RSS
After synagogue gunman’s death sentence, Pittsburgh’s Jews feel relief, resilience — and gratitude
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — The overriding feeling in this city now that the gunman convicted of murdering 11 Jews here in 2018 has been sentenced to death is gratitude.
Not for the penalty itself, which was the preference of some but not all of the victims’ families and which some local Jews openly opposed, and not even for the end of a trial whose long delay protracted communal trauma.
Instead, the gratitude is for people — those who made the trial happen, those who supported the victims’ family members as they sat through weeks of painful testimony, and those who kept the singular Jewish community thriving even when so much had been lost.
Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi of the Tree of Life congregation, which was housed in the synagogue the gunman attacked, opened a press conference at the Jewish community center in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood with a prayer of thanks.
Dozens of family members and survivors of the attack joined him as he recited the Shehecheyanu prayer in Hebrew, then translated it for the media. The prayer, he said, thanks God, “who has kept us alive, sustained us and enabled us to reach this stage.”
There was palpable relief. “The only thing positive about the sentencing of a criminal is that this long slog is over,” said Audrey Glickman, who hid in the synagogue on the day of the attack.
Myers, who during the trial recalled praying as he waited for the gunman to kill him, thanked the Pittsburgh community, the prosecution, the first responders for what he said was the “embrace” they conferred on the Jewish community since the attack on Oct. 27, 2018.
Wednesday, he noted, was Tu B’Av, the Jewish calendar day marking rituals of courtship and love.
“I don’t believe in coincidences. It was meant to be today,” he said of the end of the trial. “Why today? Because today we received an immense embrace from the halls of justice around all of us, to say that our government does not condone antisemitism in the vile form that we witnessed, and that we were embraced by a system that supported and nurtured us and upheld us.”
Survivors and family members stepped up to the microphone, some with notes, some not, and expressed thanks to law enforcement, to the prosecutors, to others who rushed to their assistance after the attack and who nurtured them in the years since.
“I want to take the time to thank all of those people that were part of the jury, the court system, our local community here, the massive support structure and staff and police taking care of us,” said Howard Fienberg, whose mother Joyce was one of the 11 murdered. “And I especially want to thank the prosecution team for their steadfast focus on this capital crime as an antisemitic act as a frontal assault on the constitutional freedom of religion, and the freedom to be Jewish and practice Judaism in the United States.”
In the hall, the JCC maintained its suburban rhythms: Parents picked toddlers up from daycare, and members headed to the gym. Outside the building, one of the most consequential trials in Jewish history barely resonated; the main topic of conversation in a diner nearby was the summer blockbuster “Barbie,” showing in the cinema across the street.
The Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh, Aug. 2, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
But inside at the press conference, survivor after survivor, family member after family member, expressed thanks in great detail: to the police, the FBI, prosecutors, the social workers, the restaurants that had fed the stunned and traumatized in the weeks after the killing and throughout the trial.
They also emphasized the importance of keeping the victims at the center of the story about what happened in Pittsburgh. In addition to Joyce Fienberg, the people who were killed were Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
It was a showing typical of a Jewish community that had always been tight-knit and became more so in the wake of the attack. Squirrel Hill, in the eastern part of Pittsburgh, has been the center of the city’s Jewish life since the turn of the 20th century, when wealthy Jewish families began settling there. While Jewish communities in other cities moved neighborhoods or migrated to the suburbs in the ensuing century, Squirrel Hill remained the home of Pittsburgh’s Jews. The neighborhood is home to multiple Jewish day schools, kosher restaurants and a Holocaust museum — as well as about 15,000 Jews from all denominations.
Members of the three congregations housed in the synagogue building — Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash — spoke to the press only after clearing it first with a public relations firm the community hired. Volunteers and staffers for the 10.27 Healing Partnership, an organization launched in the wake of the massacre, sat with the survivors and family members in interviews, ready to intervene, they explained to reporters, if a question was too triggering.
Howard Fienberg, whose mother was a Tree of Life member, said the three congregations were friendly but not deeply involved with one another before the attack. Now that they had been brought together by tragedy and its aftermath, he found meaning in their closeness.
“I didn’t understand what Reconstructionism was like,” Fienberg said about the Jewish movement with which Dor Hadash is affiliated. “They were those guys down the hall for years.”
Now he said, he was more inclined to see what brings Jews together, and not what divides them. “There’s a reason that they were all in the same space,” he said. “And it wasn’t just happenstance. They’re all Jewish, right?”
The comments at the press conference were reflected in countless statements from community members and local organizations that expressed thanks, memorialized the victims and committed to sustaining Jewish community.
“As this chapter comes to a close, we reflect on the strength and resilience of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and the entire community,” the local Jewish federation said in its statement. “In the wake of the horrors of the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history, our community neither retreated from participating in Jewish life nor suppressed our Jewishness. Instead, our community embraced our Jewish values — strengthening Jewish life, supporting those in need, and building a safer, more inclusive world.”
The divisions that do exist simmered beneath the surface on Wednesday. There had been differences among the families and the congregations about whether the death penalty was appropriate; a small contingent of local Jews who cited Jewish laws saying that the death penalty should be rare in the extreme organized. Of the nine families, the family of at least one of the victims, Jerry Rabinowitz, objected to the death penalty; seven other families were in favor of it.
Speakers at the press conference who did address the ultimate penalty were in favor of it.
“Even if he sits alive on death row for decades, he is separated from others,” said Glickman.
“Had he been sentenced to life in prison … he would have been afforded an increasing ability to communicate and play with others and the chance of working his way out of any high-security situation,” she added. “This has been a step in the right direction.”
The New Light congregation said in a statement that it “accepts the jury’s decision and believes that, as a society, we need to take a stand that this act requires the ultimate penalty under the law.” Notably, its rabbi, Jonathan Perlman, wrote to the U.S. attorney general to say he opposed the death penalty.
David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh law school, said differences about the death penalty persist but have not had an effect on the sense of mutual solidarity.
“There’s still a lot of really active conversations up to and including today that I’m having with people about, well, ‘I think he should get this,’ the death penalty or a life sentence,” Harris, who has walked members of the community through the trial’s legal thicket as a service of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, said in an interview earlier this week.
“But even though the community is not is not of one mind, we don’t have one universal opinion, we are united in supporting each other,” he said. “We are united in wanting this horrible thing to go right and be over and to say we did our best to support those who have been injured.”
—
The post After synagogue gunman’s death sentence, Pittsburgh’s Jews feel relief, resilience — and gratitude appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence
McGill University has canceled an on-campus event planned by Jewish students—and temporarily halted bookings for all extracurricular activities—following threats of violence along with a death threat, as outlined in a […]
The post McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel
US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) at a press conference in Bergenfield, New Jersey, US on June 5, 2023. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to cut off federal funding from universities that engage in boycotts of Israel.
The legislation, titled “The Protect Economic Freedom Act,” would render universities that participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel ineligible for federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, prohibiting them from receiving federal student aid. The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities submit evidence that they are not participating in commercial boycotts against the Jewish state.
“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty and it undermines the relationship between the US and one of our strongest allies. If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences — starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act,” Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.
Gottheimer added that the legislation is necessary to thwart the surging tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Although the lawmaker noted that students are allowed to engage in free expression regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, he argued that blanket boycotts against Israel endanger the lives of Jewish students and community members.
“The goal of the antisemitic BDS movement is to annihilate the democratic State of Israel, America’s critical ally in the global fight against terror. While students and faculty are free to speak their minds and disagree on policy issues, we cannot allow antisemitism to run rampant and risk the safety and security of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and guests on college campuses,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “The new bipartisan Protect Economic Freedom Act will give the Department of Education a critical new tool to combat the antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses. Now more than ever, we must take the necessary steps to protect our Jewish community.”
The legislation instructs the US Department of Education to keep a record of universities that refuse to confirm their non-participation in anti-Israel boycotts. The list of universities in non-compliance with the legislation would be made publicly available.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre acrosssouthern Israel, universities across the country have found themselves embroiled in controversies regarding campus antisemitism. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Israel, hordes of students and faculty orchestrated protests and demonstrations condemning the Jewish state. Student groups at elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia issued statements blaming Israel for the attacks and expressing support for Hamas.
Several high-profile universities have also shown a significant level of tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment festering on their campuses. Northwestern University, for example, capitulated to demands of anti-Israel activists to remove Sabra Hummus from campus dining halls because of its connections to Israel. At Stanford University, Jewish students have reported being forced to condemn Israel before being allowed to enter campus parties. Students at the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University launched unsuccessful attempts to convince the university to divest endowment funds from companies tied to Israel.
The post US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life is being criticized by a rising Jewish civil rights activist for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement addressing antisemitic behavior.
The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus. Such a demand is not new, as it began earlier this semester at the direction of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which coordinates the lion’s share of anti-Zionist activity on college campuses.
As seen in footage of the demonstration, the students chanted “Zionists aren’t welcome here!” and held signs which accused the organization — the largest campus organization for Jewish students in the world — of embracing “war criminals” and genocide.
Addressing the behavior, Harvard Chaplains issued a statement, which is now being pointed to as a symbol of higher education’s indifference to the unique hatred of antisemitism, as well as its permutation as anti-Zionism.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
It continued, “Student groups who are singled out in this way experience such language and acts of vandalism as a painful attack that undermines the acceptance and flourishing of religious diversity here at Harvard. Let us all endeavor to care for one another in these divisive times.”
Recent Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who addressed the Republican National Convention in August to discuss the ways which progressive bias in higher education fosters anti-Zionism and anti-Western ideologies, described the statement as a moral failure in a post on X/Twitter on Tuesday.
“Disappointing,” he said. “After Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Kestenbaum noted in a later statement that Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has so far declined to speak on the issue at all. He charged that when Charleston “isn’t plagiarizing, she and DEI normalize antisemitism,” referring to evidence, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that Charleston is a serial plagiarist who climbed the hierarchy of the higher education establishment by pilfering other people’s scholarship.
Harvard University president Alan Garber — installed after former president Claudine Gay resigned following revelations that she is also a serial plagiarist — has, experts have said, been inconsistent in managing the campus’ unrest.
During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.
Earlier this semester, however, Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by praising the brutal invasion as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the Jewish state is destroyed, despite having earlier announced a new “institutional neutrality” policy which ostensibly prohibits the university from weighing in on contentious political issues. While Garber ultimately has said more than Gay when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year, his administration’s handling of campus antisemitism has been ambiguous, according to observers — and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”
The university’s perceived failure to address antisemitism has had legal consequences.
Earlier this month, a lawsuit accusing it of ignoring antisemitism was cleared to proceed to discovery, a phase of the case which may unearth damaging revelations about how college officials discussed and crafted policy responses to anti-Jewish hatred before and after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The case, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
During an investigation of the incidents, which Harvard delegated to a third party firm, Ganz admitted that he believed “that the students’ description of Israel as a Jewish democracy … was similar to ‘talking about a white supremacist state.’” The firm went on to determine that Ganz “denigrated” the Israeli students and fostered “a hostile learning environment,” conclusions which Harvard accepted but never acted on.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident first appeared on Algemeiner.com.