5774: The year in review (Part three of three parts)

(Part three of three parts)

NEW YORK – Read about the highs and lows of the last part of 5774.

May 2014

New York’s 92nd Street Y, a Jewish center for arts and culture, names its first non-Jewish executive director, Henry Timms. Shortly afterward, Sol Adler, the previous longtime executive director, who was fired after revelations that he had a long-term affair with his assistant, hangs himself in his Brooklyn home.

An Anti-Defamation League anti-Semitisim survey finds “deeply anti-Semitic views” are held by 26 percent of 53,000 people polled in 102 countries and territories covering approximately 86 percent of the world’s population. Critics say the survey’s 11 questions are not accurate gauges of anti-Semitism.

 Novelist Philip Roth receives an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Now considered one of the greatest living American writers, Roth had caused outrage early in his career with his sometimes stinging portrayals of Jewish life. In 2012, Roth announced he was retiring.

Maccabi Tel Aviv wins the Euroleague basketball championship by beating favored Real Madrid, 98-86, in overtime.

The Jewish community of Sharon, Mass., is shocked as the rabbi of Temple Israel, Barry Starr, resigns amid allegations that he used synagogue discretionary funds to pay about $480,000 in hush money to an extortionist to hide a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male. Starr apologizes to the congregation in an email.

Far right parties make gains in European Parliament elections, including Greece’s Golden Dawn.

The European Union says it has banned the import of poultry and eggs produced in West Bank settlements.

A gunman kills four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. Several days later, Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French national of Algerian origin, is arrested in connection with the attack.

Pope Francis travels to Israel and the West Bank, visiting the Western Wall, Yad Vashem and the West Bank security fence, among other sites.

June 2014

Rep. Eric Cantor, the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history, is upset in the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District by a Tea Party challenger. Dave Brat, an economics professor, wins handily after attacking Cantor for drifting from conservative principles. Days later, Cantor resigns his post as majority leader.

Former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin of the Likud party is elected president of Israel, defeating Meir Sheetrit of Hatnua in a 63-53 runoff vote. Rivlin formally succeeds Shimon Peres and becomes Israel’s 10th president in late July.

Weeks after leading Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Euroleague title, David Blatt becomes the head coach of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Blatt had played for an Israeli kibbutz team in 1979 after his sophomore year at Princeton and then competed for the U.S. team that won the gold medal in the 1981 Maccabiah Games. He returned to play nearly a decade later professionally in Israel.

Three Israeli teenagers, later identified as Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, are kidnapped in the West Bank from a hitchhiking post. Israel responds with three weeks of intensive searches, including mass arrests in the West Bank of Hamas members and the rearrest of dozens of Palestinians released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner-exchange deal. Three weeks on, Israeli authorities find the teens’ bodies and announce that the boys were believed to have been killed the night they were kidnapped. The incident sparks the revenge killing by Jews of an Arab teen, riots and a surge of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces respond by launching Operation Protective Edge – Israel’s deadliest foray into Gaza since its 2005 withdrawal – on July 8.

New York Jewish teenager’s   raunchy stand-up routine on “America’s Got Talent” cracks up the judges, but his Orthodox day school isn’t tickled.

Israel announces that the suspect in the April 14 killing of Israeli Police Superintendent Baruch Mizrachi is Ziad Awad, a West Bank Palestinian released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

 The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) votes 310-303 to divest from three American companies that do business with Israeli security services in the West Bank. Heath Rada, the moderator of the assembly, says it’s not a “reflection for our lack of love for our Jewish sisters and brothers,” but Jewish leaders say it will have a “devastating impact” on their relations with the church.

July 2014

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the father of the Jewish Renewal movement which sought to introduce more music, dance and meditation into prayer and Jewish life, dies in Boulder, Colo., at age 89.

Israel launches its third major Gaza operation in six years. Dubbed Operation Defensive Edge, the campaign begins with 10 days of intensive airstrikes in Gaza. After several failed cease-fire attempts, a ground invasion of Gaza follows. Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, striking as far away as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and a Haifa suburb. In four weeks of fighting before a 72-hour cease-fire in early August, some 1,800 Palestinians are reported killed. Israel comes under heavy criticism for attacks that kill children, strike U.N. facilities and damage civil infrastructure. Israel blames Hamas for using civilians as human shields and schools, hospitals and U.N. facilities as weapons depots. The death toll in Israel includes 64 soldiers and three civilians. Several of Israel’s casualties are due to Palestinian infiltrations of Israel through tunnels burrowed under the Israel-Gaza border. Israel’s prime minister says destroying the tunnels is one of the war’s main objectives.

A riot outside a French synagogue is one of several incidents related to the Gaza war that threaten Jews in Europe. The riot by Palestinian sympathizers outside the Synagogue de la Roquette in central Paris traps some 200 people inside the building. A street brawl ensues between the rioters and dozens of Jewish men who arrived to defend the synagogue.

Most foreign airlines suspend flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv after a Hamas-fired missile strikes nearby. The suspensions, prompted by a flight ban issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, last two to three days.

Iran and the major powers, led by the United States, agree to extend negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program for another four months, citing progress in a number of areas. But the potential deal breaker remains: Iran does not want to reduce its number of its centrifuges, and the world powers say they won’t accept Iran maintaining its existing capacity for uranium enrichment.

August 2014

As the fighting in Gaza wanes and Israeli troops begin to pull back, Israel experiences several terrorist attacks inside the country perpetrated by West Bank Palestinians, including a tractor attack in Jerusalem.

The 72-hour cease-fire that brought Operation Protective Edge to a halt expires, and Gazans resume intensive rocket fire against Israel. The Israeli military responds with airstrikes inside Gaza. The sides then agree to another 72-hour cease-fire.

The University of Illinois rescinds a job offer to Steven Salaita, a professor of American Indian studies, following a series of anti-Israel tweets by Salaita, including missives comparing Israel to the Ku Klux Klan. Following a public outcry, university chancellor Phyllis Wise relents and submits Salaita’s candidacy to the university board while making it clear that she does not support his hire. In September, the board votes 8-1 to reject Salaita’s hire. Salaita threatens to sue.

Joseph Raksin, an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn, is shot and killed on his way to Sabbath services in North Miami Beach. Some activists say the murder was a hate crime, but more than a month on, police still have no arrests and say the motive for the killing remains unclear.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House took the extraordinary step  in July of halting the Pentagon’s delivery of U.S.-made Hellfire missiles to Israel in the midst of its conflict with Hamas in Gaza. The denial came as the Obama administration urged Israeli restraint in its Gaza operation and days before Israel rebuffed a cease-fire proposal from Secretary of State John Kerry. A State Department spokeswoman denies any change in policy, saying, “Given the crisis in Gaza, it is natural that agencies take additional care with deliveries as part of an interagency process.”

In a rare instance of violence from the Gaza conflict reverberating in New York, a Jewish couple is accosted by pro-Palestinian assailants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The incident prompts Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the head of a prominent modern Orthodox day school in the neighborhood, Ramaz, to consider instructing students not to wear their kippahs in public. He later changes his mind.

Celebrants rededicate Nariman House, the reconstructed Chabad house in Mumbai that was closed after Pakistani terrorists killed six people there, including Chabad emissaries Gabriel and Rivky Holtzberg, as part of a massive attack in November 2008 that left 166 people dead.

Writer and liberal activist Leonard Fein dies at age 80. Fein had founded Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger and the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy, and co-founded Americans for Peace Now and Moment Magazine. A few weeks later, Fein’s older brother, Rashi Fein, a Harvard professor known for his contributions to medicine and social policy, dies at age 88.

Hamas and Israel agree to a cease-fire that ends their 50-day war. In all, the war leaves an estimated 2,200 Palestinians dead. Sixty-seven soldiers and six civilians are killed on the Israeli side, including two soldiers who die of their wounds after the cease-fire is completed and a 4-year-old boy killed shortly before the truce. Brokered by Egypt, the cease-fire stipulates that Israel and Egypt open all border crossings to allow international humanitarian aid and construction materials to enter Gaza. In Israel, the verdict is mixed over whether the Israeli operation achieved its aims.

Israel sets off international condemnation with its announcement that it is appropriating nearly 1,000 acres of West Bank land near the Gush Etzion bloc. Peace Now says it is Israel’s largest West Bank land grab since the 1980s.

September 2014

Joan Rivers, a Jewish comic who broke barriers for women in comedy and on television, dies at age 81.

Jewish journalist Steven Sotloff, an American-Israeli who had been taken captive while covering the Syrian civil war, is beheaded by ISIS, the outlaw group that has declared an Islamic state in parts of Iraq and Syria. ISIS published video of Sotloff’s beheading and that of another American and a Briton, fueling the U.S. decision to expand its airstrikes against ISIS and enlist other countries in the cause.

Rabbi Brant Rosen decides to quit his 17-year pulpit job at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., after his outspoken criticism of Israel becomes too divisive for his congregation. Rosen is one of the leaders of the rabbinical council of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group listed by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the top 10 anti-Israel organizations in the United States.

A group of 43 reservists from the Israel Defense Forces’ famed 8200 intelligence unit causes a stir by publicly vowing to stop collecting information on Palestinians. “The intelligence gathered harms innocents and is used for political persecution and for invading most areas of Palestinians’ lives,” the reservists write in their public letter to Israel’s prime minister and IDF top brass. “Our conscience no longer permits us to serve this system.” The IDF says it will take disciplinary action against the reservists.

Four Ohio University students are arrested when a fracas erupts during their protest over the Student Senate president’s “blood bucket challenge” of Israel in which Megan Marzec filmed herself dousing herself with a bucket of fake blood to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Her video echoes the ALS “ice bucket challenge” campaign designed to raise money for and awareness of ALS.