Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 101 - 125 of 173
(JTA) — The superintendent of the Texas school district that this week ordered the removal of “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from its school’s shelves said Thursday that he expected the book, along with the Bible and other books that were removed following parental challenges, “will be on shelves very soon.” In a statement, Westfall also said that more than 50 copies of the original version of the diary remain in circulation in the Keller Independent School District outside Fort Worth. “Keller ISD is not banning the Bible or th...
(JTA) — A state senator who says the story of her grandfather’s murder during the Holocaust galvanizes her will be the Democratic candidate for Vermont’s single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Becca Balint, who has been a state senator since 2015, won Vermont’s Democratic primary on Tuesday, easily fending off her main competitor, Molly Gray, the state’s lieutenant governor. With Vermont a reliably blue state, Balint is all but certain to become the state’s first woman representative in Congress. Balint was endorsed by Vermont’s prog...
(JTA) — One of Israel’s strongest critics in Congress narrowly survived a tough Democratic primary, as Rep. Ilhan Omar eked out a victory Tuesday in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Omar, a two-term member of Congress who supports the movement to boycott Israel and once grouped Israel and the United States with Hamas and the Taliban in a statement about human rights abuses, faced a challenge from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman who courted pro-Israel and suburban support. He drew 48.2 percent of the vote in the distr...
(JTA) - Could the new owner of Ben & Jerry's Israeli business interests rename a flavor "Judea and Samaria"? Avi Zinger, who bought the company's Hebrew and Arabic branding from parent company Unilever last month, recently told an Israeli news outlet that he had the right to do so, and even proposed renaming "Chunky Monkey" to the biblical name for the West Bank. And that threat, Ben & Jerry's lawyers say, is reason enough why the sale shouldn't legally go through. "If Ben & Jerry's wanted to pr...
(JTA) — When Deborah Lipstadt recently met with a Saudi diplomat, she recalled, “He stood up and he said to me, ‘I come from a city where there were Jews.’” That interaction in Saudi Arabia, a country that has been widely criticized for its human rights abuses, was a highlight of Lipstadt’s recent Middle East trip, her first tour as the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for antisemitism, which she recounted in a virtual briefing Monday. She characterized the interaction as cordial — but it also spoke to the costs of the sentiments that...
(JTA) — The chair of a county Democratic Party in Michigan apologized after the group made a social media post reading “Zionists have no place in office,” apparently meant to support a member of Congress, Rep. Andy Levin, who identifies as a Zionist. Washtenaw County Democratic Party chair Chris Savage issued an apology Saturday for the TikTok post, which was sent Friday by the @WashtenawDems account and referenced the millions of dollars’ worth of pro-Israel money that has flowed into Michigan’s 11th District primary. The race, a redistric...
(JTA) – AIPAC marked its second major defeat of the Democratic primary cycle this week, as one of the two Democratic House candidates in the Detroit area that it backed failed to win his Tuesday primary. Michigan state Sen. Adam Hollier had more than $4 million spent on his behalf by AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, before narrowly losing his primary battle for Michigan’s 13th district to state Rep. Shri Thanedar. With about 68 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, Thanedar was leading Hollier by five percentage point...
PONTIAC, Michigan (JTA) — A Jewish political dynasty’s four-decade run in Congress has come to an end after Rep. Andy Levin conceded to Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s 11th congressional district Tuesday. Stevens’ decisive win concluded a bank-busting primary that attracted more than $4 million in pro-Israel outside spending to a face-off between two incumbents in the Detroit suburbs. “She ran a strong campaign,” Levin told his supporters. “My hat’s off to her.” He pledged to support Stevens in the general election. In his concession speech...
(JTA) - The story of Israel's 1948 war for independence is told through the eyes of one kibbutz in "Image of Victory," a new Netflix film that's being billed as the most expensive Israeli movie ever. Inspired by the real-life battle for control of Kibbutz Nitzanim, during which Egyptian forces overpowered the Israeli military, briefly captured the territory and took more than 100 prisoners of war, director Avi Nesher's old-fashioned wartime melodrama is more interested in the human beings...
(JTA) - When Steve Dettelbach was confirmed last week as the director of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he became the beleaguered bureau's first head to pass a Senate confirmation in eight years. For some, the confirmation offered hope of a changing tide in America's sea of mass shootings. But a county Republican group in Kentucky saw a different story: that Dettelbach is part of a "Jewish junta" that "is getting stronger and more aggressive." The Bracken...
(JTA) - Jewish comedy titan Norman Lear turned a century old on July 27, and he's still got a spring in his step. Lear took to Instagram to reminisce the day before his 100th birthday with a video, singing a lick from the classic tune "That's Amore," recalling how he once worked for Dean Martin singing the same during the Colgate Comedy Hour in the 1950s. "My God, the miracle of being alive with everything that's available to us," Lear told his 44,000 followers. The decorated creator of "All In...
(JTA) – Sara Góralnik Shapiro survived the Holocaust by disguising herself as a Christian and working for a family of Ukrainian farmers. She then went on to live a long and prosperous life as a member of Detroit's Jewish community. Her story is incredible on its own merits, and it's hardly surprising that someone might one day want to make a film about it. "My Name Is Sara," the latest dramatic production by the USC Shoah Foundation, is now seeing a nationwide rollout three years after it wa...
(JTA) – Sara Guralnick Shapiro survived the Holocaust by disguising herself as a Christian and working for a family of Ukrainian farmers. She then went on to live a long and prosperous life as a member of Detroit's Jewish community. Her story is incredible on its own merits, and it's hardly surprising that someone might one day want to make a film about it. "My Name Is Sara," the latest dramatic production by the USC Shoah Foundation, is now seeing a nationwide rollout three years after it w...
(JTA) – With a single driving guitar riff, the man born as Monty Noserovitch changed pop-culture forever - although he had to fight to get the credit for it. British Jewish composer Monty Norman, who died Monday at the age of 94, wrote the original version of the James Bond theme, one of the most enduring compositions in movie history. Born to Jewish Latvian immigrant parents in London's East End in 1928, Norman first made a name for himself as a songwriter for early British rock groups and W...
(JTA) — Jewish TV shows and performers are well represented on the list of 2022 Emmy nominations, with actors including Seth Rogen, Julia Garner, Andrew Garfield and Henry Winkler making the cut. It was a particularly good year for Jews in comedy, as several of this year’s nominated comedies have Jewish connections. Amazon Prime’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” both shows centering around Jewish comedians, picked up best comedy nods for their fourth and 11th seasons, respectively. “Maisel” picked up additional act...
(JTA) - After nearly a year of legal and financial battles, Ben & Jerry's will continue to be made and sold in Israel and the West Bank, as its parent company Unilever announced Tuesday it had reached an agreement with its current Israeli licensee to assume ownership of the brand in the region. Under the terms of the new agreement, Unilever is selling its Israel business interest in the ice cream maker to Israel-based American Quality Products, Ltd., which has owned Ben & Jerry's Israel factorie...
(JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s has come out against its own parent company’s decision to sell the ice cream maker’s brand in Israel to an Israeli company that pledges to continue selling the products in both Israel and the West Bank. “While our parent company has taken this decision, we do not agree with it,” the Vermont-based frozen treat makers said on social media, hours after Unilever announced it would sell its Israel business interests in Ben & Jerry’s to the Israeli company American Quality Products Ltd. The Ben & Jerry’s statement also...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett won’t run in his country’s upcoming elections this fall, his office announced Wednesday, after he served as head of a fragile, now collapsing Knesset coalition for a little over a year. The announcement caught many in Israel by surprise given that Bennett had led the country for just a year and, as the leader of the right-wing Yamina party might well have won a role in any future government coalition. He indicated in his final speech to the Knesset that he would continue to support Yair Lapid...
(JTA) - Leonard Cohen wrote around 150 verses to "Hallelujah," or so the scholars claim. The beloved Canadian folk singer, who fused Jewish mysticism with pop mythology for a global audience, wrote several hit songs over his 50-year career, including many, such as "Who By Fire" and "You Want It Darker," that are unmistakably Jewish in content. But none of them were as successful, or as pored-over, as "Hallelujah," which has been covered around 300 times and played at weddings, funerals, church...
(JTA) — In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist leader and influential figure among the rightmost flank of the Republican Party, told his followers that “Jews stood in the way” of Catholic Supreme Court Justices who “were put on the court to overturn” the 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion in the United States. Fuentes, who founded the America First Political Action Committee and the”groyper army,” a radical fringe group, made the comments on his website’s lives...
(JTA) — The global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel has disavowed a controversial website mapping Boston-area Jewish groups a day after lawmakers urged a federal investigation of the project’s potential to be used by extremist groups. The announcement by the BDS movement on Wednesday aimed to distance the group from the Mapping Project, an anonymous collective of Boston-area pro-Palestinian activists. The project lists the names and addresses of Massachusetts Jewish groups, including schools, community funds and syn...
(JTA) – For years, Steven Spielberg intended to direct a movie about Edgardo Mortara, a 19th-century Italian Jew who was kidnapped by the Catholic Church and raised Christian, eventually becoming a priest, while his Jewish family lobbied to free him. But Spielberg is no longer making the film after having trouble casting the role of the young Mortara. Instead, viewers' best chance to see Mortara's story onscreen will now be via a separate Italian production helmed by director Marco Bellochio (...
(JTA) - "Ella Fitzgerald, wherever you are, I apologize in advance." Billy Crystal gave this year's Tonys a jolt of Jewish shtick when he coaxed the audience into a call-and-response "Yiddish scat" routine, as part of a live performance to promote his Broadway musical, "Mr. Saturday Night." In a good-faith mockery of Fitzgerald's own famous "scat" routine, Crystal, in character as his show's fading comedian star Buddy Young Jr., let loose on the Sunday night telecast with a series of...
(JTA) — Just under half of all Democratic senators are seeking the “direct involvement” of the United States in the investigation of the death of a Palestinian journalist who was shot over a month ago while covering an Israeli raid on a West Bank refugee camp. Twenty-four senators signed a letter sent to President Biden Thursday, three weeks prior to his first scheduled state visit to Israel. It is the largest action yet from U.S. lawmakers seeking an independent resolution to the May 11 killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh...
(JTA) – David Brog has overseen pro-Israel organizations with significant Republican backing for more than two decades, but his own attempt to make inroads for himself as a GOP candidate fell short Tuesday in Nevada. Brog lost his Republican Congressional primary race in the state’s 1st district to former Army colonel Mark Robertson, in a spirited eight-way race to represent the GOP in what’s likely to be a competitive general election for the recently redrawn Las Vegas-area district. Brog finished with just over 17 percent of the vote, a dis...
