In the end, the hostages at Beth Israel freed themselves. Speaking to CBS News Monday morning, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who was taken hostage along with two congregants on Shabbat, said as the hostage-taker grew increasingly agitated in the tenth hour of the standoff, he saw an opportunity for escape and threw a chair at him….
Nikki Fried, a Democratic candidate in the Florida governor’s race, doubled down on Sunday on her recent comparison of Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to Adolf Hitler. In an interview with the Florida Roundup podcast on Friday, Fried, who is Jewish, suggested DeSantis is “trying to govern over the people” in the same way Hitler rose…
In the aftermath of the hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas at the Congregation Beth Israel, religious groups are coming together to condemn the actions of Malik Faisal Akram, the British national behind Saturday’s crisis. “I swear to my lord and maker, that there is no act that can justify going into a holy place of…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden removed from a commission that monitors Holocaust sites a Trump appointee with ties to white supremacists. In a letter obtained by a reporter for Politico, the White House asked Darren Beattie on Jan. 14 to resign from the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad by the end…
(JTA) — Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, the rabbi who was held hostage at his synagogue Saturday along with three others, spoke out about the experience for the first time in a Facebook post Sunday morning. He wrote: I am thankful and filled with appreciation for All of the vigils and prayers and love and support, All…
(JTA) — The University of Michigan Board of Regents fired the school’s president, Mark Schlissel, over an alleged relationship he conducted with a subordinate employee at the university. The news was announced Saturday in a letter posted to the university’s website along with a trove of emails and texts between Schlissel and the employee from…
Cytron-Walker appeared to be trying to calm down the man holding him hostage.
(JTA) — Jews who pray according to traditional liturgy each morning recite a line that is usually symbolic: “Blessed are you, God, who frees the captive.” On Saturday that line became painfully meaningful as a number of Jewish worshippers were taken hostage during Shabbat services at their Texas synagogue. And as the afternoon stretched into…
As the hostage situation at a synagogue near Fort Worth, Texas, continued into Saturday night, Jewish leaders shared calls for solidarity and prayers for the hostages and their community. I’m monitoring the situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. I’m praying for a peaceful resolution, for those being held, for the first responders, for…
If you want to understand why a man bent on freeing a Pakistani woman convicted of shooting American soldiers in 2008 would take four Jews hostage in 2022, you need to understand the conspiratorial mindset of a Brandeis University graduate named Aafia Siddiqui. The man who burst into Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on…
(JTA) — (Cleveland Jewish News via JTA) – For the nearly 13,000 students at Ohio’s Youngstown State University, Jacob Ari Labendz is the face of Jewish studies. The history professor, who came to the school in 2017, heads the school’s Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies. This year, he’s teaching three of its six courses….
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