One In 10 Christians Say Their Pastors Said Negative Things About Jews

November 15, 2019 By Ben Sales

(JTA) — Thirty-nine percent of American Christians who attend church have heard their clergy speak out about Jews, and 9 percent have heard them say something negative.

That’s according to a new study published Friday by the Pew Research Center on religion and public life.

The survey found that American Jews were ambivalent toward the role of religion in public life.

Some other numbers among the churchgoing Christians:

20 percent have heard their clergy speak positively about Jews.
8 percent have heard both positive and negative things from clergy.
1 percent have heard mostly negative things.
9 percent have heard neither positive nor negative things from their clergy about Jews.

The survey included responses from 6,384 adults, including 3,886 Christians and 290 Jews. The overall margin of error was 1.7 percent overall, 2.1 for Christians and 8.9 for Jews.

Here are some Jewish numbers:

47 percent Jews say religious organizations do more good than harm, 31 percent say they do more harm than good, and 21 percent say they “don’t make much difference.”
Most Jews — 81 percent — believe religion’s influence is declining in American life. Thirty-five percent of American Jews say that’s a bad thing and 25 percent say it’s a good thing.
58 percent say religion has too much influence over American politics. Sixty-nine percent say houses of worship should stay out of politics.

Christians are more supportive of religious influence in public life: 67 percent say religious organizations do more good than harm, 58 percent say declining religious influence is a bad thing and 21 percent say religion has too much influence on politics.

Cop Investigated For Dangling Pepperoni Pizza Over Jewish Colleague’s Food

November 15, 2019 By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — A British police sergeant will face a disciplinary hearing after he allegedly dangled a slice of pepperoni pizza over the food of a Jewish fellow officer.

A piece of the pepperoni then fell into the food of the Jewish officer and he could not eat his meal, the Sussex Police said in a notice on its website.

The misconduct hearing for Gary Jacobs is scheduled for Nov. 19 and reportedly could last two days.

The incident occurred in March. Jacobs knew the other officer was Jewish, according to the police.

Sussex is located south of London on England’s coast.

Facebook Will Not Let Laura Loomer Back On Even Though She’s Running For Office

November 15, 2019 By Molly Boigon

Far-right activist Laura Loomer will not be allowed to return to Facebook while running for Congress, according to CNN.

“People who have been banned from our services aren’t able to set up a new account even if they’re running for office,” a spokesperson told the network’s Oliver Darcy.

Loomer is banned from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Paypal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Uber and Lyft for violating their terms of service, in many cases by using hateful and Islamophobic speech.

She acknowledged in a fundraising email that she is using her congressional campaign in part to return to Twitter and Facebook, according to the Daily Beast.

“I can’t wait to see the reactions of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey as they have to reinstate a ‘dangerous individual’ to their platforms,” Loomer wrote.

Earlier this month, the Palm Beach Post reported Loomer raised about $50,000 more than her opponent, incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel.

Molly Boigon is the investigative reporter at the Forward. Contact her at boigon@forward.com or follow her on Twitter @MollyBoigon

Michael Bloomberg Apologizes For Being ‘Disrespectful’ To Women

November 15, 2019 By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is said to be preparing to become a Democratic presidential candidate, apologized for using “disrespectful” language about women.

Bloomberg, who is Jewish, apologized through a spokesman in a New York Times article published Thursday.

“Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong,” Stu Loeser, the spokesperson, said in the statement Thursday. “He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life.”

The rhetoric appeared in a booklet that employees of Bloomberg’s private firm gave him in 1990. It contained quotes attributed to him.

“If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of Bloomingdale’s,” Bloomberg was quoted as saying in the booklet, titled “The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg.”

Bloomberg also joked, according to the booklet, that the Bloomberg terminal, a reference to a product produced by Bloomberg’s digital data company, could “do everything,” including oral sex. “I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business,” Bloomberg is quoted saying.

Some of Bloomberg’s controversial statements became campaign fodder during his successful 2001 race for mayor, running on the Republican and Independence Party lines.

Bloomberg came under fire after being quoted in a 1998 deposition that he’d believe a rape claim if there was “an unimpeachable third-party witness”. A saleswoman claimed a Bloomberg manager raped her. That’s “not what he believes,” Loeser said Thursday.

NASA Renamed A Planet-Like Object Because Its Original Name Had Nazi Ties

November 14, 2019 By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — NASA has renamed the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft after it was criticized for calling it by a name with Nazi connotations.

It will now be called Arrokoth, which means “sky” in the Native American Powhatan language.

The trans-Neptunian object’s official designation is 2014 MU69, but NASA scientists considered some 34,000 names as part of a public competition in 2017 before calling the icy rock object Ultima Thule.

Ultima Thule comes from classical and medieval literature and means any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world.” But NASA apparently did not realize that Ultima Thule [pronounced TOO-leh) was a term used by the forerunners of the Nazi Party and is still used by some extreme right groups as part of their mythology.

In Germany, extreme right occultists believed in a historical Thule, also called Hyperborea, as the ancient homeland of the Aryan race. The Thule Society, founded in 1918 around this and other occultist beliefs, later became the Nazi Party.

The new official name, which was ratified by the International Astronomical Union, was announced in a ceremony Tuesday at NASA headquarters, AFP reported.

“The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. New Horizons is the name of the spacecraft that flew by the cosmic body to survey it.

NASA told AFP that Ultima Thule was only a nickname.

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