Benjamin Ginsburg spent Wednesday night just like he does every other week, dancing with friends to live country music at the Borderline Bar & Grill. He heard two loud bangs ring out, but didn’t realize what was happening. An instant later, he dove for his life as chaos enveloped the dance hall in Thousand Oaks,…
In response to the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, we asked three of the Forward’s Campus Ambassadors to tell us how they are dealing with the tragedy in their universities and home communities. Their responses are below. What was your reaction when you heard the news of the shooting in Pittsburgh? Where were you and…
Eleven people were tragically killed last month in Pittsburgh when a gunman attacked the Tree of Life Synagogue in an apparent anti-Semitic hate crime. Reports indicate that the synagogue had created a security plan and had practiced active-shooter drills, yet Tree of Life had its doors open during Saturday’s Shabbat service. This is an extremely…
On October 27, 11 Jews were murdered at the hands of a white nationalist named Robert Bowers. When I heard the news of this horrific defilement, I felt paralyzed with fear and despair. I cried and said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, as my partner held me. Upon hearing the news of the attack,…
On Shabbat morning October 27, I was visiting my former community of Boca Raton, Florida for Shabbat. I was running a Teen Shabbaton in the local Synagogue, and Congressman Deutch was the featured after-lunch speaker. Minutes before, he had told me privately about the shooting in Pittsburgh, and I had asked him not to disturb…
The United States midterm elections did not quite yield the much-anticipated “blue wave” that Democrats had hoped for. The Democrats flipped just enough seats to take back the House of Congress, while losing their most high-profile races, including Beto O’Rourke’s race in Texas and Andrew Gillum’s in Florida (Stacey Abrams in Georgia has not yet…
Searching “oven” on forum-site Reddit will mostly call up threads on pizza. But doing the same on Gab, the site the alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter used to express anti-Semitic views, brings up “Jews,” “Holocaust” and “Hitler.” Twitter user Jason Baumgartner, who owns a site dedicated to detecting hate speech on social media, analyzed “oven” as…
At no time in the last half century have American Jews had more of a reason to worry about their safety. As the campaign of Donald J. Trump gained momentum in 2016, the dark, wriggling fringes of the white nationalist right molted and spread new wings, incubated by a candidate who nursed their anger and…
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