WATCH: Westboro Baptist Church Protests At Yeshiva University, YU Students Fight Back

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The Westboro Baptist Church protested outside Yeshiva University with signs that read ‘The Jews killed Jesus’, ‘144K Jews will repent’ and ‘Stop enabling sinners’.

The Westboro Baptist Church picketers sang, “wrath will soon pour on you, for your harmful sins, your great affliction, it will soon begin.”  to the tune of ‘Hatikvah’, the Israeli national anthem.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a hate group known for its hate speech, especially against Israel, Jews. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, American soldiers, the LGBT community and politicians.

30 Yeshiva University students, alumnus and friends, staged a counter-protest, holding signs reading “V’Ahavta L’Reacha Kamocha/ Love your neighbor as yourself.”

OS News recently featured an amazing TED talk presentation by Megan Phelps-Roper who discusses her experiences being brought up within the hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church and her journey towards the decision to leave.

Her mother Shirley Phelps-Roper is one of the  leaders of the church and was present at the YU protest.

Shirley Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church Leader

Megan’s grandfather, Fred Phelps, was the church’s founder.

At one point in her TED talk, she discusses demonizing Jews and Rabbis outside their synagogue, only to have a an astonishing realization that the very people she was demonizing, took her and her sister into their home and did not hold it against her.

Megan participates in hate demonstration outside Los Angeles Synagogue.

Megan spoke eloquently about her past which she was ashamed of and how when she finally left the church her family members abandoned and excommunicated her.

“I spent my first year away from home adrift with my younger sister, who had chosen to leave with me. We walked into an abyss, but we were shocked to find the light and a way forward in the same communities we’d targeted for so long. David, my “Jewlicious” friend from Twitter, invited us to spend time among a Jewish community in Los Angeles,” She said.

Shirley Phelps, Megan’s Mother and leader of the hate church.

“We slept on couches in the home of a Chassidic rabbi and his wife and their four kids —the same rabbi that I’d protested three years earlier with a sign that said, “Your rabbi is a wh✡re.” We spent long hours talking about theology and Judaism and life while we washed dishes in their kosher kitchen and chopped vegetables for dinner. They treated us like family. They held nothing against us, and again I was astonished,” She said in bewilderment.

 

FULL TED TALK VIDEO

Along with Yeshiva University, the Westboro Baptist Church has targeted Jews with a barrage of hate-filled pickets including Hebrew Union College, Yeshiva Chaim Berlin & Yeshiva Torah Temimah as well as Shuls in Brooklyn.

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