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Jewish man killed by police after attempting attack on Memphis Jewish day school
This is a developing story.
(JTA) — Police in Memphis shot and killed a man on Monday whom they said attempted to attack a Jewish day school there.
The incident occurred around noon at Margolin Hebrew Academy Feinstone Yeshiva of the South, an Orthodox school on the city’s east side. A man fired shots outside the school but failed to gain entry and left the scene. He was killed after police apprehended him nearby, Memphis police officials said.
The suspect was a member of the Jewish community and the incident appeared personal in nature, according to a spokesperson for the Secure Community Network, an organization that coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide.
According to Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network, the suspect was a male in his 40s who tried to enter the school but was prevented from doing so due to a security system.
The Orthodox school, which serves students from pre-kindergarten through high school, sent an alert to its community.
“Please, be advised that we are currently in a developing active shooter situation. We can confirm that no one has been hurt in any way, and everyone is now safe, thank G-d,” the alert said. “Please look out for further communication with additional information to come. In the meantime, our campus is completely closed. We thank you for your understanding. May we all continue to merit Hashem’s protection.”
The school declined to provide additional comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The day school is still on summer break. But there were school personnel including construction workers during the shooting, and the building immediately went into lockdown, according to Masters. All schools in the Memphis-Shelby County Schools district were also put on a precautionary lockdown, which was lifted at 2 pm.
“He had made statements that he was targeting the facility for a specific reason,” said Masters, who added that the suspect was a “known offender.”
An executive at Jewish Community Partners, the local Jewish federation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the federation has worked for years with Masters’ organization. The federation has worked to help local Jewish institutions set security policies and access government grants meant to make facilities more secure.
“This is a testament to the Federation, the community in Memphis, taking a comprehensive approach to security that ensures the protection of the whole community,” Masters said. “It’s another reminder that we’re not going to choose the time and place of the next incident but we can choose our preparation, and today that preparation paid off.”
Police officials, too, said during a press conference that the school’s security system had averted tragedy.
“Thankfully, that school had a great safety procedure and process in place and avoided anyone being harmed or injured at that scene,” said Dan Crow, an assistant police chief.
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The post Jewish man killed by police after attempting attack on Memphis Jewish day school appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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To Be Holy Is to Live Morally and Treat Others With Respect
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
Chapter 19 of Leviticus, known as Kedoshim, includes a range of laws that concern ethical standards that were relevant back then and today.
It starts with respecting one’s parents and then goes on to talk about the importance of giving charity and helping the poor and the indigent. It also includes such basic ethical rules as don’t steal, don’t deceive, don’t lie, don’t oppress your neighbor, etc. ( Leviticus 19:2-18).
However, interspersed in this collection are ritual laws, and the repeated refrain “Be Holy because I am holy,” “I am your God,” or “ I am your God who took you out of Egypt.”
To the modern skeptical mind, they seem out of place. We are so used to thinking of morality and ethics as being divorced from concepts of God, that these ritual-based commands seem to be irrelevant to many people. Yet the Bible is based upon the principle that humans are fallible, changeable, and unreliable, and are often not the best judges of good and bad. Greek philosophical culture, on the other hand, thought that logic alone could determine what was right or wrong. The Torah established the concept of Divine Authority as a safeguard against overweening human arrogance.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead discovered that there is a universal pattern that explains all this strange connection between morality and ritual. The ancient world was concerned with order. Each culture was regulated in its own way. The Torah, too, is concerned with order, a holistic approach to life that includes the spiritual as well as the physical. It is a template of the complete life, in which one finds room for a way of life that connects with God through ritual and behavior.
In our case, the universal sacrificial system that once dominated our ritual life soon fell away. Instead, we have focused on the laws that make up what is called halacha — how we behave day-to-day and how all our actions should be predicated on forethought, consideration, and a value system.
An ethical system predicated on a ritual one, however irksome, adds a level of spirituality to our daily lives. If religious behavior does not improve one’s morality or behavior towards others, it is failing. Holiness in the Torah means being better — not automatically through birth, but rather what we do, and how we behave.
When we say be holy because God is holy, we’re not describing God. We may disagree as to what is good and what is bad, what is fair and what is not, and whether there is a God and to what extent God controls our lives. But, in the end, we should live a life of consideration and respect for ourselves as well as for the rest of humanity.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post To Be Holy Is to Live Morally and Treat Others With Respect first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Macklemore Leads ‘Free Palestine’ Chant After Performing New Anti-Israel Song in New Zealand
Macklemore performs at Alcatraz Milan on May 3, 2023 in Milan, Italy. Photo: Roberto Finizio via Reuters Connect
Macklemore performed his new anti-Israel song live for the first time on Wednesday night during a concert in Wellington, New Zealand, where he also led the sold-out crowd in chanting, “Free, free Palestine.”
The Seattle-based rapper, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, performed Hind’s Hall at his first of two Wellington shows in the TSB Arena.
In the song, which was released a day earlier, the Grammy winner expresses solidarity with anti-Israel activists demonstrating at colleges and universities across the US, criticizes US support for Israel, and denounces the Jewish state’s military actions in its ongoing war against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip. The war was launched in response to the deadly Hamas attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Images of the Palestinian flag were projected across the stadium in Wellington as Macklemore performed Hind’s Hall. Later in the concert, the rapper allegedly called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, The Guardian reported. The music video for Hind’s Hall also played on a screen behind the stage while Macklemore rapped the track’s lyrics on Wednesday night.
He told the audience: “I stand here today and every day forward for the rest of my life in solidarity with the people of Palestine, with an open heart, in the belief that our collective liberation is at stake — that we all deserve freedom in this life of ours.”
Macklemore said on Tuesday that all proceeds from Hind’s Hall will be donated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees had 19 of its employees allegedly participate in the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7. UNRWA has also been accused in the past of providing Palestinian schools with textbooks that incite antisemitism, terrorism, and anti-Israel sentiments.
The post Macklemore Leads ‘Free Palestine’ Chant After Performing New Anti-Israel Song in New Zealand first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Miss Israel Gets Threatened by Knife-Wielding Antisemite While Talking to New Yorkers About Israel
Former Miss Israel Noa Cochva talking to New Yorkers about Israel on May 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Former Miss Israel Noa Cochva was threatened by an antisemitic woman in New York City this week while trying to have peaceful conversations with locals about Israel.
On Monday, Cochva participated in a social experiment with the organization Facts for Peace in which she walked around Washington Square Park in New York City while holding a sign that read, “I’m an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldier, ask me anything.” The 25-year-old beauty queen, who represented Israel in the Miss Universe pageant held in Eilat in 2021, was approached by some pro-Israel supporters who hugged her and thanked her for being brave and speaking out in solidarity with the Jewish state. Speaking to an American military officer who stopped to talk with her, Cochva discussed feeling a sense of purpose for serving her country. Cochva served as a combat medic in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
However, she also received a negative response from other New Yorkers, some of whom called her a “war criminal” and said, “This is f—king stupid. You guys should go home.” When one man asked Cochva,”“How do you sleep at night?” she clapped back: “I sleep really well because I know I’m on the right side of history.”
In a video from the social experiment that was shared on Instagram by both Facts for Peace and Cochva, the former beauty pageant queen could be seen talking to a man on camera when a woman crashed their discussion and said, “Sorry to interrupt, I heard there was a Zionist here.” The same woman lunged at Cochva’s team with a knife, cursed at them, and berated the group by calling them “little Zionists.” She also told Cochva’s cameraman, “My daddy owns your little Jewish b—ch daddy.”
When Cochva’s group invited her to have a conversation with the beauty queen, she avoided the opportunity by giving excuses such as, “No, I only care about being seen” and “I only speak ASL [American Sign Language].” When she asked one man in Cochva’s group for some of his water and he said no, she replied, “Oh, you’re a Zionist. I get it.”
Cochva filmed a video after the incident commenting on what took place and the criticism she faced from Israel-haters. While holding back tears, she told the camera, “I was just trying to have peaceful conversations with them. But it’s a whole different experience to witness something like that. We can’t let things like this happen.”
On Wednesday, the Instagram account Jew Hate Database exposed the knife-wielding woman as Ruby Marzovilla, a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio who works as a “professional performing artist” and “transformative mediator,” according to her LinkedIn page.
On March 30, Cochva was attacked with a protest placard during an anti-Israel rally in Times Square and got a black eye as a result.
The post Miss Israel Gets Threatened by Knife-Wielding Antisemite While Talking to New Yorkers About Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
