Free Republic

On a scorching afternoon in mid-July, clergy members gathered outside a small unmarked building tucked away in a business complex in North Austin. They filed inside, up the stairs, and into the waiting room of the Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic. There, Christian and Jewish leaders stood in a circle and sang phrases in chorus: Hallelujah. Do not fear. You are loved. Bless this room. Bless this womb. The 20 or so people had assembled not to protest, but to bless the clinic, burning sage in the exam rooms and reading patient and staff testimonials. “We’re gathered together today to...

Thursday on the campaign trail, 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) described President Donald Trump’s comments about Jewish people voting for Democrats as “what you might see in the Third Reich.” O’Rourke said, “So this is additional cruelty, another attack on immigrants from a president who has attacked them from the moment he descended the escalator in the Trump Tower, declaring his candidacy for this office, warning about rapists and criminals, which is the way that he described immigrants, and trying to stoke and stir up fear and violence which we have seen perpetrated against them throughout...

Rosanna Arquette, actress, and #MeToo activist is a member of a Hollywood family that frequently gets political. This week she announced her disgust with her own skin color. She literally took old-school liberal white guilt to a whole new level.Wednesday Arquette tweeted: “I’m sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me. And I feel so much shame.” I would include her tweet here but alas, the actress has “protected” her account, which means only approved followers can see her tweets. She was advised to do so by the FBI, according to her representative. She has more than...

Catch us the foxes, The little foxes That ruin the vineyards— For our vineyard is in blossom. (Song of Songs 2:15) =========================================================== In a graphic materialization of the prophecy in Zechariah as explained in the Talmud, foxes are now being seen playing at the Temple Mount. It was reported in The Yeshiva World that visitors to the area have observed the group of about a dozen foxes in the southwestern area of the Western Wall for the last three days in the early hours of the day. This precise scenario was discussed in the Talmud (Makkot 24b). Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi...

FULL TITLE: This physician provides abortions and circumcisions. She says her Jewish values drive both practices. FALLS CHURCH, Va. (JTA) — It comes, Sara Imershein says, when the folks are noshing after the deed is done — once she has performed a brit milah, a ritual circumcision. “Someone will say, ‘Oh, I saw your website,'” Imershein said in a recent interview. At first she would think her interlocutor was referring to the site that advertises her services titled “Certified by the National Organization of American Mohelim.” It’s not the case: They are referring to her other practice, providing abortions, and...

A Seattle man was arrested this week and charged with making interstate threats after he said he planned to execute White House senior adviser Jared Kushner for being Jewish and threatened to kill other members of President Trump’s family. According to The Washington Post, the man, Chase Bliss Colasurdo, shared an image on Instagram in February showing a gun being pointed at a photograph of Kushner. Colasurdo later posted image of Donald Trump Jr. in early March and reportedly wrote that he “would just like to let the secret service know” he plans to kill him. In both instances, Colasurdo...

138 people have been killed in Sri Lanka, with more that 600 badly injured, in a terrorist attack on churches and hotels. The United States offers heartfelt condolences to the great people of Sri Lanka. We stand ready to help!

KIEV — It’s said that reality is often stranger than fiction. In Ukraine, a popular comedian is taking both by storm. The 41-year old Volodymyr Zelensky is better known for playing a president in the wildly popular TV show “Servant of the People,” which sees an earnest history teacher unexpectedly thrust into the backstabbing world of Ukrainian politics. Now Zelensky could have a shot at the real deal as Ukrainians vote in the final round of the presidential election Sunday. The comedian surprised everybody with the scale of his victory in the first round on March 31. His anti-establishment message...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=CqYOnqh_ZZE 5 min video blog by Rabbi Moshe Rothschild

Imagine three Pittsburghs, simultaneously — a multi-pronged murderous attack at Jewish institutions across the country. The Jewish community’s top security arm did just that last week at an exercise joining community leaders from across the country with senior U.S. law enforcement officials. Six months after the massacre of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue complex in Pittsburgh, several dozen officials met in a conference room overlooking the National Mall here and reviewed the lessons of that awful day as a means of dealing with future attacks. The most surprising and poignant recommendations came from survivors of the...

The Jewish Democratic Council of America reacted on Tuesday to the fact that officials from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements were not invited to a discussion at the White House with “key Administration officials” on “pertinent issues impacting the community.” “It’s clear the Trump White House invited a subset of the Jewish community and intentionally excluded others,” Halie Soifer, the director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an email to JTA. “As with everything this president does, this meeting appears to be defined by narrow political calculation as opposed to genuine outreach to the Jewish community,”...

2,000 year-old Jewish town with ritual baths, olive press, and burial estate found in Eastern Jerusalem. Impressive remains of a Jewish village from the Hasmonean period, approximately 2,000 years ago, are currently being uncovered in a salvage escavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Association in the Sharafat neighborhood of Jerusalem, where an elementary school will be built.

The executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Halie Soifer, told Hill.TV's "What America's Thinking" on Wednesday that recent remarks from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), which some have called anti-Semitic, have not signaled a shift among Jews away from the Democratic Party. "Absolutely not," Soifer told Hill.TV's Jamal Simmons when asked if Omar's comments were proof of a Democratic drift away from Jewish voters and support for Israel. "What we've seen in recent months has been select incidents, and Representative Omar is one such example, where we've had elected officials that were criticizing Israel, but invoked anti-Semitic, negative...

Welcome to JEXODUS. On Saturday, Roger L. Simon lamented at PJ Media that anti-Semitism is once again becoming respectable – or at least acceptable – across the Western world, and that this time around the Jew-haters are predominantly Muslims and leftists. Among the more prominent new standard bearers of this old hatred, noted Simon, are our two recently elected Muslim congresswomen, who, he quite reasonably surmised, “were likely inculcated at an early age, as were too many Muslim children, with the belief that Jews only (pace Darwin) were the descendants of pigs and apes and should be wiped from the...

Authorities in Paris have launched an investigation after anti-Semitic graffiti was found Saturday sprayed across a bagel shop in the city's old Jewish quarter. The word "Juden," which is German for Jews, was discovered on the glass window of a Bagelstein chain as anti-government protesters and police forces clashed in other parts of the French capital. "The most filthy anti-Semitism in the streets of the city of light," government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said on Twitter. The French League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism showed a photograph of the bagel shop graffiti alongside a photo of a Berlin shop in 1938 Germany...

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) apologized on Monday for tweets suggesting that American lawmakers were motivated by money to defend Israel. Omar's apology came after she spoke with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who along with other House Democratic leaders called on her to apologize for the "use of anti-Semitic tropes" about Jewish people and money. "Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step...

This is a participatory approach to having a social conversation to determine who among these ten celebrated racists deserves the moniker of ‘Antisemite of the Year’ for their contributions to the spreading of Nazi-level propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels (Nazi propaganda minister) proud,” said Dov Hikind, former New York state assemblyman, and chairman of the Coalition for a Positive America The ‘Antisemite of the Year Award’ campaign presents ten of the most notorious antisemites who are presented with one of their many offending statements that prove a consistent antisemitism. Online users can vote for any of the ten nominees...

I wrote the following in 1995, and decided to post it because I've been told that yesterday was the anniversary of the sinking of the USS Dorchester taking with it the Four Chaplains, and the Boy Scouts have been getting some attention lately. If I have posted incorrectly, I apologize. I'm not very tech savvy: I wrote the following about my father, and his ideals, two years ago. I am up-dating, because Monday, April 3, 1995,at 11:50 PM, my father's soul was taken into the arms of the Lord. He wore size 6 ½ shoes, but he left giant footprints....

Long time lurker here, but a family member has been a long time FReeper. One reason I recently decided to sign up too, was so I could ask the vast, well-informed, FReeper family for some important information about Judaism, the Hebrew language, and Noahidism. (I also wanted to possibly participate in future threads on all these subjects, maybe asking additional questions of those more knowledgeable here about those subjects, who might be able to answer them for me.) I know it is frowned on here to post "vanities", and I don't intend to ever do it again (I swear!), but...

There has been a sharp decline in the number of American Jews participating in the “Birthright” trips to Israel this winter, reported Haaretz, describing “a downturn of this magnitude, unrelated to the security situation” as “unprecedented”. Since its establishment in 1999, the Birthright organisation has brought some 500,000 young Jews from around the world on free trips to Israel. According to the paper, citing some of Birthright’s key trip providers, the drop ranges from 20 per cent to 50 per cent – depending on the provider – in comparison with the last winter season (which extends from December through March)....