Uncategorized
This Jewish New York City Council candidate has a prolific passion: serial sperm donation
(New York Jewish Week) — Jonathan David Rinaldi, 44, is a Republican who is running to represent New York’s District 24, which encompasses the Queens neighborhoods of Kew Gardens, Fresh Meadows, Briarwood and Jamaica. This week, he made headlines for protesting outside a motel in his district that, he claimed, was housing newly arrived migrants.
But last November, he gained local fame for a different reason. Rinaldi was featured in a post on Humans of New York, the viral social media project in which photographer Brandon Stanton posts portraits of New Yorkers he meets on the street, along with stories they relate in their own voices.
Rinaldi’s story was particularly eyebrow-raising: He said he had fathered at least 12 children over the course of two years through sperm donation — but not via sperm banks that pay donors, vet their health and limit their offspring. And he said he planned to keep going, in part because of his Jewish identity.
He said he was driven in part by his Jewish identity. “I explain to each [woman]: ‘This child will be born into a larger family. I have eighteen other children.’” Rinaldi said in the caption. “I’d like as many as God will give me. Why put your entire bloodline into one child when you can spread it out? Eighteen is a holy number in Judaism. And the next one is 36, so I’ll reassess then.”
In the Humans of New York post, Rinaldi detailed the process (“Fresh is better than frozen”) and said that he’s had sex with some of the women and wants to remain involved in their lives. “I’m what they call a ‘known donor,’” he said. “Everything is kinda handshake. I don’t charge the mothers. And they don’t expect any financial support.”
The post garnered a string of negative reactions from social media users. In response, Stanton wrote on Instagram that “stories from people you may not identify with, or even like, were a common part of HONY pre-pandemic. And will be again now that I’m back on the street.”
The post did not identify Rinaldi, but he confirmed to the New York Jewish Week over the phone that he was the person in the portrait and post. “I was interviewed once,” Rinaldi said. “It was taken out of context. I had a long conversation, a random conversation with somebody on the street.”
Rinaldi also confirmed that he donates his sperm — and has attempted to square that practice with Jewish tradition. He said that he has spoken with a rabbi to “try and figure out how to be as kosher as I possibly can and have as many children as the Bible commands,” and gave the name of a local Chabad rabbi. The rabbi declined to comment about Rinaldi but confirmed their relationship.
“It’s our responsibility as Jews blessed by God to have children,” said Rinaldi, who also has three children from a previous marriage. “Some of us are doing it extremely kosher, the way it’s supposed to be, you have a nice Jewish wife, you go to temple every day. For me, it didn’t work out that way.”
The Torah contains the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply,” which rabbis have traditionally interpreted as an imperative to have children. Rabbis have prohibited sperm donation, however, in part due to prohibitions on masturbation and on having children with an unknown father. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a leading 20th-century authority, wrote that it’s preferable for Jewish women who cannot use their husband’s sperm to use non-Jewish sperm for artificial insemination in order to avoid accidental incest in future generations.
Rinaldi said that he began donating sperm when the city was locked down due to the spread of COVID-19, and that he first donated to a friend. From there, he said, word spread of his donations. Rinaldi is what is called a “known donor,” or someone whose identity is known to the recipient and, potentially, their children. Known donors are legal in the United States, but serial sperm donation is discouraged by many countries, in large part because of the risk of biologically related offspring procreating together in the future. The Netherlands set up systems to curb a serial donor who fathered at least 100 children, while Israel barred an American Jewish man dubbed “the Sperminator” because of his extensive efforts to procreate from impregnating more women there. Ari Nagel’s own progeny tally neared 100 after a prolific pandemic, he revealed in 2021.
Rinaldi, too, said the pandemic had spurred his donations.
“At no point did I ever go to a sperm bank,” Rinaldi said. “At no point did I ever intend to do this. We were all at home, shut down. A lot of people desired families. This is not your typical sperm donor situation. … I was just blessed to even have the opportunity. I didn’t do it for money. I didn’t ask for anything. I just wanted to help families.”
He wouldn’t confirm how many children he has through sperm donation, though in the Humans of New York caption, he’s quoted as saying he had fathered 12 over the previous two years — and, at the time, three more were on the way. In an interview Wednesday with the New York Jewish Week, he responded to a question about how many children he has by repeating an idea he had alluded to in the caption: that according to Jewish tradition, the number 18 represents life.
“Eighteen is a holy number,” Rinaldi said in the interview. “It’s just what God has blessed me with. I’m doing this because I don’t believe in abortion. I am pro-life.”
Opposing abortion isn’t the only right-wing position Rinaldi holds. In an interview, he railed against the COVID-19 vaccine and compared vaccine requirements to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, a common line of criticism at the time. “You could have just worn a yellow unvaccinated star on your shirt,” he said, adding, “We were literally one thing away from them coming up to rounding up the unvaccinated.” He also said transgender people are “against Torah principles” and said schools are “not teaching kids God.”
On Tuesday, he and a group of Republican activists showed up at a Kew Gardens motel to protest migrants coming to the city, even though a lawyer for the motel said the owner is “not interested in signing a contract” to house migrants.
In District 24, Rinaldi will run against Democratic Council member Jim Gennaro, who has represented the district for more than a decade.
Rinaldi, who grew up in New York City, said his grandmother escaped Poland to Argentina during World War II. His grandfather also left Moldova at the time. Although both countries were occupied by the Nazis or their allies, Rinaldi said his grandparents were “against the tyranny of the left at that time.”
Rinaldi said he studied for his bar mitzvah at Yeshivas Ohr HaChaim, an Orthodox institution in Kew Gardens, and attended City College of New York in uptown Manhattan where he studied architecture, which is also reflected on a LinkedIn page that appears to belong to him.
He later worked in construction and design for over a decade and appeared on the HGTV reality television show “Million Dollar Contractor.”
When it comes to his sperm donation, however, Rinaldi is less comfortable being in the public eye, despite the Humans of New York post. “My lifestyle is nobody’s business,” he said.
“I am what it looks like when you don’t abort children,” Rinaldi said. “Let’s just focus on the issues if we can. I’m going to do the right thing for the community. My personal business is my personal business.”
Back in the Humans of New York post, Rinaldi suggested that he hoped to expand his personal business. He mused about practices that Jewish tradition has, for the past millennium, frowned upon: “My ultimate goal is to find two or three of the mothers who will be sister wives, because I’m gonna need help with all this,” he said. “But I know one thing: It will never be boring.”
—
The post This Jewish New York City Council candidate has a prolific passion: serial sperm donation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Catholic University of America Under Fire for Requiring ‘Opposing Viewpoint’ for Combating Antisemitism Event
A general view of the Catholic University of America (CUA) campus in Washington, DC. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Catholic University of America (CUA) is being criticized for denying the Students Supporting Israel campus organization approval to host events on combating antisemitism and defending Israeli security unless it agrees to feature “opposing viewpoints.”
The episode began earlier this month when Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a national organization that has faced opposition from CUA before, publicly complained that the university refused to sanction both an event in which US Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) would discuss “ending campus antisemitism” and another featuring an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier with experience in resisting jihadist terrorism along Israel’s security fence with the West Bank.
According to university policy, civil dialogue on the contemporary issues can’t be held unless it includes “speakers representing both sides.” While the policy purports to promote intellectual exchange, critics say it has the effect of compelling speech or censoring it altogether by imposing conditions on free speech to which no group could agree without undermining its mission.
In SSI’s case, the group has said that CUA’s policy demands the participation of anti-Israel, even antisemitic voices who would leverage a speaking engagement to utter dehumanizing opinions about Jews or propaganda confected by the Hamas terrorist organization and other groups which seek to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
The case has now become the cause of the Foundation for Individual Right and Expression (FIRE), a group which has at times disagreed with the pro-Israel community’s outlook on free speech issues.
“While CUA is a private university and therefore not bound by the First Amendment, it is legally and morally bound to adhere to the institutional commitments it has voluntarily made to protect students’ freedom of speech,” FIRE said on March 18 in a blistering demand letter to the university. “Forcing student organizations ‘to host or accommodate another speaker’s message,’ even in the service of providing a greater range of views, inevitable ‘alters the expressive content’ of the event. Having made these free speech commitments, it is no more appropriate for CUA to require Students Supporting Israel to host speakers who oppose Israel than it would be for the federal or state government to force CUA to couple its institutional pro-Catholic messages with anti-Catholic viewpoints.”
This is not the first time that the Catholic University of America has allegedly trampled on the rights of pro-Israel advocates.
In October, it allegedly used bureaucratic obstruction to suppress Jewish grieving and commemoration of the children, women, and men whom Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel by canceling a memorial display that was approved in August.
According to the school’s SSI chapter, university officials cited an arcane policy which proscribes flying the flag of any foreign nation, except for that of the Vatican, on campus. However, SSI maintains that it was selectively applied to it with malice, citing that anti-Israel organizations have flown the Palestinian flag on campus numerous times, with and without official permission, as have many other organizations.
At the time, The Algemeiner requested photographic evidence of SSI’s claims of selective enforcement, to which the group responded by sending several pictures showing dozens of foreign flags flying on the campus, including those representing the nations of Brazil, France, and Ukraine. The group added that after canceling SSI’s memorial for the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 atrocities, university staff marched toward the event spaces and dismantled everything SSI had set up and topped off the act by stuffing Israeli flags into a plastic bag, which was left on a random office chair as an afterthought.
On Monday, SSI president Felipe Avila told The Algemeiner that CUA has a pattern of squelching pro-Israel speech.
“These event details are not isolated incidents; they represent a systemic pattern of discrimination we have faced since our founding,” Avila said. “From the dismantling of our Oct. 7 memorial to the unequal enforcement of event guidelines today, administrators consistently place insurmountable hurdles in front of our students. We should not be forced to platform competing viewpoints as a condition of discussing our own community’s safety and security.”
Citing the Second Vatican Council’s rejection of antisemitism in the Catholic Church, he added, “Students Supporting Israel will continue to vigorously defend our right to speak out against antisemitism, in the very spirit of the Church’s own teaching in Nostra Aetate.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
London Jewish Community Feels ‘Anxious’ but ‘Resilient’ as It Prepares for Potential Future Attacks
A person holds a sign near the scene where four ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
The Jewish community in London is feeling “very anxious” while trying to stay vigilant and prepared for potential incidents in the future after four Hatzalah emergency vehicles were destroyed in an antisemitic arson attack last week, the president of the UK’s main Jewish umbrella organization said on Sunday.
“We’ve had two-and-a half-years of very high levels of antisemitism, obviously, the deadly attack at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester just in October, and now this incident, an arson attack in the heart of London’s Jewish community in Golders Green,” Phil Rosenberg of the Board of Deputies of British Jews said during an appearance on “BBC London Politics.”
“It is nonetheless a very resilient and proud community, and we are looking at how we push back and build back stronger,” Rosenberg added.
Roughly 150,000 Jewish people live in London.
Rosenberg, a deputy at a north London synagogue and former Labour councillor in Camden, was also asked about the British government’s response to the arson attack. He said that, with help from the government, the Jewish community in London is now equipped with specialist kits designed to help during future attacks, including equipment that could help with chemical exposure. The equipment was provided through a £28.4 million government grant to the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish charity that safeguards the safety and security of Jews across the UK.
“On the way here, I was looking at my WhatsApps. I saw one come in from my synagogue, and it was talking not about the great services we put on, the outreach to local communities, the wonderful art and charity that we do, but about a series of kits we’ve just received that will help the community if there’s an attack to stem the flow of blood, or if there’s a chemical attack. That is the situation we’re facing,” Rosenberg explained.
“It’s sad that it’s needed, though,” he added. “Because what we need to do is prevent this and create a situation where those things are not the things we’re talking about, and those are not the things we need. We want to be celebrating the Jewish community, and all communities in this city, and not [be] in fear of those sorts of attacks happening.”
Last year, there were over 1,800 antisemitic incidents in London, according to data compiled by CST. When asked if the Jewish community believes the government is doing enough to tackle the issue of antisemitism, Rosenberg said the response is “mixed.” He noted the speed at which the British government provided replacements vehicles for the Hatzalah ambulances destroyed last week and other moves by the government, like proscribing the pro-Hamas group Palestine Action.
“The government still needs to go further,” Rosenberg added, before calling for British leaders to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to take more action to combat hatred flourishing on social media, among other issues.
“We’ve seen in our society a growth of extremism … and we are very concerned that we are seeing society being pulled apart,” he said. “We need to come together, among all communities, to push back against hatred in all its forms, including antisemitism, and marginalize those extremists.”
Uncategorized
Antisemitic Acts in Australia Persist With Car Attack, Statue Vandalism
A suspect commits vandalism outside the Victorian Trades Hall on March 6. Photo: Facebook screenshot.
Law enforcement in Australia has launched investigations into multiple recent antisemitic incidents, including a car attack on Hasidic men on Saturday and the vandalism earlier this month of a statue honoring an Australian Jewish feminist.
The Victoria branch of the Community Security Group (CSG), an organization focused on protecting local Jews, released a statement on Saturday alerting the community of an incident in Melbourne “on Glen Eira Road, Ripponlea, where a vehicle swerved towards community members while occupants shouted antisemitic remarks.”
The CSG reported that “Victoria Police patrols were active in the area and responded to the scene rapidly. There are no reports of physical injuries. CSG is liaising closely with police and continuing to monitor the situation.”
Ripponlea has a significant Haredi population with members of the Adass Israel community comprising 15.2 percent of the population. The neighborhood has seen other recent antisemitic incidents, including the bombing of the group’s synagogue in December 2024.
The suspects — four women — allegedly drove a black Hyundai stolen on Wednesday from a home in the Caulfield suburb. Victoria police confirmed they had opened an investigation and received reports of other incidents involving the antisemitic occupants driving erratically and throwing eggs at people while yelling abuse.
“Those responsible are brazen, bold, and appear to act with impunity,” Naomi Levin, the CEO of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV), told The Australian.
On Friday, Victoria Police announced the arrests of seven women alleged to have vandalized the statue of Zelda D’Aprano — a Jewish Australian feminist — outside the Victorian Trades Hall on March 6 at approximately 11:00 am.
In a statement, law enforcement described the women as part of an activist group and listed their ages as ranging between 34 and 71. The police stated that security footage showed that the vandals pulled out umbrellas to conceal their identities as they sprayed black and red paint on the statue. They also hung a “difficult woman” apron.
D’Aprano worked as an advocate for women’s rights from the 1950s through the 1980s and co-founded the Women’s Action Committee in 1970. She was known to have chained herself to a government building in 1969 to advocate equal pay for women. Her statue was unveiled in 2023.
The activists face charges of “criminal damage, behaving in a riotous manner in a public place, marking graffiti on a residence without consent, recklessly damaging part of a registered place without a permit, and refusing to leave scheduled public place after a warning.” An eighth suspect remains at large.
So far, the only named suspect is Jemima Demanuele, 34, who appeared in a Melbourne court on Friday and was reportedly on bail for another protesting offense.
Victoria Police officer Tiffany Lamesta pushed back on releasing Demanuele, saying that “the accused has been given bail for the last incident but is showing no respect for court orders” and warning that “police believe the accused will continue to offend if she’s granted bail.”
Demanuele is currently on paid leave from her position at St Vincent’s Hospital as staff conduct a Fair Work investigation.
Magistrate Michelle Hodgson granted Demanuele bail and instructed her that “there is no issue with protest, but it must be lawful, it must not endanger the safety and welfare of other persons and it must not cause property damage.”
Police have not yet stated a motive for the vandalism. Photographs from the scene show multiple members of the group wearing black and white keffiyehs, the symbol of anti-Israel militancy popularized by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Antisemitism surged in Australia following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel. On Feb. 24, Australia announced the creation of a Royal Commission led by retired judge Virginia Bell to investigate antisemitism in the country following the murder of 15 Jews at Bondi Beach in December.
Bell said that the commission needs to “investigate the security arrangements for that event, and to report on whether our intelligence and law enforcement agencies performed to maximum effectiveness.”
Australia’s intelligence authorities revealed last year that the Islamic regime in Iran had directed antisemitic acts in the country using cryptocurrency to compensate criminals, prompting the expulsion of Iran’s Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi and three other officials.
On Friday, the CSG and JCCV released an annual report on antisemitism in Australia’s Victoria state, documenting 564 incidents, the highest number ever recorded.
“Behind each of these reports is a Jewish person,” Levin said. “A child in school uniform abused on a school excursion, a man in a kippah verbally abused on public transport, a worshipper arriving at synagogue to find hateful words painted on its walls, a business owner wiping racist symbols off their window before opening for the day.”