tennis at the park.) Nevertheless, we felt a deep love for Dad, and a great appreciation for his love, his wisdom and the fun we had together.

Dad, who was in Ohio, always said, “Even though we live far apart, we are always in each other’s hearts.”  I can still feel him there.

In anticipation of Father’s Day, I asked some fellow adult “children” to tell me about their fathers.

A father’s love: Stories for Father’s Day Read More »

Hebrew spoken by a rainbow of Young L.A. voices

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It’s story time at Lashon Academy Charter School, and Hebrew teacher Ravit Shemesh is reading a Hebrew-language picture book about a grandmother to a group of students sitting at her feet on the classroom’s carpet. Among them is Veer Joshi, a non-Jewish Indian student.

“Ei-fo safta garah?” Shemesh says, looking up from the book — asking, in Hebrew, “Where does grandma live?”

“Ba-bayit” (at home), Veer replies. 

Veer is surrounded by a diversity of classmates — Israelis, Latinos and others. This only adds to the uniqueness of Lashon, a K-2 Hebrew-language charter school in Van Nuys that has just completed its first year. It requires its students to study modern Hebrew and Israeli history in addition to math, science and English.

Lashon is the first and only public school of its kind in Los Angeles — though not the region, as Albert Einstein Academy for Letters, Arts and Sciences, which offers Hebrew classes, operates in Santa Clarita. Lashon Director Josh Stock called its inaugural year a success.

“Everyone feels we far exceeded our expectations,” he said during an interview in his office before giving a tour of the school. 

Stock said enrollment is expected to grow next year from approximately 100 to 185 students as it adds a third grade, and there are plans to open an additional campus in the city area. He did not say where specifically or when such a school might open. 

The school occupies little more than a hallway, a few classrooms and an office suite on the campus of Fulton College Preparatory School, where it rents its space. If it meets its goal of becoming a full-fledged K-5 or K-6 elementary school by adding a grade each year, the school will need to find more room.

Lashon, which is Hebrew for “tongue” or “language,” was recognized by the Los Angeles Unified School District with charter school status in 2013, and it describes itself on its website as a “free Hebrew public school.” It attracts a diverse student body, both in terms of ethnicity and economics. Israelis and American Jews study alongside Latinos and others, encompassing a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Stock said. Israeli and non-Israeli Jewish students comprised approximately 40 percent of the students at Lashon this past school year, a figure that is expected to rise to 55 percent next year. 

The school, unlike Jewish day schools, is not religious — laws prevent charter schools from being religious — but Lashon leaders acknowledge the school is committed to nurturing in its students a love of Israel. Stock, the son of a Holocaust survivor, acknowledges he is pro-Israel, and in one of the school’s classrooms, nicknamed “Eilat,” a map of the country decorates the wall, where it is joined by the Hebrew alphabet. 

Every Hebrew class involves the efforts of two teachers, one who instructs basic learners and one who works with the students who speak Hebrew at home, always a smaller group. (Among the latter was Shahaf Balasha, 7, son of Israeli-American Council CEO Sagi Balasha.) Stock said even in Israeli families these days, the primary language spoken in the home is often English as parents attempt to assimilate with their neighbors.

There is a waitlist for each grade for the upcoming school year, the result of solid student retention and increasing interest in the school, according to Stock. Last month, the school had a booth at the Celebrate Israel Festival at Rancho Park, where thousands of Israelis and American Jews came together to honor Yom HaAtzmaut, and where parents said, among other things, they want another campus that is closer to Westside neighborhoods, he said.

Not everything has come easy to the school. Language barriers have made it difficult for parents of students to come together, as was reported by the Journal at the beginning of the school year. Additionally, Stock said some Jewish day schools were concerned that Lashon would take away students, but he promised that’s not the intent and that the school did not draw those who would otherwise go to day schools.  

“We’re not here to take away. We’re here to add,” he said.

Aside from Stock and school Principal Sara Garcia, Lashon employs a Hebrew curriculum director, six general studies teachers, two Hebrew teachers, two Hebrew teaching assistants and an office manager. 

The emphasis on the language appears to be working, no matter what the student’s background. 

“It blows my mind,” Stock said, observing Veer’s interaction with his teacher. “After one year, they are talking Hebrew.” 

Hebrew spoken by a rainbow of Young L.A. voices Read More »

Moving and shaking: Ordination, graduation, The Learned Hand Award and more

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles, Movers & Shakers, Moving & Shaking /

Local seminaries were in full ordination and graduation mode last month, celebrating a combined total of 30 new rabbis among them.

For the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) Jack H. Skirball Campus in Los Angeles, this year’s ordination took place May 17. Rabbi Aaron Panken, HUC-JIR president, served as the ordination speaker. Twelve students were ordained as rabbis. 

A day later, the school awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters to Rosalie Silberman Abella, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and a certificate of recognition to Richard Siegel, graduation speaker and retiring director of HUC-JIR’s Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management. Seven students received master’s degrees in Jewish nonprofit management, 12 received master’s degrees in Jewish education, and eight received master’s degrees in Hebrew letters. Both ceremonies took place at Temple Israel of Hollywood.

The American Jewish University (AJU) Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement, ordained 10 rabbis during a May 19 ceremony at its Bel Air Familian campus. 

Rabbi Aaron Alexander, outgoing associate dean of the Ziegler School, delivered the invocation, and AJU President Rabbi Robert Wexler gave opening remarks. Additional speakers were Rabbi Bradley Artson, Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School; new ordinee Rabbi Ari Averbach, who spoke on behalf of his class; Reb Mimi Feigelson, masphiah ruchanit (spiritual mentor) and lecturer of rabbinic studies; and Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, associate dean of the Ziegler School.

The Academy for Jewish Religion, California (AJRCA) 2015
ordination and graduation ceremony took place May 31 at Stephen Wise Temple in Bel Air.

The transdenominational institution, which is based in
Koreatown, had eight rabbinic ordinees and four cantorial ordinees. There also were two chaplaincy graduates and the school’s first master of Jewish studies graduate. A dessert reception followed the event. 

The American Jewish Committee, Los Angeles (AJC-LA) Learned Hand Award ceremony honoring Scott Edelman took place June 3 at the SLS Beverly Hills hotel.

Learned Hand Award honoree Scott Edelman (left) and former American Jewish Committee President Bruce Ramer.  Photo courtesy of American Jewish Committee

Edelman, an attorney, is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and a current member of the board of directors at the pro bono legal aid agency Bet Tzedek. He recently took part in an AJC advocacy trip to Israel, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Cyprus. 

“The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe is yet another reminder that we can never be complacent about the freedoms we enjoy and the need to protect them,” Edelman said, accepting the award, as quoted in an AJC-LA press release. The award — established in memory of the late Judge Learned Hand — recognizes outstanding persons in the legal profession. 

More than 300 people turned out to celebrate Edelman, including AJC Executive Director David Harris, who delivered the night’s keynote. Others in attendance included Victoria Gerrard Chaney, an associate justice of the California 2nd District Court of Appeal, who presented the award to the evening’s honoree; and AJC-LA President Dean Schramm. Attorneys Wayne Barsky and Kenneth Doran, former Congressman Mel Levine and former AJC President Bruce Ramer served as dinner chairs. 

AJC describes itself as an organization that advocates for Israel and the Jewish people as well as for human rights and democratic values across the globe. 

Community members gambled for a good cause at Ante Up for a Cancer Free Generation poker tournament and casino night, organized by Cancer Free Generation (CFG), the young adults division of Tower Cancer Research Foundation (TCRF).

Israeli television star Ori Pfeffer (“Dig”) and  Nancy Mishkin, chair of the board at Tower Cancer Research Foundation. Photo courtesy of Tower Cancer Research Foundation

The June 6 event’s 320 attendees were able to enjoy rows of Texas Hold ’Em tables in a courtyard at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, or, if they preferred, blackjack tables beside the cocktail bar. Rick Aronow won the night’s poker tournament, which, along with a live auction that included an electric guitar signed by members of the rock band Green Day, helped raise approximately $150,000 toward cancer research.

Among the participants in the grand poker tournament were Israeli television star Ori Pfeffer (“Dig”), as well as Dennis Haskins (“Saved by the Bell”), Verne Troyer (the “Austin Powers” films) and Rich Sommer (“Mad Men”).

Other attendees included Nancy Mishkin, chair of the board at TCRF, a grant-providing nonprofit based in Beverly Hills, and Casey Federman, a longtime supporter of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and CFG president, who announced during the event that CFG had selected UCLA’s melanoma research department as a grant recipient.

Moving and Shaking highlights events, honors and simchas. Got a tip? Email ryant@jewishjournal.com.

Moving and shaking: Ordination, graduation, The Learned Hand Award and more Read More »

ADL to introduce graphic novel about tragedy in Tel Aviv bar

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Entertainment /

American filmmaker and freelance journalist Jack Baxter got more than he bargained for when he set out in 2003 to make a film about Mike’s Place, the famous live music bar in Tel Aviv. He was one month into shooting a documentary about the bar and the people who run it when a suicide terrorist attack there killed three people and injured many others — including Baxter. 

The 62-year-old New Yorker, who originally went to Israel to report on a story (only to find himself getting scooped), chronicles all this — stumbling onto Mike’s Place and befriending its employees, making a film about the bar and surviving the deadly attack — in the new graphic novel “Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv” (First Second Books).

Co-authored with Joshua Faudem and illustrated by Koren Shadmi, the book will be launched on the West Coast at a June 25 event hosted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) at its Century City office. Baxter will be on hand to sign books as well as to screen his 2005 documentary, “Blues by the Beach,” the film he eventually completed about Mike’s Place. (He also will appear June 26 at Skylight Books.)

How did the ADL get involved? Baxter told the Journal during a recent phone interview from his home on the East Coast that the message of the book echoes the mission of the ADL, which is that everyone is human. 

“Everybody, whatever religion you are, whatever race you are, we’re all the same, deep down,” Baxter said. 

Rachel-Ann Levy, assistant director of development at the ADL, which runs programming that takes local law enforcement officials to Israel, said trip participants often go to Mike’s Place to see this other side of Israel.  Therefore, the book seemed a natural for an ADL event.

“We thought it was a great symbol and relevant topic and thought we would engage our young leaders, which is our core demographic for this event,” she said.

Baxter, meanwhile, was 50 when he arrived in Israel during the Second Intifada and found himself making a movie about Mike’s Place, which today has several locations across the country. Not Jewish, although he married a Jewish woman and had a Jewish wedding, Baxter wanted to understand life in the Holy Land. There were so many questions: Why is there an Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why do people continue to live in a place that is overrun with violence?

The answers come in the friendships he develops with the Mike’s Place family, according to the book. There’s Faudem, a recent Israeli film school graduate who shoots Baxter’s documentary, and Gal Ganzman, the ponytailed owner of the Tel Aviv bar. Sasha, a non-Israeli, is experiencing culture shock after moving to Israel to be with her boyfriend, Faudem. And then there’s Dom, a beautiful French waitress and one of the three victims murdered in the 2003 attack.

The book is part soap opera, focusing on the romantic difficulties among the good-looking foursome in the Mike’s Place family. (Baxter told the Journal he was aiming to portray their entanglements as an “MTV ‘Real World’ type of story,” referring to the reality-television show.) This contrasts with the buildup to the tragic April 30, 2003, terrorist attack, which was the handiwork of two foreign nationals. 

All the while, Baxter becomes more familiar with — and falls in love with — Israel, its people and the passion of Tel Aviv.

The final section of the book follows people as they try to rebuild themselves and the bar after the devastation. The main characters are in and out of the hospital, visiting one another, drinking themselves to sleep, trying to understand what has just befallen them. They find comfort in, of all things, the camera, opting to continue shooting Baxter’s film, even while he is bedridden in the hospital with his wife, Fran, by his side, recovering from a blast that blew out his eardrums, caused minor burns and more. He spent two months in Israel in the aftermath of the attack receiving various medical treatments, he said. 

The survivors try to live life as best they can. They reopen Mike’s Place one week after the attack and hold a memorial service and concert there to commemorate the victims, including Dom, who is buried in Paris.

It took Baxter three years to write the graphic novel, which he says in the epilogue is an effort to truthfully chronicle the events while incorporating elements of fiction. (He originally envisioned it as a movie and even wrote the screenplay for it, but the project never took flight.) 

Shadmi’s black-and-white illustrations throughout the book’s more than 150 pages capture the sensuousness of secular life in Tel Aviv — the bar, the beaches, the apartments of the people who live in the city. The book also takes the reader into the more religious world of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Humor is a component of the story, too. 

“Surviving a suicide bombing,” Baxter’s character says near the close of the book, “is one way to cure a midlife crisis.”

For more information, visit la.adl.org

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White suspect arrested in killing of nine at black U.S. church

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

A white man suspected of killing nine people in a Bible-study group at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina was arrested on Thursday and U.S. officials are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

Law enforcement officials detained alleged gunman Dylann Roof, 21, after a traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, about 220 miles (350 km) north of Charleston, said police chief Gregory Mullen.

Wednesday's mass shooting, which occurred after the suspect had sat with parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for an hour, follows months of protests over killings of black men which have shaken the United States.

In a Facebook profile apparently belonging to Roof, a portrait showed him wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and of the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, both formerly ruled by white minorities.

The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church's 41-year-old pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.

A man who identified himself as Carson Cowles, Roof's uncle, told Reuters that Roof's father had recently given him a .45-caliber handgun as a birthday present and that Roof had seemed adrift.

“I don't have any words for it,” Cowles, 56, said in a telephone interview. “Nobody in my family had seen anything like this coming.”

Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of Pinckney, told MSNBC that a survivor told her the gunman reloaded five times during the attack despite pleas for him to stop.

“He just said, 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country,” Johnson said.

Police said Roof was armed with a handgun but surrendered quietly when he was stopped.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said her office was investigating whether to charge Roof with a hate crime motivated by racial or other prejudice.

Under federal and some state laws, such crimes typically carry harsher penalties, but South Carolina is one of just five U.S. states not to have a hate-crimes law.

“The fact that this took place in a black church obviously raises questions about a dark part of our history,” U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters. “Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

Demonstrations have rocked New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri and other cities following police killings of unarmed black men including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown.

A white police officer was charged with murder after he shot Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, in the back in April in neighboring North Charleston.

'MOTHER EMANUEL'

The 197-year-old church nicknamed “Mother Emanuel” is one of the oldest African-American Episcopal churches in the southeastern United States. It was burned to the ground in the late 1820s after a slave revolt led by one of its founders.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which researches U.S. hate groups, said the attack illustrates the dangers that home-grown extremists pose.

“Since 9/11, our country has been fixated on the threat of Jihadi terrorism. But the horrific tragedy at the Emanuel AME reminds us that the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism is very real,” the group said in a statement, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Other victims included Cynthia Hurd, a 31-year veteran of the Charleston County Public Library, and Sharonda Coleman Singleton, an associate pastor at the church, according to statements by the library and Charleston Southern University, attended by Singleton's son.

Five of the dead, four women and one man, were ministers at the church, said William Dudley Gregorie, a Charleston city councilman, as he left a memorial vigil.

“This is going to put a lot of concern to every black church when guys have to worry about getting shot in the church,” said Tamika Brown while waiting for a prayer vigil at an AME church near the site of the shooting. “They might need security guards, police officers.”

Churches around Charleston were packed at midday, with crowds spilling out into the city's streets.

Eight victims were found dead in the church, Mullen said, and a ninth died after being taken to hospital. Three people survived the attack.

Roof was charged on two separate occasions earlier this year with a drug offense and trespassing, according to court documents.

Roof's mother, Amy, declined to comment when reached by phone.

“We will be doing no interviews, ever,” she said before hanging up.

“It is a very, very sad day in South Carolina,” Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, told reporters. “Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe, and that's not something we ever thought we'd deal with.”

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Fire guts part of Church of Loaves and Fishes on Sea of Galilee

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Fire gutted part of the Church of Loaves and Fishes on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel on Thursday and investigators suspected arson as a possible cause, a police spokesman said.

The church, which Christians believe is where Jesus performed the Miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, lies on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and is a traditional site of pilgrimage in the Holy Land.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said investigators were at the site and Hebrew graffiti had been found, which led police and fire service investigators to suspect that the fire had been set deliberately.

“Firefighters arrived at the scene at around 3.30 a.m. (00:30 GMT) and it was put out, but extensive damage was caused to the church both inside and out and Hebrew graffiti was found, which has led to suspicions that the fire might have been caused deliberately,” Rosenfeld said.

The graffiti, on a limestone wall in clear red spray paint denounced the worship of idols.

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