Jewish News Roundup - Thursday, December 22, 2011

Nearly half of extremist plots in NYC aim at Jewish targets

New York City police boost security at synagogues during the holiday season because nearly half the plots to attack the city in the past 20 years were aimed at Jewish targets, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.

While law enforcement sources said there was no information to indicate New York would be targeted this holiday season, authorities are still wary after a Nigerian man tried to bring down a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day in 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

New analyses from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Division showed that since 1992, eight of 18 plots to attack the city targeted Jewish institutions or Jewish people in New York, law enforcement sources said.

The intelligence analyses also found that New York City had at some point been home to 44 extremist militants since 2002.

Of those, 43 were captured, while Samir Khan, editor of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine, was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September. Read More.

Israeli Arabs Enter Jewish Classrooms

In an educational revolution of sorts, a growing number of Israeli schools are taking a novel approach to the instruction of Arabic: They're hiring Arab teachers.

The initiative is about far more than teaching children a new language. Educators say they hope to break down barriers in a society where Jewish and Arab citizens have little day-to-day interaction and often view each other with suspicion. Read More.

Jewish youth build giant Lego menorah

Jewish youth in Windsor, Ont., have built a nearly 2.5 metre high menorah out of Lego to celebrate Hanukkah and will present it to sick children at a local hospital.

The structure consists of more than 3,000 pieces of Lego and took three hours to build. It was briefly displayed at Windsor's Devonshire Mall, the city's biggest shopping centre.

The menorah will be moved to the pediatrics unit of Windsor Regional Hospital on Thursday.

The menorah will stay lit and on display at the hospital throughout Hanukkah. It will then be taken apart, with the Lego donated to the pediatrics unit. Read More.

Christmas Eve brings together Houston Jews, Muslims

On Christmas Eve, Jews and Muslims may find themselves with nothing to do while Christian neighbors plan fancy dinners and special church services.

For the past two years, the Jewish and Muslim communities in Houston have taken advantage of their free schedules to gather together to learn about each others’ traditions and find commonalities as minority faiths.

“We’re doing it on an evening when we feel a little out of place,” said Rabbi Steve Gross, of the Houston Congregation for Reform Judaism. “Not that we have anything against Christmas and all the hoopla around it, it’s just that during this time of year we are acutely aware of own religious identity and that our celebration is different.” Read More.

Chanukah Helpers: Brooklyn Jewish toy makers spin classic toys for holiday         

Santa may have elves carving gifts for well-behaved boys and girls for Christmas.

But Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish toymakers are using their brains to cash in on Chanukah hoopla.

Jews throughout the borough are growing their own toy companies aimed at religious parents who want to keep mainstream toys like Angry Birds, Rockin’ Elmo and Battlefield 3 away from their kids.

Instead, the toymakers are taking classics like “Twister” and Fisher Price’s “Little People” and giving them a kosher twist. Read More.

Report: Saudi textbooks teach annihilation of Jews

Despite promises to clean up violent and xenophobic content from textbooks, recent editions in Saudi Arabia continue teach school children barbaric practices, Fox News reported.

The news network, which was able to obtain translated copies of the recently-printed books from the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, DC, said that the books teaches ninth graders that the annihilation of Jews is imperative.

"The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," one part reads. "There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

The reviewed editions were printed for the 2010-2011 academic year.  Another book teaches 10th graders how to cut off the hands and feet of a thief. ReadMore.

German Jews ride renaissance against tide of assimilation

Twenty years after Germany opened its borders to more than 100,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union, Jewish life is once again flourishing in the country that nearly exterminated it.

Although their numbers are still less than half of Germany’s pre-war population of a half-million, Jews in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and other major cities are reanimating synagogues with the sound of Hebrew prayer and song.

The transformation is most obvious during Hanukkah, an ancient tale of victory over threatened extermination that mirrors, in small detail, the resilience of Germany’s Jewish community after the devastation of the Holocaust.

But unlike the ancient Jews of Hanukkah lore who refused to bow to the culture around them, today’s German Jews are buffeted by a strong tide of assimilation that now threatens to sap the Jewish renaissance of its vitality. Read More.