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Ohio Attorney General Seeks to Halt Sale of Rare Jewish Book Collection
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost attends a 2022 US midterm elections night party in Columbus, Ohio, US, Nov. 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Gaelen Morse
Cincinnati, Ohio is home to a robust Reform Jewish community. In the heart of downtown sits a cathedral-like synagogue built in 1866 known as Plum Street Temple. Located a few blocks away is Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion, or HUC-JIR for short. The Reform seminary in many ways feels like a small college campus, featuring classrooms, a small Judaica Museum, and even a vegetable garden. At the center of the campus sits the Klau Library — a four-story structure dedicated to all things Jewish.
The rare-books collection in the basement of the Klau Library is now at the heart of a legal battle between HUC-JIR and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican who has served in his current role since 2019.
Yost has alleged that HUC-JIR recently began the process of auctioning the collection through the auction house Sotheby’s to address what he described as the seminary’s “budgetary deficit.” On Tuesday, he sought a temporary restraining order against HUC-JIR in a court filing made in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, hoping to prevent the sale of valuable religious texts.
In his court filing, Yost alleged that the library was “violating Ohio law and breaching the charitable trust applicable to the Cincinnati Library” by “dismantling” its collection. Yost argued that HUC-JIR has violated its charitable fiduciary responsibility to its donors. A hearing on the attorney general’s is scheduled for July 12.
HUC-JIR’s financial troubles in Ohio are not new. In 2022, HUC-JIR’s board of governors voted to close their Cincinnati campus in 2026 after facing declining enrollment and an $8.8 million deficit. HUC-JIR still has campuses in New York, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem.
The Klau Library is home to a wide range of Jewish texts including pre-Holocaust sets of the Talmud; Israeli artifacts including phone books, novels, and directories; Yiddish manuscripts; and collections of Jewish thought. It is widely considered the greatest collection of Jewish texts in Cincinnati and the surrounding area.
In total, the library holds over 530,000 books and 2,500 manuscripts. The rare-books collection alone is home to over 14,000 items.
Yost claimed in a written statement that HUC-JIR’s sale of “priceless” religious texts “would not only betray donor trust but may also violate legal restrictions placed on gifts.”
In response, HUC-JIR said that it currently has no intention of selling its rare book collection and remains committed to the “responsible collection of the Klau Library.”
However, the seminary did not rule out the possibility of selling items from the library in the future in order to stay afloat financially.
“While we have no current plans to sell any part of our collection, it would be irresponsible to foreclose such actions should they be deemed necessary to preserve and maintain the collection and access to it,” HUC-JIR assistant vice president Patricia Keim said in a statement. “In any case, any such decision would be carefully reviewed and require approval by the Board of Governors.”
Nonetheless, the seminary in Cincinnati has taken steps that indicate an interest in auctioning some of the collection, according to Yost’s court filing. The document states, for example, that the chief librarian resigned this year “after allegedly being pressured by the administration to sell rare books for Klau [Library],” and that in March, a Sotheby’s consultant visited the library to appraise its rare-book collection for a potential sale.
One item of significance in the library’s rare-books collection is the Bomberg Talmud. Venetian publisher Daniel Bomberg printed the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud in 1520, and a 1523 edition of the Bomberg Talmud can be found in the Klau Library.
In 2015, a complete set of the Bomberg Talmud auctioned by Sotheby’s was sold for $9.3 million.
HUC-JIR’s legal battle comes amid certain issues facing the future of the Reform Jewish community. A 2021 study from Yale University found that the Reform movement in America faces demographic challenges. The study projected that, by 2063, the total number of people in the Reform and Conservative denominations aged 30-69 will decline by 46 percent.
Jacob Frankel is working as an intern for The Algemeiner before heading to law school.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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