(JTA) On the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, the voice of Milton Steinberg rose to the heavens.
For more than a decade Steinberg, a Holocaust survivor with a resonant voice and a lifelong passion for cantorial music, joined Cantor Shimon Craimer of the Riverdale Jewish Center during the recitation of the Avodah prayer, a centerpiece of the Yom Kippur liturgy. With his shock of silver-gray hair, Steinberg was considered an elder statesman of the Orthodox synagogue he helped found and his stature contrasted with the much younger cantor.
“I will never forget the first time,” Craimer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Israel, where he now lives. “It was like I was the protege and he was the master. … You could feel his entire life coming out. It was magical.”
Police stand guard at Ohel Menachem Riverdale Jewish Youth Library Lubavitch, where glass windows were smashed. Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA
Jewish community leaders in New York and nationally were outraged on Monday after learning that the man arrested for a string of rock-throwing attacks on synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of New York was released by a Bronx judge just hours after another judge had ruled that he be held on bail.
Jordan Burnette, 29, was arrested Saturday on 42 charges in connection with the spree of attacks, in which over several days he smashed doors and windows at the Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC), Chabad Lubavitch of Riverdale, Young Israel of Riverdale and Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale (CSAIR).
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Surveillance footage showing a man hurling rocks through the doors and windows of houses of worship in New York City left community leaders on edge. Over the weekend, police arrested a 29-year-old man on hate crime charges in connection with the vandalization of several Bronx synagogues, which included the destruction of prayer books.
The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force announced Saturday that they arrested Jordan Burnette, who is from the Bronx, for refusing to cooperate with officers and provide proper identification after he was stopped for riding a bicycle against the flow of traffic. Surveillance footage allegedly showed Burnette smashing a van windshield with a rock ahead of his encounter with police.
Iran s supreme leader on Sunday criticized its foreign minister, who said in a leaked interview that the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Deputy Inspector Jessica Corey, head of the task force, said the suspect was spotted at around 3am on Saturday morning riding a bicycle against the flow of traffic. When confronted, he was uncooperative and brought to the 50th precinct.
Police found a van with a broken windshield near where he was arrested, and surveillance video revealed Burnette as the culprit.
Police then found Jewish prayer books on the ground in the parking lot of a nearby synagogue, where Burnette had been seen.