8 reported dead in shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue
A breaking story, and very bad news:
At least eight people were killed and multiple others injured in a shooting Saturday morning at a synagogue in a Pittsburgh neighborhood known for its Jewish population, CBS Pittsburgh/KDKA reports.
The suspected shooter was identified as Robert Bowers, 48, law enforcement sources told CBS News and KDKA. Bowers surrendered and was taken into custody.
Bowers burst into the Tree of Life synagogue and indiscriminately fired in the building while shouting, “All Jews must die,” police sources told KDKA. Three officers were shot during the incident, officials said. The extent of their injuries are unclear.
Reports are that the synagogue was full of people.
The shooter? The thing about anti-Semitism is that there are so many candidates: extremist Muslims, leftists of various kinds, Farrakahnners, neo-Nazis, and probably a few I haven’t thought to list—such as, I suppose, the garden-variety non-political lunatic.
I assume the MSM will find a way to pin it on Trump, if only for the fact that there are some bad people with guns in the United States.
One thing I don’t understand, however, is why at least one person in this large congregation wasn’t armed, and/or why there wasn’t a guard of some sort. If it has been a smaller group I might understand, but this was apparently a flourishing congregation. Maybe there was such a person, and it just hasn’t been reported. Or maybe the person didn’t get the opportunity to fire; being armed doesn’t mean you have an opportunity to take a gunman out. Even four of the police who came to the scene were apparently injured by the shooter’s fire.
And yes, I would imagine that a population of Jews in Pittsburgh would be a bit less likely than the average group to be packing heat. But it’s not as though there aren’t Jews who are very interested in self-defense and in preserving the Second Amendment.
Apparently, the perp had a high power rifle which can outmatch a person with a pistol. The Texas church shooting incident had many members who carry, but none carried in the church.
_____
After hearing that the Pittsburg perp shouted “All Jews must die” a retired FBI guy said that “this may be a bias crime.” A bias crime? Is that a legal term?
However, when the Klebold and Harris copycat in Kentucky killed 3 black people at his place of work (a supermarket) because he hated the world and wanted to go out with a bang, it was instantly labeled a hate crime.
I live in two states at different times of the year and have a CCW permit for each. My wife states very firmly that she is not an anti-gun liberal, however:
if I ever tried to bring a weapon to schul, I’d never hear the end of it; that’s tried to bring, not brought.
I go to the range and spend a couple hours practicing at least twice a week in both places; I’ve never met another Jew at either range.
It totally sucks to live in a time where people worshiping are in danger of someone walking in, using a gun and shooting unarmed people. Having said that and living here in Texas where some asshole seems to shoot up a church every few years, in the Methodist Church my wife and I attend we carry guns.
We are a sizable church with three services every Sunday and in the third service where I usher we have a retired police deceive who stands to the side of the front door of the church throughout the service and he is alway attentive. Most of us have our concealed carry and shoot fairly often, several times per month, and we hope we never, ever are put in a situation where we might actually need to use a gun at church.
What we wish the world was and what it actually is sucks and today’s shooting is one more tragedy when unarmed Jewish people are gunned down. My guess is that we will see a whole lot of signs that the shooter is a known menace with major judgement issues.
Good heavens. Saturday morning services, and reportedly there was a bris this morning as well. Many synagogues around the country have regular security guards for services, certainly for high holy days but also routinely. It’s extremely sad that this is necessary.
When I attended Christian services in Egypt, there was always armed security outside, provided by the government. And this wasn’t even at a Coptic church, where the threat is higher. (They also have protection.)
Heavy reports that the shooter has posted anti-Jewish sentiments online:
https://heavy.com/news/2018/10/robert-bowers/
Your right NEO, someone has already tweeted that this is what happens when Trump moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. It seems he used an AR-15 (not assault rifle) so there will be more calls for restrictions. Trump and Republicans are really getting hammered just as voting is starting. (CO has all mail in ballots and many have already been sent in).
Individual rights and responsibilities. The first-responders are at the scene. The second-responders are the police, and this time — not that the police are a monolithic bloc — it seems that the officers engaged the man. Also, we should not indulge in diversity or color judgments. That said, RIP.
Yes, this is already being heavily politicized by the usual suspects. How Trump can be repeatedly called anti-semitic when his eldest daughter, son-in-law, and Kushner grandchildren, with whom he is on close terms, are conservative Jews is beyond understanding. This particular shooter loathes Trump because he considers him too pro-Jewish.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/10/synagogue-mass-shooting-in-pittsburgh/#more-263921
“The thing about anti-Semitism is that there are so many candidates: extremist Muslims, leftists of various kinds, Farrakahnners, neo-Nazis, and probably a few I haven’t thought to list”
Neo,
You have tactfully avoided mentioning Christian Europe. As a person born and raised Catholic, 12 years of Catholic education, a medievalist who has studied Christian history, theology, ritual and art, I have never understood the European Christian enmity of Jews. Theologically Judaism and Christianity are so intertwined that it’s like a house condemning its own foundation. Yes I know that the common argument is that the hate is inspired by the fact that “the Jews killed Christ, the Son of God,” but by Christian theology’s own admission, had that not happened, mankind would not have been saved. It just goes to prove that we are primarily emotional rather than rational beings.
An update, they are now reporting 11 dead as a result of the mass shooting, with two of the four wounded officers in critical condition after surgery.
Is it now the standard of care that all houses of worship must have armed guards? I imagine we will find out in the coming civil lawsuits. We have come to a very bad place.
Cornhead,
Unfortunately one of the solutions that needs to be implemented is for soft targets to be hardened. Places of worship might like to think of themselves as places of peace and harmony, and even to some extent that may be. That however, does not stop the outsider from violently invading that space.
The other issue is that we have been so lulled into a sense of civility and safety (built by that abhorrent Western Civilization and the patriarchy it represents) that we think of this as how life IS. In fact, life is essentially violent and we must constantly remember that we are the exception rather than the rule and act accordingly.
It seems pretty obvious to me that it is the Left/Democrats who have been, by far, the major inciters in deliberately raising the political temperature here in this country, in effect, giving a lot of crazy people—on the edge—the incentive, the permission, to direct their rage, to act out their violent tendencies, against the enemies of the Left and Democrats.
Besides all sorts of violent images—Trump assassination porn in Broadway plays, in rap videos and, very recently, in a short story published in the New York Times, Kathy Griffin holding up the bloody severed head of Trump—we’ve also had all sorts of inflammatory rhetoric from Leftists/Democrat leaders, encouraging an atmosphere of hatred and violence, giving this “permission.”
A few examples, just off the top of my head:
Obama saying, of his political opponents, that “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, very famously telling people to confront Trump administration members as they pursue their daily lives—in restaurants, in supermarkets, in gas stations—to form a mob, to confront them, and to drive them out of the public square, stating that they do not deserve to be, that such people should not be allowed to live their lives and be in the public square.
Congressman Corey Booker talking about how people have to “get up in the faces of legislators.”
Former Atty. General Eric Holder stating that, it’s not as Michelle Obama said, “when they go low, we go high” but, rather, it’s when they i.e. their political opponents, go low that “we kick them.” This statement said, by the way, to a lot of applause.
Hillary saying that “there can be no peace with those who are a threat to all that Democrats believe in.”
And House Minority Leader Pelosi just recently saying that, if the Democrats do what they want to do, put in place the programs they favor, “if there is collateral damage [to their opponents], so be it.”
I am not aware of any similar statements ratcheting up the political temperature by Conservatives/Republican leaders.
Snow n Pine,
but in classic leftist Progressive thinking, it’s all the Republicans fault. We can only hope and pray that the normal average voter sees through all of this malarky come November 6th.
T, I agree with all your comments above. It’s both theological ignorance and ethnic prejudice. Jews were “other,” not Polish, French, Anglo-Saxon, German, even though in those locales they learned the languages. Thomas Sowell points out that Indians and Chinese have had similar issues when living out of their own ethnic areas (in Africa and Malaysia/Indonesia, for instance).
But, oh, eleven dead, and more injured. My heart aches.
at least it wasn’t a honduran child from the caravan doing the shooting at the temple. they are lying sick on the road waiting to die.
Kate. An ethnically distinct group which is doing well compared to the majority, and at the implied cost to the majority–who sells the seed, lends the money, runs the shop, all costing something–is going to be the target.
I’ve heard that Pentacostals in Central America are in somewhat of the same position, but not to the same extent.
This nutcase couldn’t string his gripes together.
My son in law is on the security team at his church. They’re expected to carry.
My heart goes out to those people in the synagogue, and to the families and friends of the victims.
And of course, I have friends who blamed Trump for this before anything was known.
Faith2014,
That’s because they blamed Trump for everything before it even happened. Just another item to add to that list. As Ann Althouse said about MSNBC: “They just can’t help themselves.”
Are people seriously blaming the attack on trump because trump is treating Israel too well and the rise of Israel in the international arena because of that attracts haters who will take their angers on innocent Jews? Trump was right that he just can’t win with these people. However, trump needs to take the high road and take the initiative to tone down the rhetoric a bit to ease up the tension within America since we can’t expect the unhinged democrat mobs to do that. This political climate needs to improve before more people get hurt.
This happened very close to my neighborhood in the east end of Pittsburgh. At the time of the massacre, my daughter was in a house directly across the street from the Tree of Life synagogue. She just arrived to lead an activity for a group of Catholic high school girls, and could very easily have crossed paths with the gunman when she parked her car on the same part of the street. The Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh is a beautiful, vibrant, safe neighborhood that’s truly diverse, including a large Jewish population. I believe they have guards at this synagogue on high holy days but not ordinary weekend services. There is shock and grief here in Pittsburgh. The gunman, a 46-year-old white guy, is local and had apparently posted a lot of anti-Semitic comments, as well as anti-Trump comments, on social media just before the shooting. Seems to fit the “extreme white nationalist” profile, but I guess we’ll learn more in the days to come. Heartbreaking.
CV,
” . . . could very easily have crossed paths with the gunman when she parked her car on the same part of the street.”
Scary stuff. I’m glad that she didn’t cross paths and that she remained safe.
My office is one block away. I pass Tree of Life every day; have been part of the community for 13 years.
First, prayers for the families involved. Heartbreaking.
Second, I have sadly been braced for an incident like this. And I expect it to get worse. The Jews are being systematically driven out of all nations, and fleeing back to Israel. It doesn’t stand out as a trend unless you focus on it, as general societies are increasingly violent. The USA is the last major bastion for Jews, and I fear this kind of incident will increase.
Third, I must respectfully disagree with Neo – there are not multiple candidates for antisemitism – there is ONE, and he uses multiple individuals and groups to do his dirty work.
His name is Lucifer.
His title is the Accuser (Satan).
His goal is to stalemate the Creator. He cannot win against the Creator, so stalemate is the best for which he can hope.
The plan to stalemate the Creator requires killing all the Jews, so that there is none left to call upon the name of the Lord (Matt 23:39).
Lucifer was (and is) the driving force behind all antisemitism; the Inquisition, Hitler, radical Islam, etc. – in the attempt to eradicate the Jews. At it’s core, antisemitism is demonically driven and cannot be explained or understood without looking at the fuller Epouranios war (the ancient and ongoing war in the heavenly dimensions – aka: the battle between good and evil).
Ultimately, Lucifer will not succeed, but it’s going to be awfully rough on the Jews in the meantime. That grieves me.
I think John Podhoretz has it right:
“He should be better than this, because everyone should, . . . ” [Podhoretz quoted by Ann @ 9″11 pm]
. . .and Podhoretz’s opinion is so blinded by his own dislike that can’t even recognize his own irony.
I had to watch Fiddler on the Roof this afternoon just to help put things back into perspective.
There’s nothing new here and as usual the mainstream media tried to blame the NRA and Trump. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
We live in very sad times and I’m afraid it’s going to get a lot worse before it starts getting better. (It’s’ hard not to be a pessimist today.)
Irv,
Keep the faith, as they say. “We live in very sad times”; sadder than watching brother fight against brother in the Civil War? Sadder than the O’Sullivan family that had to deal with 5 brothers lost all at once on the same ship in WW II?
I’m not being sarcastic or critical here. We all feel this way when times are bad because we have lived in a exceptional period of peace and personal safety. As I wrote above, our society is the exception in human evolution and civilization, not the rule. That may not make it any easier to deal with, but perhaps it helps to put it into a broader perspective to allow us to, at least, understand.
So enjoy Tevye and be well.
the nra is a target. the democrats are going to treat owning a gun the same way child porn is treated. as these are the moderate dems. the radicals want nra members delt with as terrorists!
The world is descending into madness. I said this at Shabbat dinner last night, before the shooting even happened. There are so many signs — shootings, pipe bombs, people killing their children, Islam conquering Europe (the European “Court of Human Rights” has just ruled that free speech does not include the right to criticize Mohammed), many other signs, great and small.
Our synagogue has had armed security for a couple of years now. The guards look pretty ready (in my day, we would have said “Strac”), young, fit, serious, well-turned out. I’m guessing some or all are ex-military.
We recited Av HaRachamim, the prayer for martyrs today, which we never do. The wimpy Conservative version, which leaves out all the parts about retribution,
of course. Here’s the English translation of the whole thing:
The Father of mercy who dwells on high
in His great mercy
will remember with compassion
the pious, upright and blameless
the holy communities, who laid down their lives
for the sanctification of His name.
They were loved and pleasant in their lives
and in death they were not parted.
They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions
to carry out the will of their Maker,
and the desire of their steadfast God.
May our Lord remember them for good
together with the other righteous of the world
and may He redress the spilled blood of His servants
as it is written in the Torah of Moses the man of God:
“O nations, make His people rejoice
for He will redress the blood of His servants
He will retaliate against His enemies
and appease His land and His people”.
And through Your servants, the prophets it is written:
“Though I forgive, their bloodshed I shall not forgive
When God dwells in Zion”
And in the Holy Writings it says:
“Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?'”
Let it be known among the nations in our sight
that You avenge the spilled blood of Your servants.
And it says: “For He who exacts retribution for spilled blood
remembers them
He does not forget the cry of the humble”.
And it says:
“He will execute judgement among the corpse-filled nations
crushing the rulers of the mighty land;
from the brook by the wayside he will drink
then he will hold his head high”.
Thatrt was written after the destruction of the Jewish communities of the Rhineland by the First Crusade, 11th-12th cent. C.E.
Truly a horrid day. I had tears in my eyes reading the news. Of course, some try and blame Trump and there was some article about how he made a comment about his hair at a rally, about rain not getting on his hair — but made little mention of his decisive condemnation of this hateful act.
I pray for the victims and for the survivors and for all of us. Hope things lighten up. It’s been a train wreck these past few months.
Podhoretz writes: “Where I won’t let Trump off the hook here is the way in which he does nothing to try to calm the political atmosphere…”
That approach was tried by George W Bush and look what it got him? Likewise Mitt Romney when he ran for POTUS.
It bothers me greatly that our political climate today is so loud and hateful, but I don’t blame President Trump for it.
Pretty simple, Neo, I think…A rare bird is the American Jew who doesn’t have a visceral aversion to guns in particular, and violence in general. Probably because outside of the Orthodox community (to which this synagogue did not belong, and where the aversion is less common and you will find pockets of people packing), the centerpiece of Jewish consciousness is still the Holocaust.
I have never understood the European Christian enmity of Jews.
Have a look at the comment boards at the Unz Review. The place is suffused with people who loathe Jews, blame them obsessively for anything you could imagine, and are pleased when others kill them. Christian references in their discourse sum to about zero.
Only two clues about what motivates these people. One is that most of them are the sort of people attracted to conspiracy theories. Conspiracy discourse is usually self-aggrandizing inasmuch as the conspiracy peddler fancies he’s the smart guy in the room and you’re the mark. Another hypothesis (just a guess, not derived from any allusions they offer) is that they’ve had career disappointments. That in and of itself is quite normal. Being recriminatory about it is less common, but not uncommon. Constructing a social vision and historical sense around that recrimination is pathological. N.B., an absolute loathing of George W. Bush is quite normal on those boards. Less common but seen often is the notion that blacks have no real skills or accomplishments and that any black man with a degree or aught but a low-skill tertiary sector job is on some sort of institutional patronage. Just a hypothesis, but I’ll wager what’s at the bottom of it would be stewing over the raises and promotions you haven’t received (which went to well-connected sales types like George W Bush, to Jews looking after their own, and to black AA candidates, or so you tell yourself), perhaps spiced up by an unhappy run-in some time in your past with a lawyer or an accountant with a name like Hy Goldberg.
the centerpiece of Jewish consciousness is still the Holocaust.
I don’t know why that would inhibit you from owning a gun. I do suspect there’s a cultural aversion to gun ownership among Jews, but if I had to guess its just a sense that playing with guns is not something we do; it’s for goy meatheads.
FWIW, I don’t think I’ve ever met in meatspace a Jew for whom the Holocaust was the centerpiece of his or her ‘consciousness’. I think among the older generation of Jews their was a certain anxious hedging practiced animated by the notion that you had to have some contingency plans in place in case you had to flee. So you put some money into something portable and salable in any jurisdiction, like gems. That’s more generic and practical than having ‘the Holocaust’ at the center of your consciousness.
As far as I’m concerned, the left owns antisemitism in 2018. Stormfront-esque “white supremist Jew haters” primarily exist only in the imagination of Democrats, who think all conservatives are white supremist racists (including the ones who aren’t white), but I live in a gun-heavy red state and can’t even think of the last time I crossed paths with a the sort of cartoon character from decades ago they are thinking we all are today. I’m sure there’s isolated pockets and the Internet makes it possible for fringe groups to cling to existence, since a handful of anything can find each other there, but it’s so old-fashioned. It’s difficult to imagine anyone under 60 having classic, racist ideas, or if they do, speaking them out loud.
Except Democrats, of course. Democrats of all ages are the most racist people I know and spend half their waking day talking about it.
It’s really reaching a boiling point as race-obsessed Democrats, who enable and defend racists, call us racists even though few on the right-of-center care what color anyone is. And it’s the Democrats, whose politics are virtually 100% pro-Islam, pro-Iranian, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-Jew, who defend every group of any numbers that has any modern, active Jew hate. Yet even as a Trump-hater goes out and murders Jews, Democrats blame us, based on the imaginary Stormfront bogeyman that mainly lives on only in their heads.
Logically speaking, I suspect that the current overdrive effort to brand the American right-of-center as anti-Semites goes back to the relatively recent, but very enthusiastic, adoption by the left of the Euro political spectrum which places nationalism on the right and internationalism on the left. It allows them to claim that “Hitler was right-wing” and that the US right=nationalism=Hitler=Jew hate. This is absurd in the American political context, where our younger national experience and ideals has resulted in a different right/left spectrum. But an undereducated next generation has almost no idea what happened before last Tuesday, much less any real understanding of history, and the MSM just lets the left broadcast its beliefs unhindered.
It is quite clear which side has 90% of the hate, including most of the mass murderers.
It is a profound error to look to one man, Trump, to single-handedly deliver us from the snowballing evil of the Left. He cannot do it. Why? Because the evil Leftist leaders have seduced so many moral relativists and Ignorati that the country stands divided. Those leaders include all of those who recently received the symbolic and possibly actually explosive mail bombs. Some of them are Jews; not exactly Israel-loving Jews. Liars, race-baiters, immoral Leftists all.
I do not hate anyone. Others, e.g. Never-Trumpers, disappoint me but I cannot feel hate for them. The Democrats, the hate-inspirers, are the worst in the disappoint department.
I mourn for the passing of the America of the 1950s, when the population was less than half its present size, and socially much more cohesive. What changed? In part, immigration “reform” to admit the shoeless from wretched countries, in part the rise of “experts” in all fields, the social workers (almost all Left) who are “therapists”, to whom we now uselessly defer…e.g. “grief counselors” for all pupils after the very rare school shooting. Psychology, in large part created by a cocaine-using liar, Freud, is at best semi-fraudulent, and is one of the top 5 undergraduate majors.
This will not end well.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do Thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
Just to toss in my two cents on American Jews and guns … I am not Jewish but at one point, for reasons that I won’t disclose in an Internet forum, most of the people in my everyday life were Jewish. And true, I suspect that none of them owned a gun. My belief at the time was that this was due entirely to the fact that they were all from giant coastal cities in blue states where cultural conditioning, particularly of the educated middle- and upper-class, was not one with a positive view of guns being in the hands of ordinary people.
This is terrible, but is more caused by anti-Trump extremism than by Trump.
Looking at Trump tweets, like Podhoretz seems to FAIL to do, shows Trump constantly trying to get all Americans to be unified and accepting all other Americans.
Jews are, have been, and will continue to be hated, by some. Because of their success, especially relative success. See Rwandan Hutu hate of Rwandan more successful Tutsi. See Cambodian hate of peasants against Cambodians who had an education or met a foreigner.
These hate based genocides happened in my life, and have made me have a “Holocaust fatigue” at the Hollywood stupidity about how Hitler, and almost only Hitler, was the most and only Evil man. Focus on Hitler today, even in great Schindler’s List movies, distracts from the tribalist influences and causes of hate in today’s world, including continued Jew-hate.
The single biggest reason is false demonization. It’s not fake, because the demonization is real, but the claims made by the demonizers are false.
Neo, again thank you looking so carefully and critically against false demonizers when you find them.
Finally, something I told one of my closest Jewish friends which he did not like, and claims to not believe, is a truth about discrimination. Jews are not innocent of discriminating against non-Jews, so some level of resentment is inevitable. See Fidler on the Roof, and the third daughter, exiled for loving a non-Jew. “… I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one of THEM”.
This doesn’t justify the Jew-hate, but is a small, real reason — in contrast to those who dislike the anti-Semitism so many in the world have, and don’t think there are any reasons for it. Small real reasons for resentment don’t justify killing, neither of Jews, nor an attempt to kill Reps at a baseball practice game, yet we should all be able to honestly state the small issues as real reasons.
Part of demonization involves ascribing terrible motives to anybody who tries to honestly say good points AND bad points, about the good side AND the bad side. A huge advantage of Israel is that most Israeli Jews meet and deal with other Jews, so the discrimination issues don’t come up. That’s true in most countries.
And it fails in multi-cultural countries, which the Trump-hating elites are pushing us towards. Elite demonization of Trump along with fetishization of mult-culturalism is leading to far more violence than we’d have with better elites — including all the NeverTrumpers but more importantly more professors and administrators in Universities.
See Fidler on the Roof, and the third daughter, exiled for loving a non-Jew. “… I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one of THEM”.
Yes, people ‘discriminate’ with a vengeance in marriage matters (and in their amatory life outside marriage matters). “Love” ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Among Jews, who are no more than a single digit minority everywhere outide Israel, if a strong preference for endogamy is not maintained, the dimensions of the Jewish community will shrink and shrink as Jews are absorbed into the larger society. The one thing that stops the demographic implosion is an irreducible corps who maintain that strong preference for endogamy (and a strong preference for a house full of children). You have seen the future of American Jewry. It’s not on the Upper West Side. It’s in Kiryas Joel.
gab is being shutdown I believe in free speech ;but something has to be done about these racist gun nuts. we won’t ban guns so what is to be done?
I know quite a few Jews who own guns. In a poll in 2005, 13% of Jewish households owned guns. That’s not a ton, but that’s certainly not nothing. It’s about 1 in 7 households.
IMHO, the Holocaust experience should make Jews more likely to own guns, not less, by the way. See this.
Tom G:
Not wanting a child to marry outside your faith is NOT discrimination, whether the group wanting in-faith marriage be Christian, Muslim, Jew, or any other group. Marriage is marriage. When you don’t marry someone you are not discriminating against them as long as you don’t forbid marriages by law. You are making a choice to have in-group intimate relationships, and raise children in that faith.
Jews intermarry a great deal these days, by the way.
And discrimination against Jews throughout history, as well as Jew-hatred, has been for a lot of reasons. But historical Jew-hatred by Christians was NOT because Jews wouldn’t marry Christians.
Adding to my list of examples of Leftist/Democrat rhetoric that has ratcheted up the political climate and made violent attacks against Conservatives/Republicans much more likely, I quote ex-VP Joe Biden–that smarmy, “handsy” master of BS and “malarky”–who said (in reference to Trump’s behavior as revealed by the Access Hollywood tapes) when he was campaigning for Hillary back in 2016, that if he could travel back to high school he’d like to “take Trump behind the gym ” [obviously to beat the hell out of him].
See https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/21/biden-trump-comments/92541160/
Jews intermarry a great deal these days, by the way.
I think the sweet spot for American Jewry was around 1971. Irritating social barriers had faded away (at least in my town), but inter-marriage was still uncommon and fertility deficits not so pronounced.
Not wanting a child to marry outside your faith is NOT discrimination,
You’re certainly being discriminating. The trouble here is the notion that it’s a bad thing to be discriminating. It’s a bad thing to be gratuitously rude to people, it’s a bad thing to treat people as if they polluted you by the touch, and it is certainly an imprudent thing to run your business according to silly or vicious whims and to judge people by standards other than by the degree to which they make your business thrive within ethical norms.
Art Deco:
“Being discriminating” and “discrimination in the racial or ethnic sense” are not the same thing, obviously.