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An Israeli Baseball Star Inspires Our Community, and Unites All Jews
The Jewish sports world is abuzz after Assaf Lowengart signed with the New York Boulders of the independent Frontier League, making him the first Israeli-born position player to sign a professional baseball contract in the US. Lowengart signed on Feb. 9, and the local Jewish community of Rockland has already wholeheartedly embraced him.
The support Lowengart has felt from the Jewish community is one reason he is looking forward to joining the Boulders, who play in a county where roughly a third of the residents are Jewish, many of them Orthodox … “Being able to come back there with the big Jewish community, it’s going to be pretty amazing,” Lowengart said. “I’ve been in many colleges, and the Jewish communities usually weren’t that big. So it’s going to be a pretty cool experience being connected to the Jewish community this time, having them behind me, having them support me and being able to contribute back to them.”
This “pretty amazing” support of the heavily Orthodox local community for the secular and nonobservant Lowengart is a masterclass of the Jewish unity — or achdut — that we need so desperately. We’ve seen such achdut, with Israel at war; secular and religious, left and right have connected on the basis of their shared Jewishness as opposed to harping on their differences.
Admittedly, the Boulders are not the Yankees or the Mets; Rockland’s Jewish community is excited to have Lowengart in their county not because he’s a celebrity, but because he’s their brother. That some of these fans may be of a different religious strata than Assaf is of no consequence here, proving the phrase from the Shabbat prayer yekum purkan is alive and well: “kol yisrael achehem” — “all Jews are brothers!”
Rockland’s Jews are continuing a tradition of achdut and baseball. Shtetl Jews who immigrated to America in the early 20th century were known to support Jewish ballplayers with fierce attachment. Some didn’t understand or even like baseball, but if a Jew was in the lineup, they would go to support him. This came to a head in 1923, when the New York Giants baseball team had a problem. The cross-town Bronx squad, the Yankees, had Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, whose towering home runs drew fans, ticket sales, and wins away from the Giants.
How to get fans and victory back to the Polo Grounds? Giants manager John McGraw explained: “We appreciate that many of the fans in New York are Jews, and we have been trying to land a prospect of Jewish blood.” They signed Mose Solomon, who set the minor league home run record that year, billed as “The Rabbi of Swat,” to compete with Ruth. And in his first week as a Giant, the plan was working as Mose batted .375 and drew tremendous crowds of Jews coming to see him. But that was it: one week, and Solomon was gone from the Majors forever, as his terrible fielding made him a liability. The Yankees went on to win their first World Series that year, have dominated the game ever since, and ran the Giants out of town to San Francisco.
But the Jews who came to watch Solomon in the two games he appeared in didn’t care that he was a clumsy outfielder. He was a fellow Jew. We wish Assaf Lowengart better luck on the field than Mose, and continued Jewish solidarity, love, and support.
The post An Israeli Baseball Star Inspires Our Community, and Unites All Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming
Illustrative: Israeli police at the scene of a car-ramming terrorist attack near a market in Jerusalem on Monday, April 24, 2023. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters.
JNS.org – A Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a cop car in the West Bank on Saturday in what the military was investigating as a terror attack.
The incident occurred at the Eli gas station, the scene of repeated acts of terrorism against Israelis.
“A Palestinian vehicle accelerated towards a police car and collided with it, there were no casualties,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“Troops caught the terrorist and transferred him to security forces for further investigation,” added the statement.
On Sunday, three Israeli police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, some 7.5 miles northwest of Hebron in Judea.
They were named as Chief Inspector Arik Ben Eliyahu, 37, of Kiryat Gat, who is survived by his wife and three children; Command Sgt. Maj. Hadas Branch, 53, of Sde Moshe, who is survived by her husband, three children and granddaughter; and 1st Sgt. Roni Shakuri, 61, of Sderot, who is survived by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
Shakuri’s other daughter, 1st Sgt. Mor Shakuri, 29, was killed on Oct. 7 while battling an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take control of the police station in Sderot, in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
The post Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ukraine Concerned at Reports of Iranian Ballistic Missiles to Russia
A missile unveiled by Iran is launched in an unknown location in Iran in this picture received by Reuters on August 20, 2020. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.
In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources.
Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran on the satellite-guided weapons for eventual use in the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the United States, a key ally of Ukraine, also voiced concern about the potential transfer of missiles.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Friday that Tehran’s position on the Ukraine conflict was unchanged.
“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations – to be inhumane,” it said.
“Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”
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Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur
The flag of the ISIS terrorist group. Image: Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo.
JNS.org – A Pakistani national, whom Canadian authorities arrested on Wednesday, planned to carry out an ISIS-styled, mass shooting terror attack against Jews in New York, the U.S. Justice Department alleged on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, who also answers to Shahzeb Jadoon, “attempted to travel from Canada to New York City, where he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass shooting in support of ISIS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” per the complaint.
Khan allegedly distributed ISIS videos and literature and expressed support for ISIS on social media and via encrypted messages. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is a U.S.-designated terror organization.
The defendant allegedly wrote that he wanted to target “Israeli Jewish Chabads … scattered all around,” per the 19-page complaint.
The Justice Department alleges that Khan “conveyed that he hoped to carry out this attack on or around Oct. 7, 2024—which Khan recognized as the one year anniversary of the brutal terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas, a designated foreign terror organization, which, on Oct. 7, 2023, launched a wave of violent, large-scale terrorist attacks in Israel that resulted in the deaths and hostage taking of hundreds of civilians, including American citizens.”
Khan allegedly told undercover officers that he wanted to “go for Oct. 7 or Oct 11, Yom Kippur, a major festival for the Jews,” per the complaint. “Khan emphasized that ‘Oct. 7 and Oct. 11 are the best days for targeting the Jews,’ because ‘Oct. 7 they will surely have some protests and Oct. 11 is Yom Kippur,’ and ‘they don’t have any other major festival then till next summer.’”
“In selecting New York City as his target location, Khan told the undercover law enforcement officers that ‘New York is perfect to target Jews’ because it has the ‘largest Jewish population In America,’ and, as such, ‘even if we don’t attack a event, we could rack up easily a lot of Jews,” the complaint adds.
The defendant told the undercover officers that “he intended to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible, proclaiming that ‘we are going to New York City to slaughter them,’” per the complaint, which added that Khan allegedly sent a photograph “of the specific area” where he planned to attack to the undercover officers.
Per the complaint, Khan also allegedly told the undercover officers not to wear beards, so they wouldn’t attract attention, and that “you guys will even have to attend some synagogue or Chabad sessions” to “check the insides of the buildings.” He told them it was necessary to identify emergency exits in buildings, “so we can trap them and kill them inside,” per the complaint.
“In addition, Khan also explained that they should not record their ISIS allegiance video, or ‘bayah,’ until later because it would run the risk of them being caught by law enforcement prior to the planned attack,” the complaint alleges.
One of several cities that Khan flagged had “more relaxed” gun laws, he allegedly told the undercover officers.
“What’s the point of living till you’re 70 and dying on a hospital bed when we can attain shahadah in our youths, Inshalah,” he said, per the complaint. (The complaint defines the first term as a declaration of faith and the second as God willing.)
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around Oct. 7 of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” stated Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general.
“Thanks to the investigative work of the FBI, and the quick action of our Canadian law enforcement partners, the defendant was taken into custody,” Garland said. “Jewish communities—like all communities in this country—should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack.”
The post Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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