BOISE, Idaho (JTA) — A mother and son whose lawsuit bankrupted a U.S.-based white supremacist group bought the group’s compound Tuesday and then said they may resell it to a human rights organization.
Victoria Keenan and her son, Jason, were awarded $6.3 million in a lawsuit against the Aryan Nations. The pair blamed the group for negligence, saying its security guards shot at and assaulted them near the compound in 1998.
“We hope to get the evilness out of there and turn it around to something positive,” Jason Keenan said.
Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, who sold the property after declaring bankruptcy in October, blamed a Jewish conspiracy for the outcome of the Keenans’ lawsuit.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group that represented the Keenans in their lawsuit, lent them $95,000, the required cash portion of the compound’s $250,000 purchase price.
Gay Orthodox movie has viewers trembling
PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) — After receiving positive responses from Sundance audiences last month, Sandi Simcha DuBowski’s “Trembling Before G-d,” a documentary depicting the conflict experienced by gay Chassidic and Orthodox Jews, was shown at the Berlin Film Festival this week.
Chronicling those who come out as lesbian or gay and those who choose to remain Orthodox — the film portrays accounts of those who are told they can be one or the other, but not both. The film was shot over five years in religious communities of San Francisco, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, London, Amsterdam, Antwerp and the Ukraine.