Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Florida Rabbi Defends Using Mosque as Polling Station

— A southern Florida rabbi spoke up on behalf of a mosque delisted as a polling station.

Palm Beach County removed the Islamic Center of Boca Raton as a polling station after receiving complaints from voters, WPTV reported on Monday.

Speaking up on the mosque’s behalf was Rabbi Barry Silver, the rabbi at Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor in neighboring Boynton Beach.

“There’s a lot of violent Muslims around, and we need to be aware of that and we need to be on guard about that,” Silver told the TV station. “But to suggest that every mosque is pure evil and every other religious institution is pure good is just not accurate and it’s prejudice and it’s wrong.”

Silver said that if the mosque was decommissioned as a polling site so should churches and synagogues.

County officials said the move to a local library was because of complaints from the public, WPTV said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.