Local Jewish leaders support denunciations of anti-Semitism

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After a rash of anti-Semitic incidents across the nation, including multiple bomb threats to Jewish community centers, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence publicly denounced acts and statements against Jews and Israel last week.

“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and painful and a very sad remember of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Trump said, after he visited the National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 21.

Twice in the past month JCCs have been targets of threats, including the Friedberg JCC in Oceanside. None of the JCCs have been harmed.
Threats against synagogues and JCCs began months ago, said Rabbi Steve Graber, the spiritual leader of Temple Hillel, a Conservative Jewish congregation in North Woodmere. “I believe that the president’s words were extremely important for him to say and should have been said weeks ago, while he was still campaigning,” Graber said. “Who knows what affect President Trump’s words will have, being that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic actscannot be counted as people who have normal and reasonable reactions.” 

About 200 headstones were damaged at Chesed Shel Emith Cemetery, a historic Jewish cemetery in Fenton, Mo. In an act of solidarity, Pence condemned the vandalism, and then put on work gloves and helped rake up debris there.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a yearly political forum attended by conservative activists and politicians, Pence addressed the U.S.’s view of Israel as an ally. “Israel’s fight is our fight,” he said on Feb. 23. “Her cause is our cause … and under President Trump, America will stand with Israel.”

Rabbi Hershel Billett, spiritual leader of Young Israel of Woodmere, the largest Orthodox synagogue on the South Shore, was in the Jewish state last week, and said he was “happy” to hear what Trump said, especially after the president’s omission of Jewish people from his International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.

“At the press conference when the reporter for Ami magazine asked [Trump] a question about anti-Semitism in America, which was very respectful of the president, the president trashed him and failed to answer his question,” Billett said. “[Trump] took it as a personal attack on himself, which it was not. So I was very relieved to hear a strong statement from the president condemning any and all forms of anti-Semitism and racism."

Billett referred to the Feb. 16 incident when Jake Turx, an Orthodox Jewish reporter for Ami, asked a question about threats at the JCCs. Trump said he is the “least anti-Semitic person … the least racist person,” and then attacked the media, again. He called the question “insulting” and said that the reporter should take what Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said about Trump being a supporter of Israel at face value.

“President Trump has an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren, hence I believe his condemnation is very sincere and based on personal conviction,” said Rabbi Yotav Eliach, principal of Rambam Mesvita Maimonides High School in Lawrence. “I am assuming the FBI is using all of its resources to see which groups and people are behind theses attacks and threats.”

A foundation of Judaism is to treat a stranger as you would a neighbor with justice, kindness and respect, said Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum of Temple Israel of Lawrence. “We must stand up and speak against hatred,” the Reform synagogue’s spiritual leader said, adding that federal money has helped put security measures in place. “Hatred comes from ignorance and we must do a better job of educating people, especially now.