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A Jewish initiative aims to support Asian New Yorkers following Monterey Park shooting
(New York Jewish Week) — After Saturday’s mass shooting that took the lives of mostly older Asian Americans in Monterey Park, California over the weekend, a Jewish organization in New York is seeing renewed interest in an initiative that focuses on solidarity between the Asian and Jewish communities.
That initiative, called Jews For Asians, is gearing up for numerous vigils in New York this week as the Asian American community processes yet another tragedy. Just two days after a gunman opened fire on a Lunar New Year celebration and murdered 11 people, on Monday, yet another gunman killed seven people in two separate incidents in the California coastal town of Half Moon Bay.
Jews For Asians brings volunteers to vigils and solidarity events to help mourners feel safe in a public spaces. “This horrible incident on Lunar New Year drove a bunch of interest in Jews For Asians,” Carlyn Cowen, a co-founder of the group, told the New York Jewish Week. “We’re now plugging people in. We train people to offer solidarity support and then we connect people where that support is needed.”
Cowen started Jews For Asians with Rafael Shimunov after the Atlanta spa shooting spree in March 2021, when a gunman killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent. The group is a project of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, a progressive group.
“People just wanted to help,” Shimunov told the New York Jewish Week. “We wanted to use that energy. We saw hundreds of volunteers sign up.”
Cowen, a Filipnx JFREJ member, said that Jews For Asians also provides security for other communities. In addition, the group offeres trainings on de-escalation, situational awareness, how to interact with the police and more.
Sadly our Asian siblings in New York are marking lunar New Year with vigils after hate and violence in Monterey Park, California.
If you’d like to join the now 500 #JewsForAsians volunteer list ready to secure those events, sign up here. We’ll train u.https://t.co/SO8wwqaQ7S pic.twitter.com/EXTU0hH9Yy
— Rafael Shimunov (@rafaelshimunov) January 22, 2023
Hailie Kim, a Korean American who is holding a vigil this Thursday in Sunnyside, Queens, told the New York Jewish Week that Jews For Asians will send volunteers to the gathering.
“It is really touching to me that Rafael reached out,” Kim said. “We should all be working together in moments like this and beyond. We shouldn’t only be working together when things like this happen. It should be used as a model for how we behave in our daily lives.”
JFREJ also used solidarity support tactics in combatting antisemitism with the Haredi community in 2020, and again in 2021 when a mosque was attacked in Brooklyn.
Kim, who is running for City Council in District 26, which encompasses Sunnyside, also said that she is worried about an increase in police presence at such events, and would prefer Jews For Asians volunteers to provide security at her vigil this week.
“When we ask people what makes them feel unsafe, it’s never that there are not enough police around,” Kim said. “I think having more police presence at events like this isn’t necessarily going to prevent anything.”
Asian New Yorkers are noticing an increase in the number of NYPD officers in lower Manhattan this week after the tragedy that took place last weekend. The NYPD told Gothamist it had shifted counterterrorism and patrol resources at Lunar New Year events across the city, but had not identified any threats in New York.
Shimunov, who is a Bukharian Jew and a member of JFREJ, said Jews For Asians shares a wariness about policing; JFREJ maintains that increased police presence and security can “militarize our community spaces” and make “communal spaces less safe for Jews of color, trans Jews, Jews with disabilities” and others.
“When we say we don’t need policing for things like this, or maybe for everything, how do we not just preach that, but even in a small way, how do we demonstrate to the world what that can look like and why it’s better,” Shimunov said.
He added that people in Los Angeles have reached out to Jews For Asians and asked if there was a similar program in California.
“We are looking to see if there is any group there that wants to take our model and replicate it,” Shimunov said.
We must stand together in love to protect our neighbors and reject the forces that try to divide us. Join us for a community vigil this Thursday, 1/26, 6:30 pm, at 46st St-Bliss St Plaza in Sunnyside. RSVP here: https://t.co/TYll1rm5Dj. pic.twitter.com/LRts6yIvEg
— Hailie Kim (@hailieforqueens) January 23, 2023
Rabbi Mira Rivera, the first Filipina-American rabbi to be ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, who also provides support through Jews For Asians, told the New York Jewish Week that she will be attending this Thursday’s vigil to provide support.
“We come together for celebrations, but now we have to come together for mourning again,” Rivera said. “The sense of duty is huge. It’s somehow deep within our interwoven cultures: Jews, Asians and Americans.”
She referred to a Talmud teaching that talks about how it is “our duty in Judaism to mourn with people from other nations.”
“Meaning the people of other cultures, in the same [way] that we mourn for our own people,” Rivera explained. “It is our duty to bury the dead of other nations in the same way as to bury the dead of our own. That’s the moment right now. It’s not just that they’re Asian. It’s all of us.”
“We have different traditions, but not necessarily that different,” said Cowen, who described their father as a “Chicago Jew” and their mom as from the Philippines. “As a Jewish Asian, I’ve been watching both of my communities experience an increase in hate violence over the last few years. It is very much rooted in white supremacy and white nationalism.”
“It’s awesome that Jews For Asians is getting more attention,” Cowen added, “but I also don’t want to distract from the fact that it’s my Asian American community that needs support.”
Shimunov said that Jews For Asians is part of a “bigger picture” of building a multi-ethnic, multi-faith coalition that is used to combat against what he calls “the opposition,” which he views as government power, police presence with guns and white supremacy.
“If we can maintain this coalition, we can win anything,” Shimunov said. “We have all the numbers. It’s such a precarious thing that is always being tested. This is just one of the ways to keep that coalition together.”
Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose by 339% between 2020 and 2021, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
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The post A Jewish initiative aims to support Asian New Yorkers following Monterey Park shooting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
(JTA) — Frank Gehry, a Jewish architect who became one of the world’s most renowned innovators in his field for his contributions to modernist architecture, including the famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has died at 96.
His death following a brief respiratory illness was confirmed on Friday by the chief of staff at his firm, Meaghan Lloyd, according to the New York Times.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, to a Jewish family in Toronto. In 1947, Gehry moved to Los Angeles with his family and later went on to graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954.
The same year, he changed his name to Gehry at the behest of his first wife who was “worried about antisemitism and thought it sounded less Jewish.” He would later say he would not make the choice again.
Among Gehry’s most acclaimed works, which feature his signature, sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.
Gehry also often returned to the motif of a fish, including two large fish sculptures in the World Trade Center in New York City and on Barcelona’s seafront. Some tied the fish motif to his recollections about his Jewish grandmother’s trips to the fishmonger to prepare for Shabbat each week.
“We’d put it in the bathtub,” Gehry said, according to the New York Times. “And I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.”
Gehry began to identify as an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah. But in 2018, while he was working on ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, he told the Jewish Journal that Judaism had influenced his career nonetheless.
“There’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture,” he said. “I grew up under that. My grandfather read Talmud to me. That’s one of the Jewish things I hang on to probably — that philosophy from that religion. Which is separate from God. It’s more ephemeral. I was brought up with that curiosity. I call it a healthy curiosity. Maybe it is something that the religion has produced. I don’t know. It’s certainly a positive thing.”
In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, Gehry also received the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters and in 2016 won the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-president Barack Obama.
His survivors include his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, daughter Brina, and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
The post Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96 appeared first on The Forward.
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Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”
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Syria’s Sharaa Charges Israel ‘Exports Its Crises to Other Countries’
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday escalated his messaging against Israel at the Doha forum.
“Israel is working to export its own crises to other countries and escape accountability for the massacres it committed in the Gaza Strip, justifying everything with security concerns,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Syria, since its liberation, has sent positive messages aimed at establishing the foundations of regional stability.
“Israel has responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching over 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it perpetrated in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.
“We are working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after December 8, 2014, and all countries support this demand.
“Syria insists on Israel’s adherence to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The demand for a demilitarized zone raises many questions. Who will protect this zone if there is no Syrian army presence?
“Any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks. So, who should be demanding a buffer zone and withdrawal?”