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Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt is the columns editor and editor of the JNS Wire.

Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, has suggested that Jews take on an extra mitzvah in the merit of the hostages.
Within hours after a campaign was started to help clean up the center, more than $91,000 was raised, almost double the funds needed.
Noah Shack, vice president at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, urged the Toronto District School Board to take “immediate, meaningful and reparative action to fix the rot of anti-Semitism, particularly with its Human Rights Office.”
“Unfortunately, Facebook inexplicably rejected our ads, presumably because they contain the words ‘hate’ and ‘anti-Semitism,’ ” said Mark Freedman, interim president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County.
The Dec. 2 program included a talk by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group in both Canada and the United States.
“I think it is an embarrassment to society,” said Rabbi Nechemia Deitsch, director of Chabad of Midtown in Toronto, which services the student population. “The fact that there is this hatred in the air is due completely to a lack of education.”
“It’s the result of a toxic environment where agitators spent years weaponizing debates about municipal policy with an outsized focus on Orthodox Jews, and the commentary loaded with one-sided reporting and flat-out lies,” said the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council.
Rabbi Neil Blumofe of Congregation Agudas Achim said the program was “upbeat” and “positive,” and drew a connection in his remarks to the upcoming Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
“Let us not be shy about our Judaism or cower in the face of hate. Let us stand proudly as Jews and show Jewish pride,” said Rabbi Shmuel Tiechtel, director of Rohr Chabad at ASU in Tempe, Ariz.