H eadlines
NEWSBRIEFS Menorahs Vandalized in Three Ukraine Cities
Large Chanukah menorahs on display in three
different Ukraine locales were vandalized in suspected
hate crimes, JTA reported.

A menorah erected in the Troieshchyna district in
Kyiv was knocked down, and its lamps were smashed,
Eduard Dolinksy, the director of the Ukrainian
Jewish Committee, wrote on Facebook.

In the eastern city of Dnipro, police arrested five
teenagers on suspicion of knocking down a menorah,
the Sobitie news site reported.

And unidentified individuals cut lighting strips
decorating a menorah in Nikolayev, a city in southern
Ukraine, the Novosti-news site reported.

Ukrainian ultra-nationalists have targeted
menorahs in recent years.

NYC to Mandate Vaccines for Yeshiva,
Other Private School Employees
NEW YORK CITY ANNOUNCED a vaccine
mandate for employees at yeshivas and other private
schools, which prompted pushback from haredi
Orthodox leaders, JTA reported.

The mandate will affect about 56,000 workers at
the city’s 930 private schools — including Jewish day
schools and yeshivas.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a vaccination
Get requirement for public school employees in October,
and more than 95% of employees got the shot,
although some Jewish teachers applied for religious
exemptions. Rabbi David Zweibel, executive vice president of
Agudath Israel America and chairman of a city coali-
tion of religious and independent school officials,
urged the city to reconsider.

In a letter to de Blasio and Dr. Dave Chokshi,
commissioner of the New York City Department
of Health and Mental Hygiene, Zweibel said the
mandate “could be devastating to our schools and the
children they serve,” and “some schools may even be
forced to close.”
Fresno State to Consider Renaming Library
Honoring Nazi Sympathizer
Administrators at California State University, Fresno
announced that they would consider renaming the
school’s Henry Madden Library after learning from
a professor that the namesake former librarian was
an antisemite and a vocal Hitler supporter, JTA
reported. The issue came to light because of research by Bradley
Hart, a professor in the school’s Media, Communications
and Journalism Department who wrote a book about
U.S. supporters of Hitler and fascism.

Madden was the school’s librarian from 1949 to
1979; the central library was named for him in 1981.

The university confirmed it had copies of Madden’s
antisemitic writings in its collections. A task force
was announced to rename the building.

Florida Jewish Federation Says Facebook
Algorithm Rejected its Anti-Hate Ad
The Jewish Federation of Broward County in Florida
said it tried to buy an ad on Facebook calling atten-
tion to the problem of antisemitism as part of the new
national “Shine a Light” campaign, but Facebook’s
automated system rejected the ad, JTA reported.

That led federation officials to suspect the post was
accidentally ensnared by a hate-speech blocking filter.

“Unfortunately, Facebook inexplicably rejected
our ads, presumably because they contained
the words ‘hate’ and ‘anti-Semitism,’” wrote the
federation’s board chair Alan Cohn and interim
president and CEO Mark Freedman in a letter to
the company. “This, we believe, is an unintended,
but calamitous consequence of your effort to curb
hate speech.”
The federation asked that Facebook let its ad run. It
also asked the company to amplify voices that combat
hate. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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