year in review

As 5775 winds to a close, here's a look back on the highs

I JTA Staff

September 2014

Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, during
his address at
the U.N. General
Assembly, shows a
photo of a rocket
launcher in a civilian
area of Gaza with
children nearby,
Sept. 29, 2014.

At the annual U.N. General Assembly, President Barack Obama focus-
es his speech on ISIS, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
likens Iran to ISIS and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blames
the West's blunders for fomenting the terrorists of ISIS. Meanwhile,
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issues a scathing
attack against Israel for its conduct in the summer's war with Hamas
in Gaza.

October 2014

Rabbi Barry Freundel, the longtime spiritual leader of the Kesher
Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C., is arrested and charged
with voyeurism following the discovery of hidden cameras that
recorded women undressing in the Orthodox synagogue's mikvah. The
following February, Freundel pleads guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism.
The case roils the Orthodox world.

Rabbi Avi Weiss, an ardent political activist who espouses a liberal
brand of Orthodoxy, announces his planned retirement from the
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York. Weiss is the founder of
the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah rabbinical school for men and Yeshivat
Maharat school for female Orthodox clergy.

The Death of Klinghoffer — an opera based on the true story of an
elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair killed by terrorists
aboard an Italian cruise ship — opens at the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York amid protests that the production is anti-Semitic
and sympathetic to terrorists. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani and two former New York governors, David Paterson and
George Pataki, are among those who protest the New York opening of
an opera that had its worldwide debut in 1991.

Chaya Zissel Braun, a 3-month-old American citizen, is killed when a
Hamas terrorist crashes a car into a Jerusalem rail station. A second
victim, a 22-year-old tourist from Ecuador, dies several days later from
injuries sustained in the attack.

Relations between the Obama White House and Prime Minister
Netanyahu reach a new low after an anonymous American official
calls the Israeli leader a "chickenshit" in an interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg of The Atlantic. U.S. officials condemn the remark and
Secretary of State John Kerry calls Netanyahu to apologize.

76 September 10 • 2015

JN

Rabbi Barry Freundel

Protesters in wheelchairs outside the
Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in
New York City on the opening night of
The Death of Klinghoffer, Oct. 20, 2014

The car that crashed
into a Jerusalem train
station, killing an infant
and injuring eight, in
what was probed as a
terrorist attack