January 24, 2017

GD: Anti-Semitic Tweets Erupt After Rabbis Prayer At Trumps Inauguration

The rabbi who blessed Donald Trump at his presidential inauguration Friday said he expected the anti-Semitic messages that were hurled his way on Twitter ― and that they wont stop him from doing what he thinks is right.


The Times of Israel reports that hundreds of hateful messages targeting Rabbi Marvin Hier appeared on the social media site following his remarks at Trumps inauguration. Hier was invited by Trump to offer a prayer Friday along with five other religious leaders.


On Twitter, some users expressed surprise and disgust that Hier was speaking. One person depicted him as the devil, Hier mentioned with amusement Monday.

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Theres been a rise in anti-Semitic activity since the election, according to Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that fights bigotry and attacks against Jewish people.









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Always there, sometimes just beneath the surface, other times right in your fucking face.

January 24, 2017

Anti-Semitic Tweets Erupt After Rabbis Prayer At Trumps Inauguration

Source: Huffington Post

The rabbi who blessed Donald Trump at his presidential inauguration Friday said he expected the anti-Semitic messages that were hurled his way on Twitter ― and that they won’t stop him from doing what he thinks is right.


The Times of Israel reports that hundreds of hateful messages targeting Rabbi Marvin Hier appeared on the social media site following his remarks at Trump’s inauguration. Hier was invited by Trump to offer a prayer Friday along with five other religious leaders.


On Twitter, some users expressed surprise and disgust that Hier was speaking. One person depicted him as the devil, Hier mentioned with amusement Monday.

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There’s been a rise in anti-Semitic activity since the election, according to Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that fights bigotry and attacks against Jewish people.









Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rabbi-marvin-hier-inauguration-anti-semitism_us_58864f60e4b096b4a2339c6e

January 18, 2017

Jewish Centers Across U.S. Evacuated Amid New Wave of Bomb Threats

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

Jewish Centers Across U.S. Evacuated Amid New Wave of Bomb Threats

Source: Haaretz

Several Jewish Community Centers in the U.S. were evacuated Wednesday after receiving near-simultaneous bomb threats, according to various local reports, just nine days after a nearly identical incident targeted 16 Jewish insitutions across the eastern U.S.


Bomb threats were reported in Miami and Palm Springs Garden, Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, West Hartford and Woodbridge, Connecticut, Newton and Worcester, Massachusetts, Scotch Plains, New Jersey, Albany and Syracuse, New York, Detroit, Michigan, San Rafael, California and Nashville, Tennessee.

A local NBC affiliate said two community centers had been evacuated in Connecticut, while the Miami Beach Jewish Community Center in Florida was also threatened and briefly evacuated Wednesday, according to local police. At the same time, the Jewish center in Birmingham, Alabama was also evacuated, as was a center in Nashville, Tennessee, according to The Tennessean.


Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.765875

( to ehrnst )

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Keep in mind this is second wave of threats, but one does have to wonder if this, German court calls synagogue torching an act to 'criticize Israel, will be the reaction should an Americanized Kristallnacht takes place.

January 10, 2017

Jewish Centers in Several States Targeted With Bomb Threats

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

Bomb threats targeted Jewish community centers in at least six states Monday, and some were made with prerecorded telephone calls, according to an official with the Jewish Federations of North America.

It's not clear why up to 20 Jewish community centers across the South and Northeast were targeted, said Richard Sandler, chair of the JFNA board of trustees.

"Some of the threats were robo-calls," said Sandler, adding that the number of threats was unusually high.

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In Nashville, Tennessee, 225 people were evacuated from the Gordon Jewish Community Center and an adjacent school after a security guard received a bomb threat over the phone. Buildings were evacuated and authorities investigated similar threats in Atlanta; Tenafly, New Jersey; Columbia, South Carolina; and Wilmington, Delaware.

In Maryland, threats also were called into Jewish community centers in Baltimore and Rockville.

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Prelude to an American Kristallnacht? Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey all received threats. Is this nothing more than a test run to see how upset people would be? A prank?

In all honesty, I doubt many would be very upset by multiple attacks on Jewish institutions, and I don't hold much hope that the incoming administration would do much, other than use it to their advantage to restrict more rights or scapegoat the wrong people.

January 5, 2017

Pharrell Williams and stars from 'Hidden Figures' condemn 'hateful comments'

Gospel singer Kim Burrell calls homosexuality 'perverted,' Pharrell Williams and stars from 'Hidden Figures' condemn 'hateful comments'

Gospel singer Kim Burrell labeled homosexuality “perverted” in a sermon she gave in her other life as a Pentecostal preacher, quickly eliciting responses from both Pharrell Williams, with whom she sings on the “Hidden Figures” soundtrack, and two stars from that film, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.

Burrell and Williams were originally scheduled to perform the soundtrack song “I See a Victory,” on which he is also a producer, on “The Ellen Show” on Thursday, with Monáe also slated to appear as a guest.

But on Tuesday morning, show host Ellen DeGeneres announced on Twitter that Burrell would not join Monáe and Williams on Thursday’s show.

“I came to tell you about sin,” Burrell said in the recent sermon at the Houston church she founded and where she is pastor, Love and Liberty Fellowship Church International. “That perverted homosexual spirit, and the spirit of delusion and confusion, it has deceived many men and women.”

A firestorm of criticism was touched off when video of the sermon began to circulate and Burrell took to Facebook Live to add, “There are a lot of people that I’m aware of that struggle or deal [with] or have that spirit. Have I discriminated against them? Have I ever outright told them that I don’t love you and you going to hell? … I don’t give that call.”


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This is a shameful situation for two reasons, the first being the obvious homophobic rhetoric and hate, and the second is the potential it has to mar what could be a great movie, certainly one of historic importance.

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Please read this article!

Black women who helped put America in space get their day onscreen

As if to ensure the 2016 Oscar nominations don’t come out as white as Santa’s beard, three fine films about African-Americans in the late ’50s and early ’60s have come out in the last eight weeks: “Loving,” “Fences” and “Hidden Figures.”

The last, which is the least overtly emotional, makes subtle points while depicting three women who helped NASA enter the space race with the Soviet Union. Most people who watched John Glenn become the first man to orbit the Earth multiple times – myself included, as a boy in 1962 – had no idea such women put him up there safely.

Director Theodore Melfi wrote the screenplay with Allison Schroder, adapting Margot Lee Shetterly’s book. They never overstress a scene: Whites working around black colleagues are quietly dismissive but not overtly cruel, and a Virginia police officer who finds the trio stranded by the roadside is suspicious but not vicious. The movie indicts exclusion and racial hierarchy without finding villains inside that system.

“Figures” takes place at Langley Air Force Base, as officials make calculations for launches at Cape Canaveral. Math prodigy Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) crunches numbers at amazing speed, but she’s more than a human computer in a pre-IBM age. Her insights into patterns go beyond those of male co-workers, and her boss (lethargic Kevin Costner) figures that out.

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‘Hidden Figures’ is a crowd-pleaser with math appeal