CEO — son of Holocaust survivors and a member of Dallas, Texas Jewish community — stands behind former editor’s decision to run columns

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer
Isaac Weintraub has lived in Beavercreek for a decade. While furloughed from his work as an electrical engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base because of the federal government shutdown, he had more time on his hands than usual.

He decided to read through the whole Beavercreek News-Current, delivered free to his home each week. “I generally peruse it, but I don’t read it in depth,” he says.

What he read Oct. 17 prompted him to email the editor that day to demand a retraction and public apology to the Jewish community.

In the newspaper’s religion section, he saw a column by Pastor Robert Forsberg, retired for a decade from Light of Christ Lutheran Church in Fairborn.

With the headline A rage to kill, Forsberg commented on a passage from the Book of Acts (23:12-13) in the Christian Bible, a narrative about “some Jews,” “more than 40 men,” who plotted to kill the apostle Paul.

“The religious Jews could not stand to hear anything counter to their own beliefs about God,” Forsberg wrote. “They had no tolerance for free speech on the subject of faith…the Jews would not allow their beliefs in God challenged or just be another one of the gods. What was happening was not new for the Jews. They had persecuted and kills prophets of God in the past when they disagreed with them. Certainly, they disagreed with Jesus being the Savior of the world. Debate was not an option for them. They felt their only recourse was to kill Him, and thus Paul. Today, the option of debate is being challenged by another group that chooses violence when their beliefs are questioned.”

Forsberg did not specify what current group he refered to in his column.

Weintraub went back to read some of Forsberg’s previous columns, also published in the Beavercreek News-Current and its sister publications, the Fairborn Daily Herald and Xenia Gazette.

In his Sept. 28, 2025 column, Violence raises its ugly head, Forsberg weighed in on Acts 22:21-22, in which Paul tells a crowd of Jews that God will send him to preach “far away to the Gentiles.” The narrative continues: “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

Forsberg wrote: “This was the breaking point for the Jews. Their faith was an exclusive possession. They didn’t easily share it with anyone else. This act of mercy to the non-Jews was unacceptable to the religious Jews. These words were enough to invite the death penalty. They were ‘fighting words.’ These Jews were so off base, however.

They could not accept that their God would show mercy to non-Jews and invite them into His Kingdom. Here begins the true persecution of the followers of Jesus. Here we see that words led to violence, even calling for death. Sound familiar? It is the reality of human history that words can lead to violence.”

In Weintraub’s letter to the editor, he wrote he was outraged and disappointed.

“The foundation of a civilized society is mutual respect, not the propagation of ancient divisive tropes,” Weintraub wrote. “Mr. Forsberg’s column actively reinforces the harmful and historically discredited narrative that Jewish people are inherently hostile to mercy and are the primary agents of persecution. This narrative is responsible for centuries of violence and is deeply offensive in its inaccuracy and lack of context. By publishing this, the Beavercreek News risks normalizing prejudice and contributes to an environment that breeds further intolerance.

“I urge you to overhaul your editorial standards immediately to ensure all future religious content is vetted for sensitivity and does not promote such egregious intolerance.”

‘It’s a valid opinion’
The three Greene County newspapers are owned by AIM Media Midwest, an affiliate of AIM Media Texas and AIM Media Indiana. All are managed by AIM Media Management of Dallas.

The founder, chairman, and CEO of the AIM Media group is Jeremy L. Halbreich of Dallas, Texas. He is the son of Holocaust survivors Ruth and Siegfried Halbreich, and a member of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas.

Full disclosure: AIM Media Midwest prints The Dayton Jewish Observer at its Greenfield, Ind. print site.

When The Observer contacted the Greene County newspapers on Oct. 23, General Manager Barbara VandeVenter said the editor who published Forsberg’s Sept. 28 and Oct. 18 columns, Steven Wright, was no longer an AIM Media employee.

She declined to be interviewed, citing a deadline, and referred The Observer to the new editor, who started after those columns ran, on Oct. 20.

The new editor, Jacob Espinosa, didn’t reply back. The Observer then attempted to contact AIM Media Midwest Regional VP and Group Publisher Lane Moon via email and phone; his office staff in Urbana said he was on vacation through the following week.

After The Observer contacted AIM Media Management in Dallas, Halbreich responded.

In a phone interview with The Observer, Halbreich says he stands by the decision of the former Greene County newspapers editor to run Forsberg’s columns, though he regrets that the editor didn’t reach out to the Jewish community and ask for a companion piece to run alongside them.

“It’s a valid opinion,” Halbreich says of the Forsberg columns. “I’m not saying I agree with it. I think we need to bend over backwards to use our pages to allow diverse opinions to be stated.”

When asked if the former Greene County editor’s departure from AIM was connected in any way to the Forsberg columns, Halbreich said it was not.

“Any opinion piece that we publish certainly does not reflect the opinion of the newspaper or newspapers’ owners or management,” Halbreich says. “It’s an opinion piece. I’m obviously not in a position to review everything we publish in advance. We leave that to our local editors, as I think is appropriate.

“Is it appropriate now to invite a column or letters such as Isaac Weintraub’s to be published in the newspaper in response to these pieces? Certainly it is. I just wish in this case we had, prior to publication, invited letters or columns expressing a different point of view. I’m just sorry we weren’t able to get that done at the beginning.”

According to the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton, there are 197 known Jewish households in Beavercreek, Fairborn, and Xenia.

Halbreich adds that he understands why members of any Jewish community would be offended by Forsberg’s columns.

Weintraub says he doesn’t hold Halbreich or the staff around him responsible. “It’s the ones who have the power to publish a paper in Beavercreek,” says Weintraub, who himself is an associate editor of multiple journals in his field.

“The editor that was there, I hold that person responsible because that’s their responsibility as editor. I respect the freedom of press to offer opinion pieces. But at the same time, I feel that the editorial staff of the Beavercreek paper could have done a better job. They need to think about how it will affect the community that they represent.”

Deicide narratives in Christian Scripture
American Jewish Committee Regional Director Justin Kirschner explains that the pastor’s columns focus on the narrative of deicide in Christian Scripture, the antisemitic trope that Jews bear eternal responsibility for the death of Jesus.

“Holding Jewish people collectively responsible is simply a historical and theological error,” Kirschner, who is based in Cincinnati, says.

“It doesn’t mean that it’s aligned with current church thinking within his (Forsberg’s) denomination.”

Kirschner says in general, reconciliation efforts have taken place since the 1960s between Jews and Christians, “which largely has been about rejecting this deicide charge, fixing historical and theological errors that further antisemitic tropes and dehumanize Jews.”

He says deicide was first refuted by the Catholic Church 60 years ago with its Nostra Aetate document that rejected collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus.

“Many other Christian denominations reflect its call,” Kirschner notes, including major Lutheran churches.

ADL: presume good intent first
Kelly Fishman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, cautions it’s important to first presume the good intent of the columnist.

“Freedom of the press is such an important piece of what we have in the United States. We want to be able to read a lot of different perspectives from different folks,” Fishman, who is based in Cleveland, says.

“There are still, in 2025, people that are using these kind of tropes — the idea that the Jews killed Jesus — to harm Jews in 2025. It’s also important to say…this is a person who feels very connected to his faith and studying the Bible, and being able to also say this is really hurtful to me and my identity.

“We don’t say, ‘You didn’t mean to create harm, I’m going to let it go.’ But we can say, ‘I know you didn’t intend to create harm, but this is the impact it had on me.’ And it creates an opportunity for dialogue instead of starting from a place of anger or defensiveness, which puts another person on edge as well. We have to also use systems like op-eds or reach out to our publications and share those different opinions in ways that create different perspectives.”

Greene County newspapers’ new editor, Jacob Espinosa, informed Weintraub Oct. 28 via email that his letter would be published in that week’s issues.

Weintraub says that if the Greene County newspapers continue to publish articles that disparage Jews, he’ll continue to write letters to the editor.

“I’m not going to stop taking a stance. I had to deal with a lot of this in my life. I think it’s right to take a stand for the things you believe in. Freedom of speech is protected here in the United States. I’m able to communicate my opinion lawfully and peacefully. And that’s what I intend to do.”

To read the complete November 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.