On the day of the Poway Chabad shooting, a grandfather was in shul to receive an aliyah in honor of his grandson’s bris the next day – then he heard the gunshots and thought the bris should be delayed. The mohel, Rabbi Shalom Denbo, gave the grandfather an unequivocal answer: “Absolutely not!” Read More.

Facebook plans to continue to allow Holocaust denial on its platform, according the company’s Vice President for Global Public Policy, Joel Kaplan. Despite recently banning high profile anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, “Facebook will not remove lies or content that is inaccurate — whether it’s denying the Holocaust, the Armenian massacre, or the fact that the Syrian government has killed hundreds of thousands of its own people,” Kaplan wrote. “This is because we do believe that people should be able to say things on Facebook that are wrong or inaccurate, even when they are offensive.” Read More.

Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., claimed in an interview that her ancestors provided a “safe haven” for Jews after the Holocaust. “There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the holocaust…I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that…,” Tlaib said. Outrage from the Jewish community has been widespread – the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem incited anti-Jewish violence and was allied with the Nazi regime during WWII. Read More.

Children at a Muslim center in Philadelphia sing they will “chop off their heads” — an apparent reference to Jews — in a video uploaded by the center to Facebook. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations is investigating the program at the local Muslim American Society’s chapter Read More.

An imam who has wished for the end of Zionism, called for a third Intifada and likened Israel to Nazi-era Germany delivered the opening prayer for a session of the US House of Representatives last Thursday. Read More.

In a speech denying allegations of anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia after Facebook banned him from the social media platform, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said that he knows “the truth” and “separate[s] the good Jews from the Satanic Jews.” Read More.

A Tennessee judge posted anti-Semitic articles on Facebook, including one saying that Jews should “get the f**k over the Holocaust.” The judge has denied being racist or anti-Semitic and says he has the right to free speech. Read More.

A Miami man was arrested for making threatening phone calls to a local bagel shop. The man called the Bagel Time Café several times on May 6, and in his last call threatened to “get rid of” Jews. He said that Jews were taking over the world and “We’re going to make sure you can’t overpopulate like you are now and we’re going to get rid of you.” He added: “I’m here. That’s my mission.” Read More.

White supremacy and anti-Semitism are presenting a growing challenge to Arizona, as the number of hate crimes against the state’s Jewish community continue to rise. Read More.

The Genesis Prize Foundation announced philanthropist and New England Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, as the 2019 Genesis Prize Laureate. The annual $1 million Genesis Prize, dubbed the “Jewish Nobel,” will be donated by Kraft to initiatives combatting anti-Semitism and attempts to de-legitimize the State of Israel. Read More.

As prejudices go, anti-Semitism can sometimes be hard to pin down, but on Thursday the opinion pages of The New York Times international edition provided a textbook illustration of it. Read More.

Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a resolution condemning “all forms” of anti-Semitism to mark Yom Hashoah, or Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Read More.

Speaking to the press after the Poway attack, Rabbi Goldstein said something truly remarkable. In the wake of the chaos and violence swirling around him, this rabbi suggested that a national response to the shooting should include establishing a daily moment of silence in American public schools in which “children can start the day pausing and thinking, ‘Why am I created? Why am I here? And what am I going to do?’”

The story of a 13-year-old girl murdered in Auschwitz has become the newest star of Instagram, after an Israeli billionaire brought the girl’s true story to life. Told via Instagram “stories,” the account titled “Eva Stories” garnered more than 100 million viewers after going live on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Read Here.

The judge presiding over the trail of the murder of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish physician, ordered a third psychiatric evaluation of Kobil Traore, who confessed to killing Halimi, while under the influence of cannabis. The move suggested that the system was reluctant to confront anti-Semitism by Muslims. Traore, a devout Muslim, called Halimi “a demon” while he pummeled her to death via defenestration. Read Here.

Four years after the attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium, anti-Semitism has again been making headlines in a country that symbolizes Europe’s diversity. Apart from France, “Jews do not experience anywhere [else] in the EU as much hostility on the streets as they do in Belgium”. Read Here.

Germany’s leading Jewish organization expressed alarm last week over footage of flag-waving neo-Nazis in self-styled uniforms marching through an eastern German town unhindered by police. Read Here.

Labor activist Sam Gorst, who remains under investigation by the party over social media posts comparing Israel to the Nazis and defending anti-Semite Ken Livingstone has been elected as a Liverpool City counselor. Read Here.

A man with a swastika sign paraded back and forth beside a pro-Israel event at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Campus police said the man has a right to free speech and nothing can be done. Read Here.

A Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Arkansas was interrupted by white supremacists carrying swastika flags, a white cross and posters with anti-Semitic slogans. Their appearance comes as Arkansas Technical University is being criticized for creating a scholarship in honor of a deceased professor who taught Holocaust-denying books in his class. Read Here.

The student government at Williams College has rejected a pro-Israel group from being formed on campus for the first time in more than a decade even though the group met the criteria of its bylaws. Read Here.

New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis voted to boycott NYU’s own satellite campus in Tel Aviv. The department said it is boycotting the campus because of Israel’s policy of barring entry to people who support the movement to boycott Israel despite not calling for a similar boycott of NYU’s satellite campus in the United Arab Emirates, a country rated as “not free”. Read Here.

Pro-Israel students at New York University (NYU) filed a civil rights complaint alleging the school failed to act properly in addressing the activities of the NYU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) that gave rise to “extreme anti-Semitism” at the school. Read Here.

A sense of emergency? The most disturbing development, that keeps continuing and intensifying since 2016, is that Jews in some countries feel they live in a state of emergency, because of the continuing rise, most notably in Western Europe and North America, in anti-Semitic manifestations. Download the full Kantor Center Study here.

Daniel Gordis and Jonathan Silver sit down for a discussion about the complex relationship between American and Israeli Jews. They review the long history of American Jewish ambivalence toward Zionism, explore the different theories that motivate the Jewish communities in the U.S. and Israel, and try to define what it means to be a Zionist living in America”. Click to listen to the podcast from The Tikvah Fund.

In New York City, more than half of all hate crimes reported in 2018 and 2019 were anti-Jewish. According to the NYPD, of the hate crimes reported through April 2019 nearly 57 percent were anti-Jewish. Read Here.

Germany’s top intelligence agency, the BfV, has written a comprehensive analysis about rising anti-Semitism by Islamist extremists amongst recent Muslim immigrants or refugees. In 2018, the government appointed a commissioner, Felix Klein, to focus specifically on the topic. Read Here.

To examine the rising trend in anti-Semitic hate crimes, pollster Douglas Schoen conducted studies on Holocaust knowledge and awareness in the US, Canada, and Austria. Most of the respondents agree that fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust than they used to and that there are critical knowledge gaps when it comes to basic Holocaust knowledge. The primary learning from the studies is that the more people know about the Holocaust, the more likely they are to eschew Nazism, intolerance, and any vestiges of anti-Semitism. Read Here.

Israeli researchers reported last week that violent attacks against Jews spiked significantly last year, with the largest reported number of Jews killed in anti-Semitic acts in decades, leading to an “increasing sense of emergency” among Jewish communities worldwide. Read Here.

New Pew Research Center Survey finds a growing partisan divide on how Americans views Israelis and Palestinians. Majorities in both parties have favorable views of the Israeli people, however Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say this (77% vs. 57%). Democrats have a similar view of Israelis as of the Palestinian people. Read Here.

A similar 2018 Pew Research Center survey comparing data back to 1978 found that the partisan divide in Middle East sympathies is now wider than at any point since 1978. Results show, 79% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats. Read Here.

In the movie, The Hate U Give, one of the characters asks, “What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?” With the unprecedented rise of anti-Semitism of on North American college campuses and in communities throughout the world, now is not the time for Alpha Epsilon Pi to be silent. Our Brothers are stepping up, speaking out and fighting back. Last spring, three AEPi Brothers at Towson University were attacked steps from their house. Their assailants chased and beat them yelling anti-Semitic slurs. The Brothers of Tau Mu were shocked that something like this could happen on their campus.

“As an organization we were baffled. How could something like this happen to our own?” said Brother Solomon Solkowitz. “We then understood the position we are in now. We have a voice. We are not going to sit down and allow this to define us and in fact we are going to come back stronger because of it. During our chapter meeting the next night we decided that we wanted to put on this anti-hate rally that spans all cultures, religions, and biases.”

Elan Carr, Special Envoy to Combat & Monitor Anti-Semitism announced that the US may reconsider its relationships with countries it deems to be anti-Israel. Ambassador Carr will raise this issue in his meetings around the world. Carr said that the current administration’s decision to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism “certainly breaks new ground.” Read Here.

On Yom Hashoah, Special Envoy Carr toured Auschwitz with March of the Living participants. “It is a special honor to be tasked on behalf of the United States [with fighting anti-Semitism]. It’s a vow all of us can make at this solemn and holy place. From Poland, Carr will travel around Europe and Israel to meet with governmental, NGO and Jewish community leaders. Read Here.