Briefs

96 JEWISH FEDERATIONS AND JCRCS URGE SENATE CONFIRMATION OF DEBORAH LIPSTADT AS ANTISEMITISM MONITOR

Close to 100 local Jewish federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils are urging the Senate to confirm Deborah Lipstadt as antisemitism monitor, citing the attack on a Colleyville, Texas synagogue last month.

“This latest, horrific attack makes clear that the Senate must expeditiously confirm this position so that America’s diplomatic corps has an able leader to combat the global threat of antisemitism,” the organizations said in a letter sent Monday, Jan. 31 that was initiated by the Jewish Federations of North America.

The letter was addressed to Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, its senior Republican. But the real target was Risch, who has been holding up Lipstadt’s confirmation because of her past sharp criticisms of Republicans. Jewish groups have multiple times called on the Senate to press forward with Lipstadt’s confirmation hearings.

The position of antisemitism monitor tracks antisemitism overseas and consults with governments about how to stem it. The man who held a rabbi and three congregants hostage on Jan. 15 for 15 hours was a British Muslim who appeared to buy into antisemitic tropes about Jewish control.

“We may not know everything that led to this attack, but the congregants held hostage that day report a series of antisemitic tropes from the gunman,” the letter said. “It is undeniable that a rising tide of antisemitic speech and physical attacks have targeted the Jewish community across the world, creating the dangerous preconditions to attacks on Jewish individuals and institutions abroad and at home.” (JTA)

AARON MOSTOFSKY, PELT-WEARING SON OF A JEWISH JUDGE, PLEADS GUILTY TO JAN. 6 CHARGES

Aaron Mostofsky, the Jewish judge’s son who wore fur pelts and a bulletproof vest when he entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pleaded guilty in a federal court Wednesday, Feb. 2 to civil disorder, theft of government property and entering and remaining in a restricted building.

Prosecutors dropped the most serious charge of interfering in an official proceeding. The civil disorder charge is a felony and has a maximum sentence of five years, although many of the 200 or so people convicted so far in the Jan. 6 insurrection have received minimal sentences. Mostofsky will be sentenced in May.

Mostofsky is the son of Steven (Shlomo) Mostofsky, a Kings County (Brooklyn) Supreme Court Judge and former president of the National Council of Young Israel, an Orthodox synagogue association. NCYI has been outspokenly pro-Trump in the past.

Mostofsky’s brother, Nachman, who serves as executive director of Chovevei Zion, a politically conservative Orthodox Jewish advocacy organization, also attended the protests but he has said he left before the mob entered the Capitol.

The Jan. 6 rioters, heeding former President Trump’s false claims that he won the election, sought to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win. (JTA)

WORLD OF WORDLE INSPIRES A NEW GAME: JEWDLE

In yet another addition to the world of Wordle offshoots, an Australia-based Jewish community organization has created Jewdle—a distinctly Jewish version of the wildly popular online word game.

While versions of Wordle exist in other languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish, Jewdle offers words from English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic and is different in a few key ways. Unlike Wordle, which asks players to guess a five-letter word using codebreaker’s logic, Jewdle players have to guess six-letter Jewish words, increasing the game’s difficulty.

Jewdle also throws in a Jewish educational component, adding explanations and context once a player gets a word right.

“This seemed like a really perfect way to create Jewish relevance within a very popular, secular context that so many people around the world are accessing right now,” Alon Meltzer, director of programs at the organization Shalom and the game’s creator, told J-Wire.

After joining the more than 2 million people who have started playing Wordle, Meltzer decided to make a Jewish-themed version, which came with a set of unique challenges.

“We decided to do six letters instead of five because of the phonetic differences in writing out many Hebrew and Yiddish words,” Meltzer explained. “You often need to use a ‘ch’ or ‘sch’ combination or an ‘ah’ suffix. Five letters was a bit too limiting.”

Jewdle can be played at https://www. jewdle.app. (JTA)

B & N REMOVES THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION FROM ITS SITE

Following a social media outcry, Barnes & Noble removed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from its website.

Twitter users began tweeting Jan. 25 about an online listing on the booksellers’ site, which was offering the famously fabricated antisemitic text for $24.95. The retailer said in a statement to JTA that the book was fed automatically to the website from “standard industry databases” and that the company took “prompt action to remove” the title.

Twitter users also objected to the description of the book, which summarized at length the book’s fictional description of a Jewish plan for global domination and suggested that its authenticity is still an open question. The description justified its sale as “an interesting book which deserves to be studied in the same way the War of the Worlds radio broadcast duped many thousands…. We neither support nor deny its message, we simply make it available for those who wish a copy.”

“Nothing like watching major corporations distributing long discredited antisemitic forgeries for profit,” tweeted Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council.

In their statement to JTA, a representative for Barnes & Noble wrote that the bookseller draws on industry databases and does the “utmost to diligently monitor such submissions for violations of our content policy.” According to the statement, the book was never stocked in their bookstores.

“We regret that it was listed inadvertently. As soon as we are made aware of any such offending titles, we take prompt action to remove the offending titles in accordance with our policy, as we did with this title,” said the representative.

While Barnes & Noble was the main focus of social media users’ outrage, other top online booksellers such as Walmart, Book Depository, Thrift Books, and Hudson Books were selling dozens of versions, the Jerusalem Post reported. (JTA)

THREE ARRESTED IN ORLANDO AFTER JEWISH MAN ASSAULTED AT NEO-NAZI RALLY

Police in Orange County, Florida, arrested three men accused of violence and theft during a neo-Nazi rally in Orlando that made national headlines.

Local media identified the men as Joshua Terrell, 46; Jason Brown, 47; and Burt Colucci, 45. Terrell and Colucci are charged with battery, but officials said that charge could later be elevated to a hate crime. Brown is charged with theft.

The rally on Jan. 29 at an overpass drew about 20 people identifying with the neo-Nazis, who shouted slurs at passersby. The arrests appear to be related to a pepper-spray attack on a Jewish man who approached the neo-Nazis after one spat into the sunroof of his car.

The man got out of his car and identified himself as Jewish, the reports said, and assailants pepper-sprayed and punched him and knocked the phone out of his hand. He got back into his car and a man continued to spit at him.

The alleged attack came during a weekend of antisemitic incidents in Washington, D.C., in Canada, and in Chicago, and just weeks after an antisemitic assailant held a rabbi and three congregants hostage in a Texas synagogue. (JTA)

VIRGINIA FESTIVAL JEWISH FILMOF

Presented by Alma & Howard Laderberg

ben gurion epilogue

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2:30 PM

FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION WITH PRODUCER AND EDITOR, YAEL PERLOV

SUSAN S. GOODE FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER VIRGINIA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY -ORWATCH ONLINE

Anticipating a future that would call for critical decisions to ensure the survival of Israel, the film turns back in time, in order to listen to BenGurion’s lucid voice and to seek answers for today and for tomorrow.