American immigrant sets himself on fire in Jerusalem

A 30-year-old American immigrant set himself on fire outside his Jerusalem ulpan Wednesday, critically injuring himself, in protest over Israel’s pullout from Gaza, police and rescue officials said.

The single Jewish man, who moved to Israel last year and was studying Hebrew at the city’s popular ‘Ulpan Etzion,’ was gravely injured in the afternoon incident, suffering from first-degree burns on 70 percent of his body.

Communities open doors to New Orleans Jews

Adam Bronstone barely slept last night.

After evacuating New Orleans and heading west to Houston on Saturday to avoid Hurricane Katrina, he had a lot on his mind.

“You’re worried about where it’s going to hit,” said Bronstone, director of communications for the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. “You’re worried about the place you live in; the place you work; the synagogue I go to, which is near the lake; the federation office, which is on a beautiful campus that’s only three years old and is also near the lake. I worry about where I’m going to be next week.”

Jewish cemetery in Berlin decayed

Berlin officials have backed a movement to have the city`s Jewish cemetery declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The 104-acre Weissensee cemetery has become so overgrown with ivy that many areas are difficult to get to, Deutsche Welle reports. Gravestones have fallen over, and inscriptions are almost illegible from weathering on many of them.

Iraqi Jews to demand compensation for lost assets

Leaders of the Iraqi Jewish community from around the world are to meet soon in London to plan a strategy to demand compensation for lost assets, potentially in the billions of dollars, from the Iraqi government, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Two meetings have been scheduled for September 18 and 19 to discuss the demands of the Jews from Arab countries and to bring to the forefront a political swap.

Iraqi-born Jew Mordechai Ben-Porat, chairman of Israel’s Center for the Heritage of Babylonian Jewry, organized the first meeting.

Committee hears from evacuees in Jerusalem

The State Comptroller’s Committee is asking the government and the Disengagement Authority to improve its treatment of the Gaza Strip evacuees.

“There’s a long list of problems, some of them grave, that need immediate attention,” said committee chairman MK Meli Polishook-Bloch (Shinui).

From the family that had to wait for more than four hours – in the middle of the night – for a key to their hotel room, to the family that didn’t know when their son’s remains would be dug up from the Neveh Dekalim graveyard, committee members on Tuesday heard an array of complaints from the evacuees.

Oregon synagogue vandalized in hate crime

Two brothers and a third man have been charged with various crimes after rocks engraved with Nazi symbols were thrown through windows at a synagogue during a religious service.

Jacob Albert Laskey, 25, his brother, Gabriel Doyle Laskey, 20, and Gerald Anthony Poundstone, 27, all were charged with conspiracy to violate civil rights in federal grand jury indictments unsealed Tuesday.

Jacob Laskey also was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice relating to witness intimidation, three counts of solicitation relating to attempts to kill potential witnesses, solicitation to communicate a bomb threat intended to obstruct a federal grand jury investigation, and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon.

Jews attack two Arab residents of Israel

A Jewish group attacked two Arab residents of Israel, from Ar’ara village, in the north of Israel, while the residents were working at a public park in Ramat Gan city.

The two residents, Mohammad Yasser, and Hazim Omar, were working at the public park when a group of over 40 Jews attacked and punched them.

One of the victims managed to escape, and ran towards Ramat Gan police station to report the attack.

RIVAL AMBULANCE CLASH

A “hot-headed” volunteer ambulance driver was detained by cops last night after refusing to yield to a city ambulance crew that had arrived first at the Lower East Side home of an Alzheimer’s patient, police said.

The driver, from the Jewish volunteer corps Hatzolah, was hauled off by cops. But he was later sprung after about two dozen supporters, as well as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, rushed to the Pitt Street station house.

“The outcome was totally in our favor,” a man who identified himself as the president of Hatzolah said as he jumped into his car.

Silver said he had rushed to the precinct simply to “help mediate the dispute.”

Musician turns to a different kind of horn

Southfield man hopes to be among five finalists competing on the Jewish shofar in New York City.

SOUTHFIELD — As a longtime musician, Rick May knows he’s not the best trumpet player around, but he’s hoping to become the nation’s best blower of the shofar — a wind instrument that will be heard by Jews around the world in synagogues during their upcoming high holidays.

May, 61, recently entered a contest in search of the best shofar blower in America. Sponsored by the National Jewish Outreach Program in New York, the contest will bring five finalists to New York in September for the first “Great Shofar Blast Off” and send the winner to Israel.

An ancient tradition in Jewish history, the shofar is a ram’s horn that is blown 100 times in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which this year is Oct. 3. The shofar is also blown 10 days later at the end of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Chabad Shluchim Remain In The Storm

As Hurricane Katrina made landfall pounding New Orleans with dangerous 145 mph winds and blinding rains, not everyone managed to get out in time.

Chabad-Lubavitch representatives knew there’d be calls from those who were stuck, and for that reason, they stayed put. Lubavitch.com spoke with Rabbi Yosef Nemes, one of the Chabad representatives to New Orleans earlier today, who hunkered down in his home with people who had contacted him for assistance. “They were evacuated from local hotels and turned to us,” he said, observing that water was beginning to leak into his home as he was speaking.

While they wait for the hurricane to recede, locals can only guess at the damage they will find when the last winds die down and the rains stop. Forecasters predict between 15-20 feet of water flooding, and are calling this a “once-in-a-lifetime” hurricane for the Gulf Coast. “It’ll be a long time recovering” from the damage, said Rabbi Nemes.

Anti-Semitic Elements Out of Control: Statement by Rabbi Y. Krinsky

In response to yesterday’s vicious attack on two yeshiva students, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chairman of Lubavitch Educational and Social Services Divisions, issued a statement urging a swift and unequivocal response by the Ukrainian government.

Yesterday’s violent attack on two yeshiva students in Kiev, which leaves one fighting for his life, raises serious concerns about a climate that has allowed anti-Semitic elements to spiral out of control.

The vicious attack demands a swift and unequivocal response by Ukrainian authorities. I urge law enforcement agents to locate this evil at its root, and do everything in its power to eradicate it.

It is apparent that tolerance of any expression of anti-Semitism ultimately emboldens its proponents to act in criminal and insane ways such as was unleashed yesterday on innocent yeshiva students.

Chabad-Lubavitch has a significant number of representatives, women, men and children, who, with no small measure of sacrifice, have dedicated themselves to rebuilding Jewish life and Jewish communities in Ukraine. I am sanguine that the Ukrainian government will continue to extend its support and protection to help facilitate this remarkable revival.

Chabad-Lubavitch and the larger Jewish community anticipate that Ukrainian authorities will prosecute this crime under the full measure of the law, and take all action to ensure the safety of its Jewish population.

Now things get interesting

No one should be indifferent to human suffering, and we have certainly been exposed to an overdose of suffering and tragedy over the past two weeks. As this phase of the disengagement draws to a close, we need to go beyond empathizing with its victims.

The big question – for supporters and opponents alike – is what happens next? Will Gaza become a base for Islamic terrorism, as Binyamin Netanyahu would have us believe? Will disengagement be followed by further withdrawals, as the settlers fear? Will Labor bolt the coalition and trigger new elections, as both radical Right and Left hope?

Rabbi Meir Kahane, Vindicated

No matter what you think of him, whether you hate him or love him, the name Meir Kahane is a name that will forever be engrained in the history of the Jewish people. But just this past week, fifteen years after his murder, he was vindicated on the world stage via American national television.

Rabbi Kahane, born in Brooklyn in 1932, was an author, political activist and a member of the Israeli Knesset. When concluding a speech in Manhattan, Rabbi Kahane was assassinated by El-Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian and member of an Arab terrorist cell operating in New York in 1990. Nosair was one of Sheikh Omar Abd El-Rahman’s men, who would later be convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; today, he is serving life in prison. The gun that was used to kill Rabbi Kahane was supplied to Nosair by Wadih El-Hage, who is a member of Al-Qaeda convicted of conspiracy to kill American citizens in the 1998 US embassy bombings.

Cemetery moves Gaza graves to Jerusalem

A Gaza settler, his coffin draped in prayer shawls and an orange flag representing the settlers’ protest, was borne on shoulders along a winding path in Jerusalem’s ancient Mount of Olives cemetery, then buried Monday for a second time.

The ceremony was repeated five times in the hillside cemetery that overlooks Judaism’s holiest site, as graves from the Jewish cemetery in the Gaza Strip were relocated to Israel as part of the country’s pullout from the coastal territory.

Vandals burn swastikas into jewish family’s yard

Vandals burned swastikas and obscenities into the lawn of a suburban Jewish family Sunday, splattering windows with eggs and defecating on the front porch of their two-story home.

Two swastikas were spray-painted in the road in front of Ginger Ragans’ two-story home and a third was etched onto her lawn, along with the word “Fascist” and an obscenity scrawled in the grass. Her trees were draped with toilet paper and someone had urinated and defecated on the family’s porch and discarded the soiled toilet paper in nearby bushes.

15 Jewish Families in Hebron Slated for Expulsion

Fifteen Jewish families living in the Hebron market in the town’s Jewish quarter are slated for expulsion by the IDF.

A source in the Defense Ministry said the planned expulsion is not connected to the recently completed expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes in 25 towns in Gaza and northern Samaria.

He said the plan to expel the families was the result of a “decision” made by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

Bochur critically hurt in Ukraine skinhead attack

A group of ten skinheads attacked two yeshiva students in Kiev, Ukraine on Sunday, critically wounding one of them and lightly hurting the other, Israel Radio reported Monday.

Rabbi Yaakov Zilberman, head of Kiev’s Jewish community, said the skinheads approached the two in an underground tunnel in the city center and attacked them with bottles, rods and knives.

The critically wounded student, 28, underwent surgery late Sunday.

Zilberman said that Jewish residents of Kiev continuously encounter acts of anti-Semitism. He said that they have appealed to the municipality with a request to protect the city’s Jewish community.