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In Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial, Jewish rituals feature as prominently as the carnage of the day
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Testifying at the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Carol Black described how, right before he opened fire, she had taken her yarmulke and tallis out of her velvet tallis bag.
But first, she had to explain what a yarmulke, tallis and tallis bag were.
“In my briefcase is a blue velvet bag that has a zipper on it,” she said. “I have a Ziploc bag of yarmulkes I would wear and a tallis I would wear.” A yarmulke was a “head covering,” she explained, and a tallis was a “prayer shawl.” The items, she said, “just signified being in the presence of God and being respectful.”
Black, 71, was the second witness to testify on Wednesday, the second day of the capital murder trial of the alleged gunman, Robert Bowers. She was one of a few witnesses who interspersed heart-rending testimony about the trial with, effectively, a crash course on Jewish ritual.
Black recalled how she sat in the second seat in from the aisle, because the aisle seat was where her brother Richard Gottfried sat, and they shared gabbai duties. Then Black explained the role of a “gabbai” — calling congregants to the Torah and helping them read through a passage. She described Pesukei d’Zimra, the morning service’s opening prayers, and spelled out the Hebrew name of the morning service, Shacharit, for the court reporter.
“I had just started to open the bag and I heard a loud bang,” she said. “To me it sounded like somebody had dropped a table on the metal floor.”
She added, “The first two sounds, I didn’t recognize them as gunfire. You don’t go to a synagogue and expect to hear gunfire.”
The focus of the trial is the gunfire — the shooting on Oct. 27, 2018 that killed 11 Jews praying at three congregations: Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash. But for the prosecution, explaining the synagogue — and the practices that take place in it — is also proving to be crucial. The painful collision on that Shabbat morning of the sacred and the profane is key to the prosecution’s case that the defendant merits the death penalty.
Of the 63 federal charges Bowers is facing, 22 are capital crimes: two for each of the 11 fatalities that morning, including Black’s brother, Richard Gottfried. One is “obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death” and the other is murder, enhanced with a hate crime charge. So prosecutors, seeking to show that the shooting was motivated by antisemitism, are probing witnesses about their Judaism and how they express it.
“As they did every Saturday, men and women of the Jewish faith made their way to the synagogue, to observe Shabbat,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo Song said in her opening statement on Tuesday. “To pray to God in the sanctity and refuge of their shared Jewish faith.”
Conversely, defense lawyer Judy Clarke is out to prove that her client targeted the congregants not because of their religion per se but because of a delusion that they were facilitating an immigration invasion to replace whites. Both she and prosecutors have said in court that he committed the attack.
Clarke occasionally objected when the testimony veered into how American Jews worship, or into explaining what animates Jewish practice. None of her objections to explaining Judaism were sustained — including one where she had tried to preempt the director of one of the congregations’ religious schools from explaining its educational precepts.
Describing the curriculum, Wendy Kobee, the director of the religious school of Dor Hadash, a Reconstructionist congregation, said, “Religious prayers, religious practices, cultural values.”
“Among the cultural values taught at the school was the concept of welcoming the stranger?” prosecutor Mary Hahn asked.
“Yes, that would have been incorporated into the curriculum in an age-appropriate way,” Kobee said.
Both the defense and prosecution acknowledge that the defendant, a white supremacist, targeted the building because Dor Hadash had partnered with HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group, to celebrate what the group called National Refugee Shabbat.
The trial is shaping up as a seminar on American Jewish tradition. Witnesses have provided the judge, jury and spectators with an impromptu glossary of Jewish terms, and an introduction to parts of modern Jewish thought. Dan Leger, a member of Dor Hadash who was injured in the attack, outlined the teachings of the Reconstructionist movement’s founder, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.
Kaplan’s “approach is one of looking at the Bible, the Torah specifically as something that guides our life in ways that give value in social interaction,” Leger said. “One of the ways it is most highly demonstrated is welcoming those into the community who need assistance, who need support whether or not they are Jewish, welcoming immigrants into the country.”
Prosecutors also asked witnesses about Jewish practice in order to explain what happened on the day of the shooting. Song asked Leger to explain tallit katan, the small prayer shawl colloquially known as tzitzit that observant men traditionally wear under their clothing, and why he did not have a cell phone handy when the gunman opened fire. It was Shabbat, when some Jews abstain from using electronic devices, he explained.)
Another prosecutor asked Barry Werber, who testified later, why he preferred to attend services at New Light on Friday night and for Sunday breakfasts and not on Saturdays. He liked to sleep in on Saturdays, he said, but he went to services on the morning of the shooting because he felt obliged to honor his mother on her yahrzeit. He explained that a yahrzeit was “the anniversary of someone’s death.”
Like Tree of Life’s rabbi, Jeffrey Myers, had on Tuesday, Leger testified that he recited the Shema when he believed he was dying, after the gunman shot him in the abdomen. He translated the Torah verse and central Jewish prayer for the jury. Leger, a retired registered nurse, and another Dor Hadash congregant, Jerry Rabinowitz, a physician, had run into the shooting to help the injured. Rabinowitz was killed.
“I thought about the wonder of my life, the beauty of it all, the happiness I had experienced, the joy of having two beautiful sons and a wonderful wife and the wife previous to that wife, all the wonderful friends I have in the world,” Leger said. “I prayed for forgiveness for those who I have wronged in my life. I was ready to go.”
The defendant, wearing a dark blue sweater and a light blue collared shirt, his arms folded, stared at Leger.
The stories on the witness stand offered windows into American Jewish families and history. Gottfried started attending New Light after his mother died in 1992, Black testified about her brother, but she said she remained uninterested in frequent synagogue attendance until she injured a hip running about a decade ago. Gottfried, who was younger, encouraged her to come to services, and she celebrated her bat mitzvah as an adult.
“In Uniontown [Pennsylvania] where I grew up, in our Conservative congregation, which incidentally was called Tree of Life, girls did not get bat mitzvahed,” she said.
Black and Werber both discussed the social aspect of Shabbat services, describing the propensity of Melvin Wax, a New Light congregant, to tell jokes. Werber recalled that just before the shooting, Wax was telling jokes to Cecil Rosenthal.
Yet along with descriptions of how ritual and prayer bound the synagogue communities together, the testimonies all came back to the horrific details of the shooting itself.
After sitting with Wax, Werber said, Rosenthal went back upstairs, where the gunman shot him multiple times. Down in the New Light sanctuary, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman led Werber, Wax and Black into a storeroom behind the bimah. Richard Gottfried was in an adjacent kitchen with another New Light congregant, Dan Stein, preparing breakfast for the next morning. He called 911.
The gunman came down the stairs and killed Gottfried and Stein. There was a pause, so Wax peeked out of the storeroom to see what was happening. The gunman shot him twice, and he fell at Black’s feet. The gunman hovered a while in the area and then retreated.
Eventually, emergency responders found the group hidden in the store room. Wax’s body still lay there.
“I had to step over him to get past him,” Black testified, her voice cracking. “Quietly to myself I said goodbye to him and followed the officers.”
—
The post In Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial, Jewish rituals feature as prominently as the carnage of the day appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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French Court Cuts Sentence for Teen in Antisemitic Gang Rape of 12-Year-Old Jewish Girl
France, Paris, 20/06/2024. Gathering at place de la Bastille after the anti Semitic rape of a 12 year old girl in Courbevoie. Photography by Myriam Tirler / Hans Lucas.
More than a year after the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, a French court has dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted in the attack, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”
On Tuesday, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure, the French news outlet Le Parisien reported.
“The court took into account the entire case as provided for by law: the facts, their seriousness, but also the personality of the minor and the need to prepare for future reintegration,” the boy’s lawyer Melody Blanc said in a statement.
The original sentences, handed down in June, gave the two boys — who were 13 years old at the time of the incident — seven and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were convicted on charges of group rape, physical violence, and death threats aggravated by antisemitic hatred.
The third boy involved in the attack, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, was accused of threatening her and orchestrating the attack, also motivated by racist prejudice.
Because the girl’s ex-boyfriend was under 13 at the time of the attack, he did not face prison and was instead sentenced to five years in an educational facility.
The lawyers of the victim, Muriel Ouaknine-Melki and Oudy Bloch, praised “the courage of [their] client” for confronting her attackers and ensuring that two of them were imprisoned.
According to police reports from the time, the two French boys cornered the girl on June 15, 2024, inside an empty building in Courbevoie, a northwestern suburb of Paris, questioned her about her Jewish identity, and then physically assaulted and raped her.
The assailants who were Muslim also allegedly called the victim a “dirty Jew” and uttered other antisemitic remarks during the brutal gang-rape.
Under threat of death, she was forced to perform penetrative and oral sex on two of the boys, while her ex-boyfriend threatened to burn her cheek with a lighter and attempted to make her sit on her handbag, which he had set ablaze.
Local reports indicate that part of the assault was recorded, and at least one assailant allegedly demanded 200 euros from the girl to withhold the footage, which was eventually circulated.
The ex-boyfriend sent footage of the assault to a boy the girl had gone out with that afternoon, with the message “Look at your chick,” according to law enforcement. After receiving such a message, the boy informed the girl’s family, who found her an hour after the attack.
“Before letting her leave, they made her swear on Allah not to say anything and that she should not tell anyone, neither her parents nor the police,” the girl’s mother told Le Parisien at the time.
The three-day trial, held behind closed doors, took place in a regional juvenile court in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.
During the proceedings, the judge explained that the severity of the sentence came “in view of their concerning personality traits and the immense social disturbance.”
“There is no doubt that [the victim] would not have been assaulted or raped if she had not been Jewish,” the judge said at the time.
The brutal crime sparked outrage throughout France and among the Jewish community, unfolding against the backdrop of a disturbing surge in antisemitism that has gripped the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
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Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa says he wants to play an NFL game in Jerusalem
(JTA) — The phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” is customarily spoken at the end of the Passover seder. But this past weekend its sentiment was conveyed at the end of a different kind of gathering: a low-scoring NFL game between the Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders.
“Shoot, it’d be pretty cool to go play in Jerusalem,” Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said postgame.
The game — which the Dolphins won 16-13 in overtime — was the NFL’s first in Spain, as part of a growing international series that’s seen contests played in England, Germany, Brazil, Ireland and Mexico.
Tagovailoa, a Christian, was asked where else he’d like to play after experiencing Madrid and previously Frankfurt, Germany. And his answer caught the eye of a high-ranking diplomat: Mike Huckabee, the United States Ambassador to Israel.
“Tua is right,” Huckabee wrote on X. “Bringing an NFL game to Israel is a great idea. Next year in Jerusalem…I like the sound of that.”
The suggestion comes amid an increasingly contested role for Israel as a host in global sporting events. EuroLeague basketball is supposed to return next month, and officials from the league are in Israel now to assess conditions before finalizing the plan.
Soccer, too, has been a fraught space for Israeli participation. The Union of European Football Associations had been set to vote on suspending Israel but paused the process after the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that began last month. Some want the organization to return to the deliberations, with Ireland’s soccer federation submitting a motion earlier this month to ban Israel from all UEFA competition for “organising clubs in occupied Palestinian territories without the consent of the Palestinian FA” and “the alleged failure of the IFA [Israel Football Association] to enforce an effective anti-racism policy.”
Tagovailoa’s comments on playing in Israel did not mark the first time speaking about the country during a postgame media availability. Following a home game on Oct. 15, 2023, Tagovailoa paused the press conference to talk about Hamas’ attack on Israel, which had taken place just over a week earlier.
“I didn’t really realize how bad things were in Israel,” Tagovailoa said. “And just wanted to bring to the attention for those who don’t necessarily understand things that are going on, that it really is bad.”
He added, “I don’t know what we’ve come to, but just my thoughts, my prayers are out with those people in Israel,” continuing on to note that there is “also the Ukraine and Russia war still going on as well.”
There has been no indication from the NFL about a potential game in Israel, though Robert Kraft — the American billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, who is Jewish and founded the Blue Square Alliance against Hate, formerly called the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism — sponsored the construction of the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem, which includes an American football field. The adjacent park, Gan Sacher, is routinely home to informal football and flag football games.
Meanwhile, the capacity of Jerusalem’s largest stadium, Teddy Stadium, is just 31,000. Attendance at the NFL’s international games have ranged from upwards of 86,000 to, at their lowest, 47,000.
The post Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa says he wants to play an NFL game in Jerusalem appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Pure Astonishment’ and other new Yiddish poems
דער פּאָעט באָריס קאַרלאָוו (פּעננאָמען פֿונעם ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר דובֿ־בער קערלער) ברענגט דאָ אַ קראַנץ נײַ־געשאַפֿענע לידער אויף פֿאַרשידענע טעמעס — די נאַטור, ארץ־ישׂראל, אַפֿילו „איי־אײַ“. לייענט און האָט הנאה! [רעד׳]
הוילער וווּנדער
ס׳איז אַוודאי שווער צו זאָגן
וועמען האָסטו מערער ליב:
צי דעם פֿרילינג ערבֿ טאָגן,
צי דעם אָסיען שאַרלעך טריב?
און אַפֿילו גרינעם זומער
האָסט אַוודאי גאָרניט פֿײַנט,
און מיט ווינטערדיקן קומער
גרייט ביסט אויכעט ווערן פֿרײַנד…
ס׳איז אוודאי שווער באַשליסן:
וועמען האָסטו מערער האָלט
צי דעם רעגן וואָס טוט גיסן
צי די זון מיט איר ריין גאָלד?
איינס איז קלאָר אַז אַלץ – באַזונדער,
צי אינאיינעם – הוילער וווּנדער!
*
דין־וחשבון
אַרײַנגעקוקט האָב איך אין מײַן עזבֿון
ווי ס׳קוקט אין סוכּהלע אַמאָל אַרײַן אַ יוון
און ניט געווען בכּוח תּופֿס זײַן גענויער
ווי ס׳הייבט זיך אָן דאָרט הימל
און וווּ ס׳עקט זיך רויערד
אַ הון קוקט אין בני־אָדם מעשׂה־אינדיק
און אויך מײַן קוק איז לעכערלעך און זינדיק
אַקעגן מײַנע שורהלעכס שיריים
וואָס פּיקן קרישקעס ערד
ניט שפּירנדיק שמיים
שמיים — דאָרט איז וואַסער, זאָגט מען,
סאַמע מים־חיים…
צו אַלדי רוחות! הילכט דעם טאַטנס זאָג עד־היום
פֿון יענע וואַסערדיקע הייכן וואָס באַגרינדן
דעם שטילן עכאָדיקן שמייכל
בײַסיק לינדן.
*
למען היושר
ייִדיש, ייִדיש תּרדוף
און ווען טוסט עס דעריאָגן
קריגסטו באַלד אַדעראויף
פֿון טיף ייִדישע יאָגן
און זיי זאָגן אַזוי
ניט אין רו פֿון נירוואַנע
זאָלסט דערגרייכן צום בלוי
וואָס ער טוט דיך מהנה
צו אַנטדעקן אַ וועלט
מיט פֿאַרשידענע וועלטן
נאָר דורך יאָגן צעהעלט
צווישן בענטשן און שעלטן
צווישן ברכה און בראָך
מיט אַ הייסער נשמה
איבער ווידער און נאָך
יעדער טראַף – שם און נאָמען.
*
סוף גאָטס פֿרײַטיק
ווען אומרו זיך צום סוף באַרויִקט
און ס׳ווערן אײַנגעשטילט די ברואים
נעם זינגען הלל קרועה־בלוע
פֿאַר דעם באַשעפֿערלס ישועה
פֿאַר דעם באַשעפֿערס גרויסע חסדים
און פֿאַר דעם שעפֿערס אַלטע בגדים
און ווען דער הלל זיך באַגרעניצט
מיט דעם באַשעפֿערס שטילן געניץ
מיט דעם באַשעפֿערלס אַ שמייכל
גראָד ווען דעם שעפֿער דאַרט דער שׂכל
פֿאַרגעס ניט אָפּבענטשן דעם גומל
באַג(ר)יסנדיק דעם גאַסט מיט בוימל
*
לידער מיט ארץ־ישראל
(Singing with Israel)
א.
ס׳איז אַוודאי זייער פּשוט
זאָגן — אַלץ איז שווער און קשה
אַז די וועלט ווערט באַלד פֿאַרברענט,
אַז מע הייבט שוין אויף די הענט,
אַז די האָפֿענונג שוין גוססט,
לעצטע כּוחות גייען אויסעט…
דאָך פֿונדעסטוועגן, מײַן חבֿר,
אַלע ווייסן דו ביסט בראַווער
פֿון די גרעסטע דרייסטסטע ריזן
אַלץ וואָס דו האָסט ניט באַוויזן
וועסט נאָך ניסימדיק באַווײַזן
ווײַל ביסט שטאַרקער נאָך פֿון אײַזן
און ביסט גיכער פֿון אי־מייל
גבֿורות־ישׂראל־מי־ימלל
ב.
די נשמה זינגט און ווייטיקט
נאָר איר ליד קלינגט אײַזן־שטאָל.
טיף געטראָפֿן, שווער באַליידיקט
זינגט זי דאָך מיט ארץ־ישׂראל –
ווידער פֿעלדער אירע גרינע
שטאַרק צעבלוטיקט נאָך אַמאָל…
נאָר די גרוילן באַלד אַנטרינען
ליכטיק ט׳ווערן באַרג און טאָל,
ווײַל דאָס ליד מיט האַרץ טוט שטימען,
דאָס געזאַנג – מיט ארץ־ישׂראל
*
וווּ לעבט אײַ־אײַ־אײַ?
כ׳האָב געפֿרעגט בײַם איי‐אײַ
וווּ עס לעבט אײַ‐אײַ‐אײַ
האָט ער גלײַך מיר געזאָגט
וווּ דער אײַ‐אײַ‐אײַ טאָגט
בלויז פֿאַרשוויגן פֿאַרדעכטיק
וווּ דער אײַ‐אײַ‐אײַ נעכטיקט
כ׳טו אַ שרײַ: דו, איי‐אײַ,
ביסט אַ שטיק שאַלאַפּײַ,
זאָג מיר גיך, כ׳מאָן מיט רעכט,
וווּ פֿאַרברענגט ער די נעכט?
ס׳טוט אָ זאָג דער איי‐אײַ:
אײַ‐אײַ‐אײַ פֿליט פֿאַרבײַ
איבער קלאַנג וואָס ווערט שטום
דאָרט וווּ ס׳דרעמלט די זון.
*
נײַע קלאַנגען
ס׳נעמען קלינגען העראַקליטיש
און היברידיש — נײַע קלאַנגען
און מע זאָגט: ס׳האָט מאַמע ייִדיש
יונגע הערצער שטאַרק געפֿאַנגען
און דו פֿרעגסט זיך: טאַקע ייִדיש?!
פֿרעגסט זיך אָן אַ שמץ באַנג און
ווערסט געפּלעפֿטערהייט פֿאַרחידושט
פֿון דעם קלעזמערישן טאַנגאָ –
כּלל ניט פֿאָטעריש, ניט מאַמיש,
ניט קיין היימיש לשון־קודש
אויך ניט חוצפּהדיק דינאַמיש
צו דער וועלט אַ פֿרעכער ״הודו״?!
מילא, זאָל דאָס אויך זײַן ייִדיש
צי מיט גראַמען, צי אָן גראַמען
בעת אין טײַך קלינגט העראַקליטיש:
אוי, אַ וויי איז צו דער מאַמען!
*
אַ לידל פֿונעם אַלטן גולם
כ’האָב אַרײַנגעקוקט אין סוואַרבע
און דורך תּיבות דאָרט דערזען
אַז דו וועסט צו מיר נאָך קומען,
ממש קומען ווען־ניט־ווען!
כ’האָב אַרויסגעכאַפּט אַ גמרא,
ברייט צעעפֿנט און וואָדען? –
וועסט צו מיר, שטייט דאָרט אַ סבֿרא,
ווידער קומען ווען־ניט־ווען!
כ’האָב גענומען הערן תּורה
פֿון דעם הייליקן בעל־שם
איז ער אויכעט מיך מעורר:
אַז אָט קומסטו ווען־ניט־ווען!
שטיי איך, שוין אַן אַלטער גולם,
שטאַרק צעטומלט און פֿאַרקלעמט:
זאָג, אויף דעם, צי יענעם עולם
וועסטו קומען ווען־ניט־ווען?
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אַצינדערט
אַצינדערט מעג מען זינגען שיר־השירים
אַזוי פֿיל מילדע לאַסקע רינט אין ווערטער
וואָס שטייען אויפֿעט שטײַף צו מילדקייט אירער
דער געטלעך פרײַער שכינה אויסגעקלערטער
פֿון מינדסטן פּגם און פֿלעקיקן חיסרון
אין ריינקייט אויסגעוואַשן, אויסגעבאָדן
ווען אַלץ וואָס מ׳מעג, וועלן די ווערטער טאָרן
מיט שבֿח צום איינציק לעבעדיקן אָדון
און ער, דער שבֿח, וועט שפּאַלטן שווערע הימלען
צום סאַמע האַרץ פֿון דופֿקדיקן לעבן
און וואַסערדיקער הייליקייטס געווימל
וועט צו דער ערד־און־באָדן פֿלײַסיק שטרעבן
געדענק און בענטש דאָס ליד פֿון אַלע לידער
און קוק אַוועק פֿון נישט וואָס אייביק נישטיקט
און ווען דײַן ווערטערגאַנג ווערט לויזער, מידער
און ס׳רינט אַוועק דער אַפּעטיט צום פֿרישטיק
דערמאָן זיך אין דעם חן פֿון גרויסן חסד
דערקוויק זיך מיט דערוואַכונג וואָס שטײַגט איבער
די אותיות צוויי פּיי נון טיף אויסגעטעסעט
אויף לוחות פֿון דײַן האַרץ ווי שאָטנס טריבע
און זינג און זאָג מיט האָפֿערדיקע קלאַנגען
צעוואַקלדיק דעם מיזמורס שטײַפֿע כּללים
מיט שטורעמדיקע דראַנגען און פאַֿרלאַנגען
צעשטערנדיק דער וועלטס הבֿל־הבֿלים
The post ‘Pure Astonishment’ and other new Yiddish poems appeared first on The Forward.