Googling Anti-Semitism
Online searchers punching the word "Jew" into the Google search engine may be surprised at the results they get.
Online searchers punching the word "Jew" into the Google search engine may be surprised at the results they get.
This Sunday\’s "End Occupation" rally in Hollywood has led Jewish watchdog groups to be concerned about the increasing anti-Semitism of the antiwar movement.
Jews in America are more favorably regarded than Catholics, barely less well liked than Protestants and far more highly viewed than Evangelical Christians.
Eric Rudolph was arrested Saturday in western North Carolina after a five-year search by investigators. In total, he is believed to be responsible for four bombings, in which two people were killed and 150 people injured.
Persecution is something that religious groups have known elsewhere. Religious freedom has allowed them to flourish in the United States — religious freedom and tolerance.
Anti-Semitism, I learned on a recent trip through France, is alive and pervasive. Nor, I discovered with some surprise, was the rabbi or those in charge of the synagogue overreacting.
The straightforward but intensely personal piece stands out amid the flurry of third-person documentaries emerging on the Middle East crisis, including Ilan Ziv\’s 2002 suicide bombing expose, \”Human Weapon,\” and Oliver Stone\’s \”Persona Non Grata\”.
On May 7, at about 6:30 a.m., I was awakened by a call informing me that an incendiary bomb had been thrown through the stained-glass window of our sanctuary at Valley Beth Shalom. I rushed to the temple, only to find that our custodians, uninstructed by any temple official, had themselves rushed into the sanctuary, opened the ark, removed the scrolls of the Torah and deposited them safely in another room. A spark of holiness penetrated the darkness of our mood. Here were men and women who take care of the grounds of the synagogue, clean and prepare the classes, seminars and programs of our congregation, people mostly Hispanic and Catholic, not of our faith or our catechism, who would not stand idly by and observe without action the violation of a people\’s sanctuary. We must acknowledge Marcial Cano, Martha Arelleno, Irma Buenelo and Carlos Crespian, custodians lovingly supervised by Sigfredo Barker and his daughter, Noemi Lasky. Here are people who realized in their lives the potentiality of God\’s image invested in every child of Adam and Eve.
During three successive days last week (May 5-7), incendiary devices, described by some as Molotov cocktails, were hurled at the Baha\’i Faith Community Center, the Iranian Synagogue, Da\’at Torah Educational Center and Valley Beth Shalom, one of the leading Conservative congregations in Los Angeles.