So far appears that the shooter is in custody, and no fatalities. Hopefully that is accurate.
Updated information is that there is one fatality and the Mayer of Poway has unequivocally stated it was a hate crime. The shooter is in custody.
My understanding (very limited) is that it was a Chabad group, which mean the sort of Orthodox that look different from the mainstream, and they had advertised last-day-of-Passover services starting at 10 am… which could explain why they were a targeted by a hater.
One of the women in my Widow’s Group has kids in the area… I sure hope they’re OK but I probably won’t know until Tuesday. >sigh<
Broomstick, one woman interviewed on CNN said her husband had been inside there, and injured, but she looked no different than anyone else I would see day to day. Ordinary clothes, not anything unusual to my Western eyes.
The Chabad men in San Antonio don’t wear the black frock coats and black hats (like the Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights Brooklyn), but they do have long beards, may have long sidelocks, and sometimes you can see the tallit fringes peeking out from under their shirts. The women generally dress modestly (think Mormon, or evangelical home-schooler types) and married women cover their hair.
The Chabadmovement is very interesting.
Here’s a little more about the 250-year-old movement from Wikipedia:
I don’t know if it’s generally known, but Jews don’t seek converts. In fact, if you decide you want to convert, it’s traditional that the rabbi turn you down three times before permitting you to take instruction. This is because Jews don’t think they have anything special that you need, unlike Christians, who have received the Good News of salvation and (according to belief)were directed by Jesus to tell other people about it. The Chasidic movement’s outreach is directed toward other Jews who may want to feel connected but don’t know how to go about it. I’ve been to Shabbat dinner at the local Chabad community and there are usually dozens of guests, singing, lots of food, kids running around, and generally it’s a very joyful experience.
The apparent shooter is a student at the university in where I teach - California State University, San Marcos.
This article has quite a bit of detail about the shooter … a 19 year old white supremacist that lives at home with his parents. Of course.
spends two days offline
comes back to this
Happy Passover, y’all. :(:mad:
I wonder if he was influenced by the New York Times anti-Semitic cartoon published a couple of days ago.
I don’t know anything about this cartoon, but the article linked above says he started planning the attack four weeks ago, so…no.
It also says he was inspired by the Tree of Life shooting and the attack on the mosque in New Zealand. So again…no.
It seems…peculiar…to jump to the conclusion that this guy was inspired by a cartoon when there are so many better known and more appalling inspirations out there.
Because when a white supremacist goes on a shooting rampage, there must be some way to blame the “liberal media,” right?
As ThelmaLou pointed out, among the Chabad it’s the men that look most different from mainstream America, not the women. Even the married women who cover their hair frequently have high-quality wigs, they just look conservatively dressed.
The Chabad in my area don’t wear the frock coats and such associated with the New York Hassidim, but the men (males over 13) wear a kippa or other head covering, you can usually see the fringed tallit danging below their shirts, beards, side locks, etc. The women can usually blend in with the conservative Christian types but you can pick them out if you know what to look for.
I’m pretty sure I saw that interview, too. Keep in mind that not only do the Chabad women tend to blend in with the mainstream, but for Passover it is very, very common to invite people outside the immediate community, people of other faiths, and so on so the woman interviewed might be from a more liberal Jewish tradition or even perhaps not Jewish (though the odds are high that she is). This year I went to a seder of a family that were kind enough to invite me after finding out I had no family within hundreds of miles. The woman in my widows’ support group who is Roman Catholic was invited to a seder this year as well. Last year I went to community seder that had a number of Christian folks of African-American descent for whom the Passover theme of deliverance from slavery has a particular resonance (come to think of it, the local Chabad rabbi ran that particular seder).
The timing seemed plausible to me, but if he started planning it weeks ago, then the NYT anti-Semitic cartoon wouldn’t have been the impetus.
It is posts like this that keep me at the SDMB. I learn a lot here!
Oh, yes, of course, because the those New York Times cartoons–with their Svengali-like grip on the public–so often inspire young people to suddenly take up arms and commit violent acts. 4chan has nothing on NYT cartoons.
It would have been my very very first thought, too.
I hadn’t heard about it — it’s really a pretty gross cartoon, and I don’t feel like linking to it.
So Ditka wondered whether a grossly anti-Semitic (in effect, at least) cartoon that appeared in international editions of the New York Times inspired an act of terrorism in California. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ You do you, I guess.
Of course 19 year old red necks in California are avid readers of The NY Times. :rolleyes: My god what a shitty thing to say at a time like this. Shame on you
Like the Christchurch shooter there are reports of the shooter participating in alt-right, internet hate sites. It even includes an attempted live-stream and hate filled manifesto.
And here I thought the New York Times was Failing bigly and full of Fake News. Who knew Ditka held it in such high regard?
Some info here on the shooter’s relationship with 8chan’s /pol/. Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board - bellingcat
Apparently inspired to take his violence into meatspace by [Strikethrough]Ilan Omar[/Strikethrough] the Christchurch NZ attack.
Great to see the kids taking the Columbine template to the next level by memeifying it.