Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaking at the organizations Never is Now conference in New York City, Nov. 17, 2016. (Courtesy of the ADL)

(JTA) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo directed state police to investigate an anonymousbomb threat called into thenational offices of the Anti-Defamation League.

New York City Patch reported that the threat was called into ADLs Manhattan headquarters at about 11:08 a.m. Wednesday, according to police. Neither the report nor the ADL said whether the building was evacuated.

Three days earlier, 11 Jewish community centers across the country were evacuated after bomb threats were called in the fourth wave of such threats in five weeks. The threats turned out to be hoaxes but forced the evacuation of many buildings.

Two days ago, up to 200 headstones were overturned at a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery.

We are treating these incidents for what they are as crimes and we will not allow them to go unpunished, Cuomo said in a statement. Today I have directed the New York State Police to coordinate with federal and local law enforcement to launch a full investigation into this latest incident. Make no mistake, we will find these perpetrators and hold them fully accountable for their actions.

A statement from the ADL indicated that the threat, like those leveled at JCCs in recent weeks, was a hoax.

While there is no information at this time to indicate that this is more than a threat, we are taking it very seriously, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. We are working with law enforcement officials to determine if it is connected to similar threats against Jewish institutions across the country.

This is not the first time that ADL has been targeted, and it will not deter us in our efforts to combat anti-Semitism and hate against people of all races and religions.

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Posted By admin on February 22, 2017

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The gravesites of more than 170 Jews were vandalized at a cemetery in University City, Mo., sometime over the weekend.

And on Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish Community Centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said, a development that elicited comments from a White House spokesman and Ivanka Trump, neither of which used the phrase anti-Semitism or mentioned Jews.

There were no words at all from President Donald Trump himself as of early morning Tuesday.

That prompted the head of the Anti-Defamation League, to praise Ivanka Trump and call on the president to follow her lead.

Glad to see this, he tweeted of Ivanka Trumps comment. All Jews need to urge the president to step forward & share a plan. His words carry weight. His actions will speak even louder.

The exchanges were particularly noteworthy in part because of President Trumps unusual response at a news conference Wednesday to a question about the rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country. Rather than condemning them, Trump responded by talking about his electoral college victory, describing the question as unfair.

Trump has been criticized for refusing to describe the threats toward Jews as anti-Semitism. An op-ed at the Forward, the New York-based newspaper written for a Jewish audience, described Trumps silence about anti-Semitism as deeply disturbing.

When asked again about the rise in anti-Semitic threats, during another news conference on Thursday, the president responded as though he had been personally accused. Trump said that the question was very insulting and that he was the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life.

The weekends events, coming in the wake of last weeks public exchanges with Trump, served to heat up a long-simmering tension between some leaders of the nations Jewish community and the Trump White House.

The perpetrators of the cemetery vandalism and their motives were not yet established. Police in University City, an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, were just launching an investigation, reviewing video surveillance at the cemetery, operated on a not-for-profit basis by The Chesed Shel Emeth Society and calling on anyone with information to come forward.

Because of the Sabbath, the cemetery does not operate on Saturday, Anita Feigenbaum, director of the Chesed Shel Emeth Society told The Washington Post in a phone interview.

A groundskeeper arrived Monday morning to find gravestones overturned across a wide section of the cemetery, the oldest section as it happens, bearing the remains of Jews who died between the late 1800s and the mid-20th century.

She called it a horrific act of cowardice, beyond anything the cemetery had experienced in the past.

The cemetery was founded in 1888 by the Russian Jewish community in St. Louis to aid all Jews who needed burial whether they had the money or not. They started with the burial society and then extended to hospitals and houses that help the poor and the sick. To this day thats what we do. We are not for profit. We help in this horrible time in a persons life.

Feigenbaum had walked through the cemetery during the day and had not yet completed counting the number of damaged stones, most of them pushed over, off their bases. So far she said she had found than 170. Feigenbaum said she was starting to hear from families of people buried there. We will reach out to the families that are affected, she said.

The cemetery holds the remains of more than 20,000, she estimated.

She said she was getting an outpouring of support from across the United States with people volunteering to help with repairs and was deeply appreciative.

Separately on Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish Community Centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said.

While ADL does not have any information at this time to indicate the presence of any actual bombs at the institutions threatened, the threats themselves are alarming, disruptive and must always be taken seriously.

Bomb threats were called in at Jewish Community Centers in 11 cities across the U.S.: Albuquerque, Amherst, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, St. Paul, Tampa and Whitefish Bay, Wis. Since January, there have been 69 bomb threat calls targeting 54 centers in 27 different states, according to the Jewish Community Center Association.

In Amherst and Buffalo, the community centers were briefly closed after a threat was phoned to the Amherst center. Disruption was the goal, said Richard A. Zakalik, the local New York JCC executive director, to the Buffalo News on Monday. They accomplished what they wanted, Zakalik said to the Buffalo News. The whole point was to scare and disrupt.

No devices or bombs were found in connection with the threats; the Jewish Community Center Association described all of Mondays incidents as hoaxes. The FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department will probe the series of calls for federal violations, according to the Star Tribune.

Paul Goldenberg, the director of Secure Community Network, the security affiliate of Jewish Federations of North America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the bomb threats appeared to originate from the same serial caller. Noting that not every building which received a call decided to evacuate, he said that the community centers were very well-equipped to handle this. The centers also increased their security measures after the threats, the JCCA noted.

The weekend spate of anti-Semitic threats were not limited to the U.S. In Canada, a 70-year-old Toronto woman named Helen Chaiton said that her mezuza, the case containing Hebrew verse traditionally affixed to a doorpost, had been vandalized twice over the weekend. Chaiton and her neighbors also found that the vandals had left behind sticky notes with swastikas, the CBC reported.

Responding to an inquiry from NBC News about the threats, the White House tweeted back: Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom. The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.

The tweet from Ivanka Trump, a convert to Judaism, appeared to be unsolicited and drew generally favorable reaction, but also questions about why her father, the president, seemed reluctant to speak out.

The ADL issued a statement on Feb. 16, characterizing Trumps news conference reaction as mind-boggling.

On two separate occasions over the past two days, President Trump has refused to say what he is going to do about rising anti-Semitism or to even condemn it, the ADL said in the statement. This is not a partisan issue. Its a potentially lethal problem - and its growing.

And after the new rash of phoned-in threats Monday, the organizations chief executive drew a connection between the incidents and the presidential silence. A lack of attention to this from the president creates an environment in which the bigots feel empowered, the ADLs Jonathan Greenblatt told Haaretz. They feel like their intolerance is being tolerated.

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Jewish cemetery vandalized, Jewish centers threatened; ADL calls for Trump to 'step forward' - WatertownDailyTimes.com

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Posted By admin on February 22, 2017

CEO Jonathan Greenblatt says new order undermines core values of American society

The Anti-Defamation league criticized new tough orders issued by the Trump Administration for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration on Wednesday. The orders put the country's nearly 11 million undocumented foreigners in its cross-hairs.

In an official statement released by the organization, the ADL referred to the new rules as "ill-advised" and said they undermined the core values of American society.

These new rules are extremely ill-advised and counter to our values as a nation that has always served as a beacon of hope for people around the world, said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. This step is deeply problematic on many levels. It removes critical due process rights for new immigrants and imperils countless numbers of refugees fleeing extreme violence in Central America.

Greenblatt voiced extreme concern over the effort to require law enforcement officers to the new orders.

Perhaps most concerning of all, however, are the efforts to effectively turn local law enforcement officers into de facto immigration agents, Greenblatt said. "That threatens to drive a dangerous wedge between law enforcement and communities they have sworn to serve and protect.

"When a community starts to fear the police," Greenblatt added, "it creates an underclass that is particularly vulnerable to becoming targets of crime, it makes police officers jobs much harder, and it makes all of us less safe.

The orders sent shivers throughout US immigrant communities, where millions of people who have spent years building families and livelihoods in the country, most of them from Mexico and Central America, were seriously threatened with deportation for the first time in decades.

Rights groups labelled the move a "witch hunt", warning that a threatened "mass deportation" would damage families with deep roots in the United States and hurt the economy.

But John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who issued the new orders in two memos, said they were necessary to address a problem that has "overwhelmed" government resources.

"The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States," he said in one of the memos.

The new rules make it easier for border patrol and immigration officers to quickly deport any illegal immigrants they find, with only a few exceptions, principally children.

The priority will remain undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, as well as anyone who has been charged or potentially faces criminal charges.

However, people deemed as low priority for deportation by the previous Barack Obama administration -- generally anyone not tied to a crime -- are no longer protected.

"With extremely limited exceptions, DHS will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement," the memos said.

"All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to enforcement proceedings, up to and including removal from the United States."

The memos followed up on President Donald Trump's order, made just after his January 20 inauguration, for authorities to crack down on illegal immigration by tightening enforcement and building a wall along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,145 kilometer) US-Mexico frontier.

In the memos Kelly ordered immediate action to begin planning the wall. He also ordered the hiring of 15,000 more officers for the Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.

The move comes ahead of meetings this week between Kelly and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico, in which illegal immigration and border security will be key topics.

The turn in policy follows years in which the Obama administration, and the George W. Bush administration before it, sought to find a way with Congress to allow most of the long-term illegal immigrants to stay in the country.

But Trump campaigned for the White House on a promise to crack down on what he characterized as a source of widespread crime and a drag on the economy. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump "wanted to take the shackles off" of officials enforcing the laws.

DHS said there are more than 534,000 pending immigration cases in the courts nationwide, and that department agents have apprehended more than 93,000 people trying to sneak into the country in October and November alone.

That work "has significantly strained DHS resources," it said.

While Spicer said Trump "has a big heart" and that policy could evolve in future beyond the DHS memos, there was no indication of what form those changes could take.

Pro-immigrant groups, already nervous after hundreds were arrested in a series of ICE raids on immigrant "sanctuary cities" two weeks ago, expressed shock and outrage.

"Secretary Kelly has unleashed an unprecedented witch hunt on millions of immigrant families," said Angelica Salas, executive director for the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

"These guidelines represent an unlawful, expedited process, a dragnet, to remove undocumented immigrants living and working in the US. This is a dastardly approach to a very human issue," she said.

Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted strong legal challenges to the new policy.

"These memos confirm that the Trump administration is willing to trample on due process, human decency, the well-being of our communities, and even protections for vulnerable children, in pursuit of a hyper-aggressive mass deportation policy," he said.

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Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017

A view from the ground shows a more somber reality -- scores of granite and marble tombstones, toppled and damaged in a historic Jewish cemetery at a time tensions in the nation's Jewish communities are already high.

A vandal or vandals toppled and damaged more than 100 headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in the St. Louis suburb of University City within the past week, police said Monday. Workers spent part of Tuesday using crane trucks to upright some stones and documenting which memorials will need replacing altogether.

Police didn't release further details about when the vandalism happened at the cemetery, a burial ground since the late 1800s. But they said officers first responded to a report about the damage about 8:30 a.m. Monday.

Officials at the fenced and gated cemetery believe it happened over the weekend; it was closed between late Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.

The vandalism left families wondering whether their loved ones' tombstones were affected, what it will take to repair the damage and whether their heritage had anything to do with why it happened.

The vandalism drew dismay from people whose relatives are buried there, including Bravo's Andy Cohen, host of "Watch What Happens Live" and executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise.

Cohen devoted a few moments of Monday night's "Watch What Happens" show to the incident, calling the vandal or vandals the "Jackhole of the Day."

"This is extremely personal for me because my great grandparents and many other of my relatives are buried there in that cemetery," said Cohen, a St. Louis-area native. "I don't have to have a personal connection, though, to know that this is not who we are as Americans, and this certainly should not be where we are heading."

Emily Wasserman of Chesterfield, Missouri, told CNN that she learned about the vandalism Monday night as she was browsing Twitter. Her great-grandparents have graves there, but she didn't immediately know whether their tombstones were affected.

She planned on visiting the cemetery to learn more Tuesday or Wednesday.

"People in St. Louis are disheartened by the vandalism," she said. "I grew up in St. Louis but I also went to college here, and many of my former classmates from (Washington University in St. Louis) are speaking out against the vandalism on Facebook and other social media platforms.

"I think that the violence sent a shockwave through the St. Louis Jewish community."

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens tweeted Monday night that he was "disgusted to hear about the senseless act of desecration at the cemetery in University City."

"We must fight acts of intolerance and hate," the tweet reads.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Greitens called the damage a "cowardly" and "despicable act of what appears to be anti-Semitic vandalism."

Regardless of the motive for the vandalism, the cemetery is sacred ground, said Karen Aroesty of the Anti-Defamation League of St. Louis.

"The level of tension in the Jewish community is pretty high," she told the TV station.

The land where the cemetery is located was purchased in 1893 by a group of Jewish immigrants from Russia.

The investigation into the cemetery break-in comes as 11 phoned-in bomb threats were reported by various Jewish centers across the country Monday morning, according to the JCC Association of North America.

From the start of the year through Monday, 69 bomb threats have made to 54 Jewish centers in the United States and Canada, said David Posner, the association's director of strategic performance.

No bombs were found, and no one was injured in connection with the threats, according to the organization, which is working with law enforcement and the FBI to investigate the calls.

The Trump administration has faced criticism that it had not sufficiently rebuked acts of anti-Semitism that have occurred nationwide since the election.

On Tuesday, President Trump addressed the issue while visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms," he said. "The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil."

CNN's David Williams, Dani Stewart, Artemis Moshtaghian and Elizabeth Landers contributed to this report.

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Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017

The New Yorker

Anti-Defamation League offers reward in cemetery vandalism case fox2now.com UNIVERSITY CITY, MO (KTVI) The job of putting the headstones back in place at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City could take days. Families crowded the cemetery Tuesday morning to see if their loved ones' graves had been vandalized. Generous Muslim fundraisers collect 44000 in donations in a matter of HOURS to help US Jewish community repair ...The Sun St. Louis Responds to a Rise in Anti-SemitismThe New Yorker Support pours in for damaged Jewish cemetery near St. LouisWPSD Local 6 The Times of Israel -LaunchGood all 411 news articles »

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Posted By richards on February 22, 2017

Bomb threats against JCCs throughout the U.S. are bringing many reactions, but none tastier than this tweet from The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in response to Presidential spokesman Sean Spicers bizarre insistence that Donald Trump has spoken out against anti-Semitism many times:

Thats a nice Jewish twist on let them eat cake, which is a frequently used translation of a sentence in Jean-Jacques Rousseaus autobiography, Confessions. But wait thats just the beginning of the story.

In French, the sentence actually reads: Quils mangent de la brioche and it is often mis-attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, who was nine years old in 1765, when Rousseau wrote those words in his multi-volume opus. (He finally published it in 1782.)

In the interest of facts, an endangered concept these days, in the previous sentence, Rousseau merely refers to a grande princesse, and he doesnt name names. Theres no record of Marie Antoinette saying anything about brioche.

What the let them eat cake saga does show is that fake news has a long history; the misattributed utterance was taken as a symbol of total disregard for the struggles of poor peasants; brioche was a luxury, and certainly not within the means of the poor.

Back to babka and the contemporary struggle for actual reality. Yes, the Anne Frank Center was suggesting that the current administration literally, at least should eat some yeast cake that in Jewish tradition usually includes lots of chocolate or cinnamon. Figuratively, of course, the Anne Frank Center was displaying its disdain for Spicers claim.

But language nerds had another pressing concern. Come to think of it, what does the word babka mean?

The Oxford English Dictionary says babka is the diminutive form of baba, which, via French from Polish, literally married peasant woman. (The shadow of Marie Antoinette and the peasants lives on.) The OED also points out that baba in Indian culture means father or respected older man, but thats not relevant to the European cake that has become a staple of Jewish-American cooking as well as Israeli bake shops.

If babka immediately makes you think grandmother, or the Yiddish word for grandmother, bubbe, its because, well, thats also what babka means.

Savta. Bubbe. Grandma.

The Polish and Belarusian noun babka and the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian baba mean grandmother or little grandmother. And while this may sound a bit creepy, The Oxford Companion to Food points out that the babkas bottom part looks like the pleats of a skirt in other words, the kind of thing grandma might wear.

No matter what grandma is wearing, many of us would love it if a brigade of feisty Jewish grandmothers were responding to Spicer and Trump right now, perhaps while slinging babka.

So how did a word for grandmother become a pastry? According to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, babka as a pastry name came to English from Polish, via French. But dont worry too much about grandmas disappearance from use: The Canadian Oxford assures us that babka is still sometimes used in its original meaning (grandmother), especially among those of Central and Eastern European descent. And of course, the word babushka can be heard in neighborhoods with Russian-Jewish grandmothers in abundance. Babushka means grandmother, and is the diminutive of baba, or older woman, according to Merriam-Webster.

If all this etymology just makes you want to snack, youre in luck. You can certainly make babka at home, no matter what your heritage, and a bonus is that making babka can keep you busy long enough to miss a news cycle and the accompanying rise in blood pressure.

Baking a chocolate babka is no casual undertaking, writes Melissa Clark of The New York Times in her introduction to her babka recipe.

The Eastern European yeast-risen coffee cake has 14 steps and takes all day to make, Clark writes. But the results are worth every sugarcoated second with a moist, deeply flavored brioche-like cake wrapped around a dark fudge filling, then topped with cocoa streusel crumbs.

Here is her recipe:

If fourteen steps seems too simple, and you want to stay busy and distracted from the Presidency for even longer, Bon Appetit offers a babka recipe featuring a double helix twist. Think of it as supporting science, another endangered entity right now.

Maybe babka will get a Trump bump, just like Nordstroms, Teen Vogue, and other unexpected members of the resistance. But for those who follow pastry, grandmothers favorite snack, babka, was getting kind of hot before the Anne Frank Center made it even hotter.

Bon Appetit magazine declared last month that babka is the new bagel, meaning it is finely making its way to the masses. We can only rejoice, Vered Guttman of Haaretz wrote about a year ago, when it seemed a bit easier to rejoice.

Not to be outdone, Haaretz offers a classic poppyseed babka recipe, an ideal treat to master with Purim only weeks away. Last but certainly not least, Haaretz even offers a ten-photo, step-by-step babka-making primer which makes babka-making seem totally doable, and even soothing.

Far less damaging to the heart rate than watching Sean Spicer, and a reminder that if our grandmothers survived what they survived and still managed to roll dough, spread chocolate, and enjoy the ensuing babka, perhaps we can best get through this with a little piece of elaborate yeast cake too.

Aviya Kushner is The Forwards language columnist and the author of The Grammar of God (Spiegel & Grau). Follow her on Twitter at @AviyaKushner

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How Marie Antoinette and Sean Spicer Are Making Babka Famous - Forward

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Posted By richards on February 22, 2017

Fourteen U.S. Baptist leaders returned from Israel this week after learning about the Jewish state beyond the headlines and building Christian-Jewish bridges, in a mission, Feb. 13-20, organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship).

The Baptist leaders toured Christian and Jewish holy sites including the Western (Wailing) Wall and Old City of Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, Masada, Caesarea, Muhraka (Horn of Carmel) and Meggido. The group also made a special visit to Israels Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

Visiting the Holy Land of Israel is a great privilege. We are so grateful to have been given the opportunity to learn about the Jewish homeland and our Christian heritage and to strengthen our connection to the Israeli people and most importantly, to G-d, said Rev. Samuel Tolbert, a trip leader and president of the National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA).

The Baptist leaders were the most recent major Christian group to visit Israel with The Fellowship. In the summer of 2015, The Fellowship hosted 21 top ministers of the Detroit-based Pentecostal group the Church of God In Christ, while in in Jan. 2016, it brought 22 top clergy of the Washington, D.C.-based Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC), the movement of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to Israel. In May of last year, 26 leaders of the NBCA the second-largest African-American Baptist group also visited Israel with The Fellowship, and last Sept. The Fellowship brought 22 leaders from the Bahamas-based Global United Fellowship (GUF) to Israel.

We were honored to host these outstanding Baptist leaders in Israel, said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of The Fellowship. By experiencing the spiritual power of the Holy Land, they deepened their own faith while strengthening the profound historic bonds between the Christian and Jewish people.

The Fellowship was formed in 1983 to promote better understanding and cooperation between Christians and Jews, and build broad support for Israel. Today The Fellowship is the largest channel of Christian support for Israel and Jewish needs around the world.

Participants in this months mission included Tolbert, Rev. Derick Brennan of Philadelphia; Rev. Dr. Jason Coker of Jackson, Mich.; Rev. Earlene Coleman of McKeesport, Pa.; Rev. Gary Dollar of Glen Carbon, Ill.; Dr. Brian Ford of Columbia, Mo.; Dr. Jim Hill of Kirkwood, Mo.; Rev. Forestal Lawton, of Kansas City, Mo.; Rev. Steven T. Mack, of Camden, N.J.; Dr. Harry Rowland of Decatur, Ga.; Rev. Doyle Sager of Jefferson City, Mo.; Rev. Napoleon Smith of Albuquerque, N.M.; Rev. Julian K. Woods of Lake Charles, La.; and Rev. James E. Victor, of Arlington, Va.

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Baptist Leaders 'Strengthen Connection to Israel' on Bridge-Building Mission - Breaking Israel News

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Posted By simmons on February 21, 2017

Growing outcry against a recent spate of anti-Semitic acts and threats pushed President Trump to denunciate the rising violence, calling it "a sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Trump called anti-Semitic violence horrible and vowed Tuesday to take steps to counter extremism in comments that followed criticism that the White House had not clearly denounced vandalism and threats targeting Jewish institutions.

Hours before Trumps remarks, Hillary Clinton called on her former presidential rival to speak out against anti-Semitic acts aftermore than 170 Jewish graves were found toppled at a cemetery in Missouri.

The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community at community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil, Trump said following a visit to the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Trump called the tour a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms. Earlier, he told NBC News that anti-Semitism is horrible, and its going to stop.

The remarks by Trump also appear aimed at easing pressure on his administration, which faces claims from opponents that it has failed to distance itself from extremist ideology and has emboldened right-wing groups through its populist, America-first themes.

The tweet from Clinton did not specifically mention the gravesite disturbances inUniversity City, Mo., but noted increasing reports of troubling threats against Jewish community centers, cemetery desecrations and online intimidation.

Clintons message to Trump came as the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S. Lauder, also urged U.S. officials to recognize that anti-Semitism is alive and kicking.

American Jews are worried, Lauder said in a statement. It is shocking to see that Jewish sites are once again being targeted by criminals.

On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish community centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said.The development elicited comments from a White House spokesman and Ivanka Trump, neither of which used the phrase anti-Semitism or mentioned Jews.

Glad to see this, the ADLs chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt,tweeted of Ivanka Trumps comment. All Jews need to urge the president to step forward & share a plan. His words carry weight. His actions will speak even louder.

The exchanges were particularly noteworthy in part because of Trumps unusual response at a news conferenceWednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a question about the rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country. Rather than condemning them, Trump responded by talking about his electoral college victory.

Trump has been criticized forrefusing to describe the threats toward Jews as anti-Semitism. An op-ed at the Forward, the New York-based newspaper written for a Jewish audience, described Trumps silence about anti-Semitism as deeply disturbing.

When asked again about the rise in anti-Semitic threats, during another news conference on Thursday, the president responded as ifhe were beingpersonally accused. Trumpsaidthat thequestion was very insulting and that he was the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life.

The weekends events, coming in the wake of last weeks public exchanges with Trump, served to heat up a long-simmering tension between some leaders of the nations Jewish community and the Trump White House.

The perpetrators of the cemetery vandalism and their motives arenot yet established. Police in University City, an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, have launched an investigation. They are reviewing video surveillance at the cemetery, which is operated on a not-for-profit basis by the Chesed Shel Emeth Society,and calling on anyone with information to come forward.

Because of the Sabbath, the cemetery does not operate on Saturday, the director of the Chesed Shel Emeth Society, Anita Feigenbaum, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.

A groundskeeper arrived Monday morning to find gravestones overturned across a wide section of the cemetery, the oldest section, bearing the remains of Jews who died between the late 1800s and the mid-20th century.

She called it a horrific act of cowardice, beyond anything the cemetery had experienced in the past.

The cemetery was founded in 1888 by the Russian Jewish community in St. Louis to aid all Jews who needed burial whether they had the money or not. They started with the burial society and then extended to hospitals and houses that help the poor and the sick. To this day thats what we do. We are not for profit. We help in this horrible time in a persons life.

Feigenbaum had walked through the cemetery during the day and had not yet completed counting the number of damaged stones, most of them pushed over, off their bases. So far she said she had found more than 170. Feigenbaum said she was starting to hear from families of people buried there. We will reach out to the families that are affected, she said.

The cemetery holds the remains of more than 20,000, she estimated.

She said she was getting an outpouring of support from across the United States with people volunteering to help with repairs.

Separately on Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish community centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said.

While ADL does not have any information at this time to indicate the presence of any actual bombs at the institutions threatened, the threats themselves are alarming, disruptive and must always be taken seriously.

Bomb threats were called in at Jewish community centers in 11cities across the United States: Albuquerque, Amherst, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, St. Paul, Tampa and Whitefish Bay, Wis.Since January, there have been 69 bomb threatcalls targeting 54 centers in 27 different states, according to the Jewish Community Center Association.

In Amherst and Buffalo, the community centers werebriefly closedafter a threat was phoned to the Amherst center. Disruption was the goal, saidRichard A. Zakalik, the local New York JCC executive director, to the Buffalo Newson Monday. They accomplished what they wanted, Zakalik said to the Buffalo News.The whole point was to scare and disrupt.

No devices or bombs were found in connection with thethreats; the Jewish Community Center Association described all of Mondays incidents ashoaxes. The FBI and the civil rights division of the Justice Department will probe the series of calls for federal violations, according tothe Star Tribune.

Paul Goldenberg, the director of Secure Community Network, the security affiliate of Jewish Federations of North America, told theJewish Telegraphic Agency that the bomb threats appeared to originate from the same serial caller. Noting that not every building that received a call decided to evacuate, he said that the community centers were very well-equipped to handle this. The centers also increased their security measures after the threats, the JCCA noted.

The weekend spate of anti-Semitic threats was not limited to the United States. In Canada, a 70-year-old Toronto woman named Helen Chaiton said that her mezuza, the case containing Hebrew verse traditionally affixed to a doorpost, had been vandalized twice over the weekend. Chaiton and her neighbors also found that the vandals had left behind sticky notes with swastikas, the CBC reported.

[Anti-Semitic jokes cause YouTube, Disney to distance themselves from PewDiePie]

Responding to an inquiry from NBC Newsabout the threats, the White House tweeted back: Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom. The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.

The tweet from Ivanka Trump, a convert to Judaism, appeared to be unsolicited and drew generally favorable reaction, but also questions about why her father, the president, seemed reluctant to speak out.

The ADLissued a statementon Feb. 16,characterizingTrumps news conference reaction as mind-boggling.

On two separate occasions over the past two days, President Trump has refused to say what he is going to do about rising anti-Semitism or to even condemn it, the ADL said in the statement. This is not a partisan issue. Its a potentially lethal problem and its growing.

And after the new rash of phoned-in threats Monday, theorganizations chief executivedrew a connection between the incidents and the presidential silence. A lack of attention to this from the president creates an environment in which the bigots feel empowered, Greenblatt, of the ADL, told Haaretz. They feel like their intolerance is being tolerated.

John Wagner contributed to this report.

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"A Christian should keep his body and mind pure and clean because he is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)"

"When a miracle happens, it takes the spiritual mind to conceive/ appreciate the force behind it (John 9:33)"

"As a Christian, when your mind becomes the watchman, you would do what Jesus expects you to do; you would see what Jesus is looking at; you would watch and pray (Matthew 26:41)"

T.B. Joshua

"Everyone sees through different eyes, feels with different hearts, hears through different ears (John 7:12)"

T.B. Joshua

"Great thoughts produce great decisions (Romans 12:2)"

"If you have the mind of Christ no one can influence you (Acts 21:12-14)"

"If your heart and mind are filled with God's Word, you will talk that Word (Luke 6:45)"

T.B. Joshua

"In the mind of God you are a successful person. For you to put that success into your life, you need to retrain your mind with the words of Joshua(Joshua 1:8)"

T.B. Joshua

"Jesus Christ never rejects anyone who asks for healing(Matthew 20:29-34)"

"Jesus Christ came down from heaven to give help to the helpless and hope to the hopeless (Luke 19:10)"

"Jesus Christ opened prison doors; He healed the sick; He delivered the oppressed. Jesus preached the Good News (Luke 4:17-19)"

T.B. Joshua

"When you listen to the Holy Spirit, you will be protected from the pitfall of every enemy (Isaiah 30: 21) "

T.B. Joshua

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