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H eadlines
NEWSBRIEFS NJ Condo Settles With Residents Who Sued About
Shabbat Elevator Discontinuation
ELEVATORS AT THE COLONY condominiums in Fort Lee,
New Jersey once again will stop on every floor on Shabbat as part
of a settlement with Orthodox Jewish residents who sued over
the service being canceled, JTA reported.

Residents filed suit in June alleging that the condo discrim-
inated against them by turning off the Shabbat setting in the
elevators and preventing staff from pushing the elevator buttons.

They contended that they were thus trapped in their apartments
during Shabbat.

In a letter to condo shareholders, it was announced that the
elevators will stop on every floor for 9½ hours each Saturday and
on major Jewish holidays. The lawsuit sought damages, but no
payments are required per the settlement.

First Bar Mitzvah Celebrated in Bahrain in 16 Years
Bahrain’s Jewish community recently celebrated its first bar
mitzvah since 2005, JTA reported.

The Association of Gulf Jewish Communities said the
ceremony took place in Bahrain’s only operational synagogue,
the House of Ten Commandments in Manama.

The unnamed bar mitzvah boy read from a Torah scroll
donated by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser to
former President Donald Trump.

There are about 50 Jews living in Bahrain, which signed a normal-
ization accord with Israel in 2020 that Kushner helped to broker.

“It is a very exciting time for Jewish life in the [Gulf Cooperation
Council] as more families celebrate Jewish milestones more
publicly,” AGJC Rabbi Elie Abadie said. “This is an affirmation of
the continued growth of Jewish life in the region.”
Spanish University Cancels Seminar Comparing
Holocaust, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A Spanish university canceled a course titled “Auschwitz/Gaza: A
Testing Ground for Comparative Literature” after being criticized by
several Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations, JTA reported.

Jewish groups contended that the University of Santiago de
Compostela in Galicia trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“This very title and expected content is not an issue of
‘freedom of expression,’ but a banalization of the Holocaust,
which can incite to hatred and violence against Jews of today,”
wrote Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director
for international relations, in a letter sent to Spain’s minister of
universities, Manuel Castells Oliván.

Ukrainian Café Says SS Logo a ‘Font Gone Wrong’
Owners of a Ukrainian cafe housed in a former synagogue said
a logo featuring two lightning bolts that resembled the Nazi SS
insignia “is a case of a font gone wrong,” JTA reported.

The owners of Café Escobar in Chernivtsi said on Facebook that
they worked two lightning bolts into the logo to advertise their coffee’s
reenergizing qualities. They apologized and said they will drop the logo.

“We didn’t make any Nazi references, we assure you! And
sorry if this caused negative emotions,” they wrote. “We apolo-
gize to anyone whose feelings may have been hurt.”
The cafe has kept some of the Hebrew text on the walls from when
the building was the Great Synagogue of Chernivtsi. The building
dates from 1853 and combines baroque and classicist elements. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
6 SEPTEMBER 2, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM