News

A barrage of gunfire, with hundreds of rounds fired, concluded around 2:00 p.m. in the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey, on Tuesday afternoon as a deadly shooting left four victims lifeless inside a kosher supermarket, including three frum Jewish members – Reb Shlome Friedman, Mrs. Leah Mindel Ferentz, and Mrs. Chava Gold, according to local Hatzalah volunteers and the JBN Jewish media outlet. Fifteen-year veteran Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals was also deceased, following a probable gun or drug deal gone awry at nearby Bay View Cemetery just after noon. Misaskim founder Rabbi Jack Meyer was on the scene alongside Chesed Shel Emes and NJ State Police Chaplain Rabbi Abe Friedman to ensure proper procedures were followed for the Jewish victims. Two other officers and three others were injured. The suspects were found dead in the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City.

A week after the massive rally against hate that marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, a smaller but equally vocal demonstration took place at MacDonald Park in Forest Hills, put together by young political activists in the Queens Jewish community. “Never did I imagine that in a modern and accepting society that I would be speaking to denounce anti-Semitism in New York City, the most diverse place in the world,” said organizer David Aronov.

At the White House Chanukah Party on Wednesday, December 11, President Donald Trump hosted Chabad rabbis and rubbed elbows with Jewish-American patriots like Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kraft, Rosalee Glass (a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor), Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer, and Jewish members of Congress.

Every year around this time, we all ask the same basic question: “What do I want to give for shalach manos this year?” But no one really asks, “What do the people around me want to get?”  Isn’t it about the receiver? 

The cold temperature did not deter nearly 25,000 people from expressing solidarity against anti-Semitism in a historic rally that began in downtown Manhattan. Billed as the “No Hate, No Fear Solidarity March,” the rally kicked off at Foley Square, with a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, concluding with speeches and performers at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn. “Thousands of New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge today to send a message: We have no tolerance for anti-Semitism and hate,” Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted, with a video of the march.

In a cavernous conference hall at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Downtown DC last week, over 18,000 delegates from across the US and Israel and around the world thundered with cheers over highly partisan addresses by an all-star roster of Trump administration-affiliated speakers, including Vice President Mike Pence, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. During their speeches and others, the crowd gave standing ovations for mentions of President Donald Trump, while references to leading Democrats like Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Representative Ilhan Omar, and former President Barack Obama drew resounding boos.