Photo by Mason Resnick: Smashed window of Park Place in Highland Park, New Jersey

I will be visiting the Judaica Gallery today because I need to make a purchase for my daughter – at least those of us that are local can support the businesses that were targeted. Rutgers Hillel and Chabad in New Brunswick also were targeted with smashed glass, as well as the restaurant Maoz. The Highland Park businesses were Jerusalem Pizza, Park Place, Judaica Gallery, Trio Gifts and Jack’s Hardware. Maybe I should go buy some light bulbs at Jack’s.

A big thank you to the Highland Park police for their quick and decisive action regarding this crime.

Update: A Letter from Mayor Steve Nolan (it ends with: “As a community, we are much stronger than a pane of glass could ever be.” – bravo)

Update: An excerpt from a letter from Rutgers Hillel director Andrew Getrauer:

Wednesday morning at 2 AM a Jewish Rutgers student, very
involved in Hillel, was at the kosher Dunkin’ Donuts in Highland Park,
when a man approached him and started a conversation about Jewish
issues. He identified himself as Jewish. This deteriorated into a rant
where the man also declared himself a neo-Nazi and told the student he
should be in a camp and killed like his ancestors, and that he would
start a ‘second Kristalnacht.’ At this point the Dunkin Donuts staff
threw the man out of the store.

Wednesday morning Highland Park woke up to find 5 Jewish-owned
stores with windows broken; 2 Judaica stores, 2 kosher restaurants, and
a hardware store owned by an Orthodox man. A Jewish-owned falafel
restaurant in New Brunswick was also targeted. Hillel staff contacted
the student who had encountered the man at Dunkin Donuts and made sure
he was in touch with police. Hillel staff contacted the ADL and New
Brunswick police to help connect the dots between the various incidents.
There was wide spread anxiety throughout the local community, expressed
thru constant phone calls, emails, Facebook and twitter messages. To
give you a sense of the feeling at the time, people were calling it
“Kristalnacht in New Jersey.”

More details were reported in the Star Ledger, New Jersey Jewish News and other press.

May his wife and children be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Update: Ruti Mizrachi wrote a post Barry, we hardly knew ye.

Purple Crocus in the Spring Snow

Bud of a Small Willow Tree in Our Backyard

Magnolia Bud on My Neighbor's Tree - March 15, 2011

For more Nature Notes, visit Rambling Woods:

In “unnatural” news, I was upset to hear of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem – this came one week after the brutal massacre of a family in Itamar, Israel. For some upbeat news, you can watch Autistic Child Fully Recovered with Biomedical Treatment for Autism.

To quote Aaron Marcus, Rutgers student leader: “”We wanted to protest this event because as the children and grandchildren of victims of the Holocaust we believed it to be absolutely absurd to compare Israeli act of self defense to the viscous, systematic murder of millions of Jews, Catholics, Gays, Gypsies, Russians and others.”

Watch the videos on Challah Hu Akbar:
Rutgers University Event Bans Jewish Students and Community Members

Videos with commentary on Jake Binstein’s blog:
BAKA Lies

Learn more on JoshuaPundit:
Rutgers Puts Apartheid Against Jews Into Practice

A Statement by StandWithUs:
STANDWITHUS DEPLORES ANTI-JEWISH DISCRIMINATION AT RUTGERS “NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE” EVENT, APPLAUDS PRO-ISRAEL ACTIVISTS’ STRONG RESPONSE

Rutgers student organization BAKA (Students United for Middle Eastern Justice) sponsored the presumably public event, but when it became apparent that pro-Israel attendees would outnumber BAKA sympathizers by almost four to one, the organizers became alarmed. “There are so many Jews here,” exclaimed one BAKA member who was wearing a “Smash Israeli Apartheid” T-shirt.

To end this post with an upbeat, local event, here’s one of my son the filmmaker’s videos that may appear in the Highland Park Public Library Teen Film Festival on February 6:

Last week I made two mini faux pas where I rushed through reading online. In one case I misread a tweet on Twitter; in another I misread an email note. On Twitter I caught the misreading right away, and I tried to explain it to the other person, but I’m afraid the humor got lost (He wrote, I have time to write because my daughter is back in school, and I read, I have a hard time writing because my daughter learned to read in school). Hard to explain in 140 characters that at first I misread his tweet in a humorously wrong way. In the email the other person wrote Why should I comment. I read What should I comment. Two different lines! Note to self: slow down. Years ago I misread an email where I thought the person wrote “some idiot” and she had written “some idiot like me.” I should have waited to respond to that one!

Have you ever misread something and had it come back to haunt you?

•   •   •

Haiti’s devastation due to the earthquake has been so much in the news. When one reads of the earthquake, it is hard not to feel sad and helpless. Sometimes reading about one person, even when the person dies tragically, can provide connection to the terrible news. Sometimes the one person might be a helper, who is doing some rescuing (Baila has information about donating to support the Israeli relief team in Haiti). Then after a while, you just can’t take more of the news, and you want to look at a beautiful flower of spring (Michelle has some information in her left column about donations that might help Haiti as well).

•   •   •

Thanks to Jack for including my post Protect Children from Abuse in the latest Haveil Havalim, the blog carnival of the Jewish blogosphere.

Some links:

• Baila: Venezuela, Venezuela on My Mind
• Gail: Trouble in Venezuela
• Vandalism of Jewish Cemeteries in Greece
• Iceland Protest: Jews are Not Welcome
• Yemeni Children Assaulted Over Gaza
• Our Community Will Not Survive: Mandaean in Iraq
  “Historically it is said that we are Jews originally and we came from Israel 2,000 years ago…At least you have Israel, but we don’t have that backbone to keep us safe, our country Iraq has been taken from us, hijacked by those extremists.”

Pictures of Israeli soldiers rescuing Palestinians from a tunnel (used for smuggling weapons) in Gaza.
In the most moral army in the world, instead of blowing up the tunnel, they [the soldiers] rescue the one who is trying to kill you.
After smuggling weapons they [the Palestinians] receive:
Medical care, blankets, a cup of tea.

Read the whole thing.

This post is maddening and saddening, might as look at beauty.

Among the many philantropies that have suffered losses because of this guy’s schemes are Yeshiva University (which my husband and father attended), Maimonides School in Brookline, MA (which I attended for twelve years), Ramaz, SAR Academy, The Robert I. Lappin Foundation, Chais Family Foundation, the Gift of Life Foundation, a Jewish bone marrow registry, Yad Sarah … the list goes on.

A bit on Yad Sarah:

Yad Sarah, the largest voluntary organization in Israel, provides a spectrum of free or nominal cost services designed to make life easier for sick, disabled and elderly people and their families.

JTA article on Madoff Scandal
Jeffrey Woolf Heartbreak: Madoff Fallout

Our rabbi is glad the Ponzi scheme is not named after Madoff, even though Madoff ripped off many more than the original Ponzi. In a Ponzi scheme, you reward the first investor by giving them money from the second investor…until the whole thing collapses.

In a search for something positive to say, Tzvee Zahavy writes about driving Rav Soloveitchik in the early seventies:

During one such drive around 1971, with some concern I inquired about what the Rav thought about the serious financial crisis of that time that YU faced. I was surprised to hear both the certainty and the flavor of the Rav’s response to me. He said: “The Yeshiva has survived many serious financial crises for many years and I am sure it will survive many more serious financial crises for many more years.”

(Hat tip: Rebbetzin’s Husband)

Unfortunately, there is too much urban drama going on in the home city of photo blogger magiceye. As I type this post, I am wondering about the safety of the Chabad rabbi and his wife, trapped by terrorists in the Nariman house in Mumbai. (Update: Chabad Rabbi and his wife in Nariman house reported killedtortured and then murdered, and more than 125 too many reported dead in Mumbai). Thank you to Dina in Jerusalem for posting about this. To use Twitter for updates, go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23mumbai or click http://hashtags.org/tag/mumbai/. For updates on Chabad, http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nariman (Nariman is the name of the Chabad house in Mumbai).

An upsetting post about the Taj by an eyewitness

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ll say I’m thankful that there is an America.

For more Skywatch participants, please visit:

This Thursday, September 25 at 7:30 there will be a rally at the corner
of 3rd & Raritan Avenues. The purpose of the rally is to express our
disappointment that the Mennonite Central Committee, the parent
organization of the 10 Thousand Villages store, is hosting the
president of Iran for dinner while he is in New York, and to protest
Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide against Israel.

Ahmadinejad is basically a modern day Haman. He has threatened to destroy Israel and has held a Holocaust-denial conference. One of the hosts is someone named Penny Pritzker. I’ll let you do the research.