This week marks the 33rd anniversary of the Crown Heights riots.
It's one of those moments that altered the trajectory of New York City's history, and exposed glaring errors in how violence against Jews is treated - and perhaps more damningly, how the media (still) fails to understand it. Just this past week, the Times once again distorted the events of 1991 - giving legitimacy to the vicious lie that Hatzolah first responders had neglected to care for Gavin (testimony from police on the ground, eyewitnesses and the definitive fact finding Girgenti Report have all thoroughly debunked this 'fake news')
and repeating the idea that chasidic Jews played an equal role in the violence.
(The picture it uses, of some chasidim yelling at cops to do their jobs, literally has picture of someone telling the cops to 'look over there' at people throwing rocks at Jews)

Wow! Earlier today a tweet went viral after a frum man apparently demanded a female journalist change seats on a flight, precipitating a conflict with the flight attendants.

👀 But this interview paints a very different picture!

https://twitter.com/danielamram3/status/1691605433134252129?t=nZuGNph0wlK4A3sr48jjEg&s=19

@NeriaKraus's tweet became a springboard for a litany of complaints about frum Jews... but seems that her own reaction was not based on the gentleman's reasonable request, but rather what her preconceived expectations about what such a request from a man with kipa, must mean.

Absolutely bizarre way to characterize three days of Antisemitic terror.

@emmagf's words here are a case study in the danger of both sidings hate... Especially in the paper of record.

🧵 On why this section is so deeply problematic It's virtually impossible to understand how Jews, cowering in their homes - hiding under the table while windows were smashed and doors taken off their hinges ... While those with "grudges" shouted "Hitler Didn't finish the job" counts as one side pitted against the other.

Absolutely bizarre way to characterize three days of Antisemitic terror.

@emmagf's words here are a case study in the danger of both sidings hate... Especially in the paper of record.

🧵 On why this section is so deeply problematic It's virtually impossible to understand how Jews, cowering in their homes - hiding under the table while windows were smashed and doors taken off their hinges ... While those with "grudges" shouted "Hitler Didn't finish the job" counts as one side pitted against the other.

Any clear understanding of how Antisemitism affects visibly Orthodox Jews needs to take into account that "landlord" is a dangerous trope. Yes there are Jewish landlords, but just as we understand Diamond Merchants or Bankers to be a dog whistle, the same consideration is needed

https://twitter.com/elizashapiro/status/1585711876368789505

The build up to the horrific violence experienced by frum Jews in 2018/19 (violent attacks in Crown Heights, W'brg, BP, murders in Jersey City and Monsey) was preceded by some of the hottest rhetoric about gentrification and "landlords"

I (unfortunately) read this on shabbos.

Leaving Eastern Parkway, by @matthew_daub, is a truly shameful work or #hasidsploitation.

Completely divorced from reality, eye rollingly bad in depicting Lubavitchers... It's a mind boggling that no one stopped to say, fix this I think there's a kernel of an interesting story perhaps about a nice Jewish boy, hardened by the streets of Brooklyn, finding his way in the Midwest.
None of that needed to create stilted, lazy ugly pictures of chasidic Jews

As we bring the Jewish year to an end and begin again, I want to share one final thread why this coming year is going to *absolutely amazing*

🧵But first, some history: When the Jewish people stood as one at Sinai, it ushered in a new epoch in human history - giving us the power bridge the physical and spiritual.

This is a great chance to unpack a question some bring up: The supposed change in Chabad under the leadership of the Rebbe from its prewar roots.
As such, it's time for a thread.

(SPOILERS: Not all that much!)

https://twitter.com/sashargs/status/1523279697076908033

A preface: This is not to say that Chabad has been static since its inception.

Just the opposite, it is a dynamic movement that has continued to meet the needs of an evolving society.

The today dynamism is without a doubt a testament to the Rebbe's vision

Chabad in Paris would like a word Chabad: y'all name it, they do it.

Chanukah is a major rabbinic holiday of Judaism, a rabbinic religion.

It represents the purity of the soul, its ability to outshine forces of oppression and the potential for luminous resilience that transcends the natural order.

It is awesome... Just like you are! A few chanukah misconceptions that can be dispelled with a little light!

Claim: Chanukah is a minor holiday

Truth: Chanukah is a major rabbinic holiday. Chanukah candles take precedence in Jewish law even over kiddush wine for Shabbat! (see Maimonides Megillah v'Chanukah 4:12)

My son (9) asked me if there was any news from Israel today.
I asked him why.
He and a group of other kids, 7-12 years old go with a few older yeshivah students to help Russian Jews in south Brooklyn shake the lulav.
On the subway platform a man approached him and began to yell "He kept asking me why we were killing kids in Gaza."

My son looked at him in confusion, and so the guy ("He had some white in his hair.") began shaking my sons arm.
The man followed the kids onto the train, still yelling.

Some Simchat Beit Hashueva moments

This week is going to mark the 30th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots.
The media has always played an outsized role in how we understand the events of Aug. 19-22, 1991 . . . And I want to get ahead of all the discourse now with some thoughts. The riots were, in the words of Professor Edward S. Shapiro, “the most serious anti-Semitic incident in American history."
Rioters marched through the streets shouting "Kill the Jews" and "Hitler didn't finish the job."
Jewish homes were targeted, their windows smashed. Jews.

My grandmother Tzivia Feiga Dorfman passed away earlier today.

She was 88.

She was my link to Judaism - both quite literally, my mother's mother - but more importantly spiritually. She had a love for Yiddishkeit that inspired and directed her entire family, each in their way. She was tenacious and proud - living through personal turmoil and crisis, growing in her faith and dedication on the way.

Over Simchas Torah I heard a rather powerful memory.
Someone recounted how one of the elderly members of the community once told him, as a child in Riga his grandfather would take him on Simchat Torah to the Cantonist's shul These were special synagogues frequented by the Jewish child soldiers forcefully conscripted into the czarist army.
The Cantonist's would have a special hakofa. They would strip off their shirts, revealing the scars from lashes on their backs from resisting forced assimilation

In terms of other things that were due today though perhaps not as momentous:
My profile on MAD's Al Jaffee (and other comic legends!) decades long partnership with @chaba dropped today!

https://twitter.com/Chabad/status/1281267978550611968

When he put down his pencil last month at the age of 99, the creator of the Fold-In spoke to me about his masterful work on The Moshiach Time's hero: the Shpy!

"The Shpy wasn’t just some superhero. I had to draw a character I could get into. I really put myself into [him].”

Ok. Everything around Jersey City and the violence, and the stupid online Jewish divisivness in the face of tragedies and all this garbage has me feeling pretty awful inside. So I'm gonna share some positive things I saw out of all of this This chasidic guy in the Supermarket knocked the gun pointed at him away and ran out. In his note about what he saw, he said he saw one of the chasidic kids from the school walking towards he store to buy a treat. He intercepted him soundcloud.com/mottel/eyewitn…

The bodega in question is JC Kosher Supermarker

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1204463408097234944

Hatzolah on the scene

It's amazing how unbelievably cheap some Jewish blood is to others.
A clear reminder that as long as you terrorize and attack the right (read Chasidic) type of Jews, not only doesn't it matter, @TheRAC and @URJorg will give you praise & adulations.
washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds…
#RAC19 I'll be clear, any @ReformRabbis from @JonahPesner and down that doesn't get up and walk out when @TheRevAl is called up, is displaying the same moral turpitude as making claims of "both sides" after Charlottesville.
#RAC19

The Chabad QAnon/Russiagate/Politico conspiracy theory already spinning into high-gear after today's events. Every one of my kids is a part of conspiracy