WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Trump administration has invited Jewish leaders over for a briefing on “pertinent” issues.
“Gathering with Jewish leaders,” an invitation viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency says. “You are invited to a discussion with key Administration officials on pertinent issues impacting the community.”
It’s not clear how many Jewish leaders are invited to the meeting set for Tuesday, or what the “pertinent” issues are, or who the “key officials” are.
President Donald Trump has said he will soon be ready to release his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Jewish community officials also are concerned about security since an alleged white supremacist massacred 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the worst attack ever on U.S. Jews.
A Pennsylvania man was arrested on April 12 for anti-Semitic threats and vandalism.
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the man, identified as 30-year-old Corbin Kauffman, is being charged with posting “threatening images and messages on a website called Minds.com on March 7, 2019,” which included “the killing of Jewish people, black people, and Muslim people.” He is also being charged with vandalizing the Chabad Jewish Center in Ocean City, Maryland, with stickers depicting swastikas and Adolf Hitler.
“Pennsylvanians know all too well how dangerous these kinds of white supremacist threats can be,” U.S. Attorney David Freed said in a statement. “The last thing we want is to see another tragedy like we saw at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, or at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, or at Emmanual African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. We don’t know what might have happened, but we take these threats seriously, and I commend the FBI for their vigilance and quick action in this case.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) website states that they sent a tip to the DOJ about Kauffman, pointing out that Kauffman’s posts included a picture of himself with an AR-15 the day after the New Zealand mosques terror attack stating, “Let’s get it” under the alias of “KingShekels.” Other posts from Kauffman that the ADL highlighted included calls to “murder your local Judean” and “Gas Jews and murder nigz.”
“I’m thankful to law enforcement for their work & proud of our Center on Extremism for assisting in this arrest of a potentially violent white supremacist,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted. “Especially after tragedies in Pittsburgh and New Zealand, we must all be especially vigilant about violent white supremacy.”
I’m thankful to law enforcement for their work & proud of our Center on Extremism for assisting in this arrest of a potentially violent white supremacist. Especially after tragedies in Pittsburgh and New Zealand, we must all be especially vigilant about violent white supremacy. https://t.co/7Ymv8nH9gi
Imagine waking up the week of Passover. While grocery shopping you find that all the Kosher for Pesach items are out of stock. Now you can’t feed the 20 people attending your seder and you haven’t even started cleaning the house for hametz. Never mind the fact that you will have to live off of Matzah and grape jelly for a week since you didn’t plan to grocery shop weeks ago.
For as wonderful and ritualistic the Passover holiday is, logistically it can be a nightmare.
It’s why calligraphy artist and author Rae Shagalov decided to create “The Ultimate Passover Planner,” a coloring book, multiplanner, journal and Passover spirit guide all in one.
“Passover is a time of intense preparation, there are so many details and its very easy to get lost in the details and get overwhelmed with it all,” Shagalov told the Journal. “I decided to put together all the planning tools that I have been using and I crowd sourced Facebook for tips that many other women use and combine them all with calligraphy art notes on passover then also combine with coloring as a stress-free combination of Jewish wisdom and mediations with a spiritual focus on what we are doing for the Passover preparations.
The book includes extensive broken down spiritual tips, logistical tips on what to clean, what to buy, recipes, coloring sections and checklists to get you through the holiday. The book even includes musical playlists, seder prep and a section for what to do for next year.
Shagalov noticed most people in her life started to prepare or begin to prepare thinking about Passover a month before.
Spiritual thought page of the planner. Photo courtesy of Rae Shagalov.
With all the worrying the planning doesn’t become a joyful experience and so “The Ultimate Passover Planner” attempts to bring joy back into planning the holiday.
Shagalov said she and her husband got married the day before Passover 15 years ago. Her friend, who put on the wedding in her backyard, told Shagalov the only way it would be a success is if she switched her house for Passover a week before she regularly would. Since the wedding was the destination, planning Passover was a joyful experience.
“That’s the goal of preparing for passover,” Shagalov said adding “We are celebrating our freedom and our marriage to god, so that’s the tone that I put into “The Ultimate Passover Planner” ways to keep focusing on the spirituality and the happiness and the memories we are creating.”
Checklist Table of Contents Page. Photo courtesy of Rae Shagalov
There are more than 100 spiritual tips and thoughts shared throughout the book that one can doodle or color on including, “if you are very apprehensive for preparing for Passover, your children will feel that way, too.”
“I wanted to create more a journal experience where people could customize it themselves,” Shagalov said. “But where all the details are there and they could use those details and have a place in the journal to customize it.”
She doesn’t just want the book to remain in tact. She says if someone wants to rip a page out and start coloring with their kids, they should. If they need to take a break and rip out a thought in the page and decorate the house with it, go for it.
“One of the first checklist I put in there was a self-care checklist,” Shagalov said. “You need to think about how you are going to maintain your energy in an uplifting way and what you’re gonna do to take care of yourself in this intense journey before we enter Passover.”
Shagalov said all the chaos starts in your head and if you don’t have a place to organize it and put it down then the stress builds. She hopes the book allows people to clear their mind space so they can be present and in the moment.
“Remember with whatever you are doing Jewishly, be joyfully Jewish doing it,” Shaglov said. “[The] Passover experience is about searching. Searching for Jewish identity and searching for relationship with God. When you are traveling to go on a big trip to a country you have never been to before you are so excited you are so happy, that’s how we should feel when going into Passover.”
University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a statement on April 12 that he was “heartbroken” over an anti-Semitic song that was performed at a joint UNC-Duke University conference in March about the Gaza Strip.
The event occurred from March 22-24 on UNC’s campus; filmmaker Ami Horowitz attended the conference on March 22 and caught audio of various attendees promulgating the anti-Semitic trope that Jewish money wields enormous power in politics as well as one attendee spreading the falsehood that Israel forcibly sterilized Ethiopian refugees. Horowitz also asked an unidentified professor on camera about the recent uptick in blacks committing hate crimes against Jews in New York City, prompting the professor to respond, “Blacks have a lot of… reason to be angry at Jews now.”
But what has received the most attention from Horowitz’s video was a performance during the conference by the rapper Tamer Nafer, who tells the audience before the song, “I need your help. I cannot be anti-Semitic alone.” Nafer then tells the crowd to think of Mel Gibson during the song, not Beyonce or Rihanna. Gibson infamously ranted during his DUI arrest in 2006 that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” and shouted “f*** Jews!”
Nafer can be seen singing to the audience, “I fell in love with a Jew… her skin is white and my skin is brown, she was going up up and I was going down.”
Horowitz also notes at the end of the video that the conference received a federal grant that totaled almost $250,000.
Guskiewicz said in an April 12 statement, “A performance during a recent conference held on our campus contained disturbing and hateful language. Like many members of our community, I am heartbroken and deeply offended that this performance happened.”
“I stand steadfast against anti-Semitism and hate in all its forms,” Guskiewicz said. “The Carolina spirit is not about hateful language that divides us, but about civil discourse that advances ideas and knowledge. We must continue to aspire together to that ideal.”
Duke University President Vincent E. Price and Provost Sally Kornbluth said in a joint statement on April 11, “Anti-Semitism is one of the great scourges of modern life. Its resurgence, as demonstrated by the worldwide increase in hate crimes and incidents, is deeply troubling and should be of great concern to any civil society.”
“Whether it occurs on our campus, in our community, through graffiti, rallies or concerts, in conference rooms or courtrooms, we must all speak out forcefully against actions and statements that target and threaten members of our Jewish community,” they said.
A three part-series at The Tower detailed how the UNC-Duke conference “whitewashes Hamas” while singling out Israel. Horowitz’s full video can be seen below:
As recently as this week, anti-Semitic flyers were found in the campus library.
A resolution calling for Cornell University to divest from companies that conduct business with Israel failed at the April 11 Student Assembly meeting.
The Cornell Daily Sun reports that 14 members of the assembly voted in favor of the resolution and 13 voted against, with one abstention. However, the resolution failed because of the “community vote,” where the 582 undergraduate students present at the meeting were allowed to cast a vote on the matter. The “community vote” was 248 in favor, 330 against and four abstentions, resulting in two votes being added to the “against” tally.
During the meeting, Student Rep. Mackenzie Smith alleged that she was among the assembly members that was subjected to “threats, insults and attacks” from those in favor of divestment, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) told the Sun that the resolution doesn’t single out any individuals and that they denounce “all political attacks targeted at individual students.”
Cornell Hillel celebrated the resolution’s failure in a Facebook post.
“We are grateful to the hundreds of members of our community who showed up tonight and voted in support of Israel!” the post stated. “Thank you to the student leaders from Cornell Hillel, Cornellians for Israel (CFI), allies on the SA, and other organizations within the University community who organized a thoughtful response to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] resolution.”
Cornell Hillel added that “the BDS resolution has caused hurt and division within our campus community.”
“We understand that it may feel challenging for you to share publicly your support for Israel,” the post stated. “Please remember that you have the support of the Cornell Hillel community and Cornell Hillel professionals.”
Cornell SJP framed the vote as a victory in their Facebook post.
“When we last brought divestment before the Student Assembly five years ago, the resolution died within minutes of it being introduced because the SA didn’t even consider it worthy of debate,” Cornell SJP’s post read. “Today, we saw a majority of SA members vote for divestment, with the resolution only being defeated by a quirk of parliamentary procedure. Coming into this campaign, we knew how well-funded and well-organized our opposition was. The odds were stacked against us from the start. But nonetheless, our campaign accomplished everything we could have hoped for and more.”
Rena Nasar, the managing director of Campus Affairs at StandWithUs, said in a statement, “We are incredibly proud of the students at Cornell University who stood up against this hateful campaign. With this vote, the Student Assembly ensured that it would not further divide students for an unjust cause.”
This article has been updated to include Cornell SJP’s statement to the Cornell Daily Sun.
MONTREAL (JTA) — The Jewish mayor of a Canadian town compared a proposed bill that would bar religious symbols on some public workers to “ethnic cleansing.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked William Steinberg, mayor since 2005 of the affluent town of Hampstead in Montreal’s west end, to apologize for the remark.
“We shouldn’t use words like that,” Trudeau, who opposes the bill, told reporters in Ottawa last Friday. “We don’t need to go to extremes.”
Steinberg instead defended using the term, saying he meant “ethnic cleansing” only in a “non-violent” sense.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith and human rights groups have denounced the proposed law as discriminatory and contrary to Canadian human rights charters, but polls consistently show most Quebecers supporting it by a healthy majority.
Critics say the real targets of the law are women in hijabs, but supporters say the law is in line with Quebec’s long-standing goal of making the state religiously neutral and more secular. It will bar public school teachers, judges, police officers and others from wearing kippahs, turbans, or hijabs at work. Quebec premier Francois Legault, head of the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec government behind Bill 21, wants to pass it before the legislature goes on holiday in June.
Steinberg’s town, with a population of about 8,000, is more than 70% Jewish and less than 2 %Muslim. To avoid stirring more controversy, he said he would not attend an April 14 rally in the west-end municipality of Cote St. Luc protesting the bill.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Four Jewish House Democrats known for their ties to AIPAC warned Israel not to annex West Bank territory days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election-eve pledge to do that.
The statement by Reps. Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey, both D-N.Y., Ted Deutch, D-Fla. and Brad Schneider, D-Ill., did not name Netanyahu, but alluded to his pledge that he would extend Israeli law to Jewish settlements in the West Bank — even those in remote areas that would diminish the prospects of a contiguous Palestinian state. Netanyahu won Tuesday’s elections.
The statement signaled a warning from the party’s most pro-Israel wing that retreating from the two-state solution would be catastrophic for efforts to maintain close ties between Democrats and Israel. There is an emerging argument among Democrats on whether to become more sharply critical of Israel under Netanyahu.
“As strong, life-long supporters of Israel, a U.S.-Israel relationship rooted in our shared values, and the two-state solution, we are greatly concerned by the possibility of Israel taking unilateral steps to annex the West Bank,” the statement released early Friday said.
The statement appeared to defer to one of Netanyahu’s talking points, that Israel maintains overall security control of the West Bank even after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Every one of Israel’s frontiers plays an important role in its security, and Israel’s ability to guard itself from threats is non-negotiable,” it said. “We hope that any security measures are implemented within the context of preserving the eventual possibility of a two-state solution. Two states for two peoples, negotiated directly by the two sides, with mutually agreed upon land swaps, is the best option to achieve a Jewish, democratic, secure Israel living side-by-side with a democratic, de-militarized Palestinian state.
It also echoed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s tendency to blame the failure to achieve peace on the Palestinians, although Palestinians at first welcomed Trump administration efforts to broker a peace deal, until President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.
“This will not be easy,” the statement said. “Palestinian leadership has been unwilling to accept any reasonable peace proposal or even to negotiate seriously toward a solution. To paraphrase Abba Eban, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And instead of negotiating, they have pursued unilateral statehood through the United Nations. Our fear is that such unilateral steps — whether from Israelis or Palestinians — would push the parties farther from a final, negotiated settlement.”
Despite the caveats, the statement is a shot across the bow from the four, who routinely attend AIPAC conferences and have split with the party in the past to favor AIPAC positions, including in 2015 when each of them opposed the Iran nuclear deal. Three of the four hold senior positions in the House of Representatives caucus: Engel chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lowey chairs the Appropriations Committee and Deutch chairs the Middle East subcommittee.
Rabbi Levi Welton is a speaker and author. He was ordained as an Orthodox Rabbi by the former Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Rav She’ar Yashuv Cohen Z”L, he is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America and is also a Captain in the United States Air Force. Additionally, he has completed degrees in science, medicine, film and education.
