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Orthodox Jewish recruit is valedictorian of New York Police Department’s training academy
(New York Jewish Week) — Samuel Winsbacher didn’t acknowledge that he was wearing a kippah under his police cap as he delivered his valedictory address Tuesday at the NYPD Academy’s graduation ceremony.
But to anyone in the know, his acknowledgments to his family offered a giveaway about his Jewish identity.
“I would like to thank my family and close friends — my father Eli, my mother Sharen; my brothers Mendel, Sholom and Levi; my sisters Merele, Chana and Esther — for always putting up with me and supporting me,” Winsbacher said. “I would not be standing here today without your continuous support.”
Winsbacher earned the speaking role at the graduation ceremony by finishing his training with the highest grade-point average of all new officers and winning two of the eight prizes handed out to new officers: the Mayor’s Award and the First Deputy Commissioner Award. He is now joining a division that patrols part of the Bronx.
Winsbacher, 25, is from Monsey, New York, the Rockland County town that is a hub of Orthodoxy in the region. His family is affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and his father was involved in the creation of Chabad’s first website, which the movement boasts was one of the first 500 websites.
Winsbacher is part of the NYPD Shomrim Society, a membership organization of Jewish police officers formed in 1924. (It is not affiliated with the private Shomrim safety patrols organized in some Orthodox neighborhoods.) The Shomrim Society says Jewish officers serve at all levels with in the police department; one Orthodox officer who has risen to note is Richie Taylor, now the commanding officer of community affairs outreach, who began working with the Jewish emergency service Hatzalah as a teenager before entering the police academy.
The most senior Jewish officer in the city is Alvin Kass, the department’s chief chaplain, who was named one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 to Watch” this year. The 87-year-old rabbi, who has been on the force for 57 years, delivered the spiritual blessing at the start of the graduation ceremony.
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The post Orthodox Jewish recruit is valedictorian of New York Police Department’s training academy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.