WATCH: Rabbi Crashes D.C. Council To Protest ‘Dangerous’ Anti-Semitism
Image by youtube
A prominent Washington, D.C. rabbi broke into a city council meeting on Tuesday to decry officials’ lack of action against anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, the leader of the modern Orthodox congregation Ohev Shalom, was outraged over the Council not censuring councilman Trayon White after he claimed last month that a snowstorm was caused by the Rothschild family — a reference to an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
White later apologized for his statement, but was later criticized for leaving early from a specially-arranged tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and for giving funds from his constituent services account to the Nation of Islam, run by the anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan.
“I cried in pain because you endangered my children,” Herzfeld shouted, filmed by Washington Post reporter Fenit Nirappil. “This is unacceptable. You know better. I say shame on you.”
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld crashes Council breakfast to criticize them for not censuring @TrayonWhite pic.twitter.com/1COdtPF7AA
— Fenit Nirappil (@FenitN) 1 במאי 2018
The White issue was compounded further when a “unity rally” organized last week by an employee of mayor Murial Bowser featured a speaker calling councilwoman Elissa Silverman a “fake Jew.”
The council’s other Jewish member, Brianne Nadeau, said at the meeting that she and Bowser are coordinating a May 16 event to learn about Jewish and African American histories, Nirappil tweeted.
Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
