The Atlantic: A Brief History of Anti-Semitic Violence in America

Saturday’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 11 people were murdered and six more were injured, is believed to be the deadliest attack against the American Jewish community in U.S. history. The massacre is an unprecedented act of violence against American Jews—but it is by no means the first time that anti-Semitism has manifested in deadly violence against Jews in the United States.

American anti-Semitism is as old as America itself. For decades, American Jews have faced social discrimination, acts of vandalism against sacred spaces, and, in recent years, social-media harassment—and the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents has risen dramatically since 2016. Fatal attacks against American Jews have been far less common than these other forms of discrimination. And yet American history is full of episodes of physical violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. What follows is a list, far from comprehensive, of some of the many violent attacks targeting Jews in recent history.

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Politico: Merkel’s coalition lives to fight another day — just

Angela Merkel’s “grand coalition” of conservatives and Social Democrats (popularly known as the “GroKo”) suffered substantial, though not crippling, losses in a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday. While the result was somewhat better than predicted for the major parties and should quiet fears of an imminent coalition collapse, it highlighted how fragile and unloved the Berlin government has become after little more than half a year in office.[...]

The chancellor’s CDU won 27 percent of the vote in Hesse, down from 38.3 percent in the last election in 2013, while the Social Democrats (SPD) finished second with 20.1 percent, dropping from 30.7 percent, according to a projection by Infratest dimap, a polling institute, for ARD public television. The Greens won 19.6 percent, nearly doubling their 2013 result.[...]

National issues dominated the campaign in Hesse, a wealthy region that is home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt. That turned the election into a referendum on the performance of Merkel’s coalition with the SPD, which has been plagued by infighting since it took office in March.[...]

Above all, the result signals that German politics have become more volatile than at any time since World War II, meaning established parties are no longer able to rely on the allegiance of core constituencies. For example, nearly 75 percent of voters who abandoned the CDU and more than 50 percent of those who left the SPD said they did so in order to “send the party a message.”

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Al Jazeera: How much power does Saudi Arabia wield over the global economy?

Saudi oil is "actually quite important, particularly in the short-run," according to Chris Garcia, CEO of Vicar Financial and former deputy director of the US Department of Commerce under US President Donald Trump. "This is why when we look at some of the potential retaliation tactics that the Saudis have threatened, we have to take them seriously."[...]

"It's the short-run repercussions of the Saudis cutting [oil] output that would send shockwaves throughout the global economy, but I would say that's leverage that would diminish in the long run unless they diversify as the world continues to diversify itself from its energy resources," explains Garcia.[...]

Saudi's sovereign wealth fund is called the Public Investment Fund, which traditionally had a strategy of low-risk investments. But everything changed in 2016 when the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund invested $3.5bn in Uber, making it the largest single investment ever made in a privately-held company at the time.

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Haaretz: Israel's Chief Rabbi Refuses to Call Pittsburgh Massacre Site a Synagogue Because It's non-Orthodox

The country’s ultra-Orthodox newspapers, in reporting on the event, have also refused to acknowledge that it took place in a Jewish house of prayer because Tree of Life is a Conservative congregation, and they do not recognize the non-Orthodox movements.

In the interview with Makor Rishon, a newspaper popular in the Israeli Modern Orthodox community, Rabbi David Lau said that “any murder of any Jew in any part of the world for being Jewish is unforgivable.” But rather than acknowledge that the crime had been carried out in a synagogue, he referred to the location as “a place with a profound Jewish flavor.”[...]

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox newspapers all reported on the attack, but likewise, refused to refer to Tree of Life as a synagogue, preferring instead to call it a “Jewish center.”

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99 Percent Invisible: The Modern Necropolis

In the town of Colma, California, the dead outnumber the living by a thousand to one. Located just ten miles south of San Francisco, it is filled with rolling green hills, manicured hedges, and 17 full size cemeteries (18 if you include the pet cemetery). 73% of Colma is taken up by graveyards. Their motto? “It’s great to be alive in Colma.”[...]

From a distance, Colma looks a bit like a sprawling city , its landscapes dotted with mausoleums, monuments, towers and tombstones. It is home to just 1,600 living citizens but also houses the remains of a million and a half humans.[...]

Even though Colma’s deceased residents had no idea they would wind up miles from their original grave sites in San Francisco, leaving only bits of their memorial markers behind in the beaches and parks of the city of the living .

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