Local Leaders Stand Against Anti-Semitism

Photo by Derek Redd

WHEELING - While local leaders remember the 2018 shooting at Tree of Life synagogue, which claimed the lives of 11 people, antisemitism again enters the public discourse inspired by the comments of Ye, the rapper and mogul formerly known as Kanye West.

Leaders from throughout the Ohio Valley are forming a united front against antisemitism and standing alongside Rabbi Joshua Lief of Temple Shalom in supporting the Jewish community. On Thursday, they met at Temple Shalom to reinforce their solidarity.

Among those who stood with Lief were YWCA diversity coordinator Ron Scott Jr., Suff. Bishop Darrell Cummings of Bethlehem Apostolic Temple, West Virginia NAACP President Darryl Clausell, Belmont County NAACP President Jerry Moore II, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott and Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio.

A memorial service will be held coinciding with the usual Sabbath observance at 8 p.m. Friday evening, Lief said. All are welcome to attend. Lief recalled the day after the shooting, the synagogue welcomed more than 600 people to the service, which was so many people that some had to stand outdoors, but which showed the outpouring of support from the public in a time of crisis.

"Six-hundred-plus people gathered here to stand with us and to show their support," he said. "In the past couple weeks, there has been a rise of antisemitic rhetoric in our national discourse. It was incredibly poignant with this anniversary coming up that our friends from across the community reached out to us and said, 'We want to stand with you again.'"

Over the last several weeks, Ye, formerly known as West, repeatedly made antisemitic comments on social media, ranging from claiming that he would go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE," to boasting that he "can literally say antisemitic things Adidas can't drop me" in an Oct. 16 podcast. Adidas would drop Ye's eponymous footwear earlier this week, a move which would see Adidas lose around 10% of its sales totals, according to Fortune, and would slash about $1.5 billion off Ye's net worth, according to Forbes.

Scott said he felt it was important for the communities to band together, particularly with Ye, a Black man, serving as the current mouthpiece for antisemitism in the national discourse.

"In the current moment, the face of antisemitism is the face of a Black man, pushed into a lot of folks' face," Scott said. "I wanted to make sure folks understand that there's another side to that point, another face that can be shown to you instead of the one getting pushed into yours.

"More important than anything, I wanted to stand in solidarity with you," Scott said to Lief.

Cummings echoed Scott's sentiments, drawing from his childhood experience in Cleveland Heights, where many of his friends and neighbors were Jewish.

"We definitely support our Jewish brothers and sisters. I was tremendously blessed in that I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which was, at the time, considered a true ghetto, and the original meaning of the word is a Jewish village," Cummings said. "All my friends, all my classmates were Jewish. My next door neighbor had come through the Holocaust, broke her back, and she showed me her numbers. I used to cut their grass just to hear the stories of what they went through.

"I'm so saddened that someone looking like me has promoted (antisemitism) against the Jews, against the Hebrew nation. We support them, we're in this together, and the rabbi has been a great example of support on both sides."