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Sinai Temple in Los Angeles Launches Program to Help Jewish Students Combat Antisemitism
A new “intensive” seminar based in the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and described as the “first of its kind” will prepare Jewish high school students to withstand and resist campus antisemitism, The Algemeiner has learned.
Announced in the shadow of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the Beren Scholars Program will educate cohorts of students in 11th and 12th grade about the history of antisemitism across the ages and its latest manifestation in higher education, steeling them against a wave of hatred that university administrators have failed to stop.
A key component of Beren Scholars is a lecture series featuring the world’s leading Jewish and non-Jewish antisemitism experts, including Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Dr. Pastor John Paul Foster, and Sarah Idan, a former Miss Iraq winner and leading Muslim supporter of Israel. Connecting Jewish students with leaders drawn from every culture and faith will, Sinai Temple says, expand their network of support and hone their ability to serve as ambassadors of the Jewish community on and off campus.
“The program will culminate with a trip to Sacramento where students will practice their news skills, meeting with state lawmakers to advocate for Jewish causes,” Sinai Temple said earlier this month.
The establishment of the Beren Scholars Program comes amid an eruption of antisemitism on college campuses unlike any in US history.
According to a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published last month, there was a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena during the 2023-2024 academic year. The report revealed a bleak picture of a higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate, noting that 10 campuses alone 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. Violence was most common at universities in the state of California, where, for example, anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
It is this harrowing reality which prompted Sinai Temple and the Robert M. Beren Family Foundation to equip Jewish students with the tools they will need to overcome a hostile world, Rabbi Erez Sherman, co-senior rabbi of the synagogue, told The Algemeiner during an interview.
“What might have began as a defensive idea will be turning into a proactive vision,” Sherman said. “Looking back now post-Oct. 7, it’s clear that programs like this should have been with us many years before, but we became a bit too complacent. They used to say ‘we have to teach our college students’ and then they said ‘we have to teach our high school students.’”
Sherman added that numerous incidents going back years portended the crisis Jewish students face today. But he explained that Oct. 7, its suddenness and cruelty combined with the higher education establishment’s indifferent response to it in some cases, convulsed the Jewish community, forcing it to accept that even institutions reputed to be the most tolerant and diverse can, either through intentional neglect or incompetence, become bastions of antisemitism. Moreover, he explained, the community recognized the urgency of mobilizing allies in non-Jewish communities.
“Little things were creeping up,” he continued. “But I don’t think we understood the magnitude of what lied beneath the surface. When it exploded on Oct. 7, we realized that we had to address it, and Sinai Temple and this community was very fortunate to, number one, already be in a space of Israel activism — so we didn’t have to recreate anything — and two, to also be in a space of allyship creation, wonderful relationships with our Catholic Church, Faithful Central Bible Church, the Mormon Church.”
Sherman hopes the work in which the Beren Foundation and Sinai Temple is engaged will spread to synagogues across the country.
“What’s unique is that this is coming out of a synagogue and not any other organization that’s just fighting antisemitism or just working on college campuses,” he said. “We want people to realize that their own houses of worship have value beyond just worship and praying to G-d. They can also take action.”
Julie Platt — the daughter of the late Robert M. Beren, a generous supporter of the Orthodox community who died last August — called it a “great blessing to carry on our father’s legacy knowing that our work will support the next generation of Jewish students.”
She added, “In a world where Jews are thinking to retreat, our Beren Scholars will not hide. Instead, they will stand tall, speak out, and create a world of empathetic, intellectual, strong, joyful Jewish leaders.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Sinai Temple in Los Angeles Launches Program to Help Jewish Students Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies
The poppies that we wear at this time of year are our visual pledge to remember the brave Canadian soldiers who served and sacrificed to preserve and defend our democracy. […]
The post Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days
An antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York struck its latest victim on Wednesday, wreaking an “excruciating” beating on a middle-aged Hasidic man.
According to Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — the victim was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery.
“The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the emergency room,” Behrman tweeted. “The police are investigating the incident.”
A Chasidic man was beaten in Crown Heights tonight near Utica and President at approximately 7:30pm. The assailants, one was wearing a mask, demanded the victim’s phone, but when he refused, they chased him and beat him. The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the… pic.twitter.com/s4mn1K6HtV
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) November 7, 2024
The perpetrators were two Black teenagers, according to COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet.
Tuesday’s attack was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
On Monday morning, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish Crown Heights neighborhood
Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Numerous antisemitic hate crimes have occurred in Crown Heights in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called US President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the US presidential election earlier this week.
“Netanyahu spoke to President-elect Donald Trump and was among the first to call to congratulate him for his victory,” the Prime Minister’s office said on Wednesday. “The conversation was warm and cordial, and the two agreed to work together for Israel’s security and discussed the Iranian threat.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration had a “maximum pressure” policy with regard to Iran, aimed at making it more difficult for the country to make a nuclear weapon and fund its terror proxies — such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — across the Middle East.
However, some observers are concerned the incoming US administration will not be as strong on the Iranian threat as it was in its first term. Late last month, US Vice President-elect JD Vance said on a podcast that the US and Israel can at times have conflicting interests and warned that Washington should seek to avoid a war with Iran, the Jewish state’s chief adversary in the Middle East.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct — like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said.
He then argued that a war with Iran “would be [a] huge distraction of resources; it would be massively expensive to our country.”
In addition to the phone call, Netanyahu’s office will also reportedly announce “the appointment of a new ambassador to Washington who will work with the new Trump administration” within the next 24 hours, according to Axios reporter Barack Ravid.
Netanyahu was the first world leader to congratulate Trump on his victory.
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he wrote on X/Twitter. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”
He added, “This is a huge victory!”
During Trump’s first term, he and Netanyahu were close allies, working together to sign the Abraham Accords and move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, their relationship reportedly strained when Netanyahu congratulated then-US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory against Trump while Trump was still actively disputing the results of the election.
“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with,” Trump reportedly said at the time. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”
“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” he added. “The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”
Heading into Trump’s second term, there have not been indications that this tension still lingers.
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