Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - A Jewish arts group. A Jewish high school. A Jewish newspaper. A synagogue network. A major Jewish philanthropy that directs funds to mental health, homelessness prevention and refugee resettlement initiatives. These are a few of the locations on a dense interactive map of "Zionist leaders and powerhouse NGOs" in Massachusetts created by an activist group that says it aims to expose "local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine" and reveal how support for Zionist causes...
(JTA) — Massachusetts’ two Democratic Senators have joined at least four Democrats in Congress, including one vocal critic of Israel, in speaking out against a Boston pro-Palestinian activist group’s initiative mapping “local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine,” saying the map, which includes the names, addresses and staff members of many Jewish organizations, could incite violence against the Jewish community (See page 1 article). “At this moment of rising antisemitism, racist attacks, and political violence, this ‘mapping...
(JTA) – General Mills announced Tuesday it would be fully divesting from a business venture in Israel that had operated in an East Jerusalem settlement, in a move pro-Palestinian activists celebrated as the result of their campaign against the food conglomerate. The Minnesota-based company has operated a Pillsbury frozen-food factory in the Atarot Industrial Zone since 2002, in a joint venture with Israeli investment group Bodan Holdings. In a statement, the company said it would sell its majority stake in the venture back to Bodan as part o...
(JTA) - The Palestinian Authority concluded its investigation into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by accusing Israeli soldiers of deliberately shooting her in the back, a claim that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said could not be true. "Any claim that the IDF intentionally targets journalists or those uninvolved [in terror] is a crude and blatant lie," Gantz said in a statement after the release of the PA report on Thursday. Israel has maintained that it is...
(JTA) – An unusual scenario played out in Arizona recently: The son of a Jewish woman who fled the Nazis was asked if he wanted to be executed by the same gas the Nazis once used. Frank Atwood, who was convicted of murdering an 8-year-old girl in 1984, has been on death row for decades. For his method of execution he was given the choice between lethal injection, Arizona’s default method, or a gas chamber — which the state had refurbished last year in preparation for possibly killing Atwood and one other death row inmate. Arizona’s intent...
(JTA) – The Harvard Crimson’s recent endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has attracted far more wide-ranging attention than a typical student paper’s editorial page, as faculty and alumni of the Ivy League institution have lined up to denounce the student paper’s op-ed and condemn the shift in Israel discussion on college campuses. In an open letter, more than 100 Harvard faculty members objected to the paper endorsing an academic and financial boycott of the state of Israel, including the school’s former president...
(JTA) – Some of the biggest Jewish names on Broadway weren't shining so bright in this year's Tony nominations. The much-anticipated revival of "Funny Girl," with Beanie Feldstein in the Barbra Streisand role as pioneering Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice, came up almost empty-handed, despite Feldstein's star status and the fact that the book was revised and updated by stage and screen legend Harvey Fierstein. The show received only one nomination in total, for featured actor Jared Grimes, l...
(JTA) – Israel has granted a temporary residency to American basketball player Jared Armstrong, ending for now a months-long saga of multiple rejections, accusations of racism and petitions by influential people including an American investor and a rabbi with close ties to President Joe Biden. Israel’s Interior Ministry, which handles citizenship applications, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of its decision Sunday, three weeks after Armstrong’s tourist visa expired and one week after the ministry announced it would be granting citizenship to...
(JTA) — A historically Jewish fraternity at Rutgers University has been the target of multiple cases of antisemitic harassment this week, prompting the school to announce it would be increasing security on campus. Authorities said the university’s AEPi house was first targeted on Friday when protestors exiting a rally for Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian university activist group, went to the house and shouted antisemitic rhetoric and spat at the brothers. Rutgers Hillel Interim Executive Director Rabbi Esther Reed told loc...
(JTA) – The Harvard Crimson’s recent endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has attracted far more wide-ranging attention than a typical student paper’s editorial page, as faculty and alumni of the Ivy League institution have lined up to denounce the student paper’s op-ed and condemn the shift in Israel discussion on college campuses. In an open letter, more than 100 Harvard faculty members objected to the paper endorsing an academic and financial boycott of the state of Israel, including the school’s former president...
(JTA) — The 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova died near her home in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 4, while the city was under a devastating Russian attack. Her family believed that her survivor testimony died with her. Obiedkova died, reportedly cold and emaciated, while sheltering in the basement of a store near her home; her daughter and son-in-law fled the city after burying her. The house they shared burned during the attacks, and the VHS tape containing the video testimony Obiedkova had recorded of her Holocaust e...
(JTA) - It sounds like it could be the story of Purim: A Jewish woman uses her sex appeal to enter the upper reaches of a group whose members are hell-bent on destroying the Jews. But instead of Esther with King Ahasuerus, imagine her becoming romantically involved with Haman himself - and instead of the Persian Empire, it's the British Empire, circa 1962. "Ridley Road," a gripping and provocative four-part miniseries debuting on PBS's "Masterpiece" on Sunday after airing on the BBC last year, i...
(JTA) - Despite his name, Norman Jewison, the director of the 1971 film adaptation of "Fiddler on the Roof," is not Jewish. The 95-year-old Jewison has often spoken about how, when asked to helm the movie version of the popular Broadway musical about an Old World shtetl, he felt the need to sheepishly inform the producers that he was a goy. Less well known is that, following the worldwide success of the "Fiddler" movie, Jewison actually wound up embracing the Jewish faith. Though he has never...
(JTA) – That's one way to "never forget." A peculiar item of clothing went viral this week after a comedian tweeted about a pair of leggings emblazoned with artwork inspired by "Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg's 1993 Holocaust drama. The pants show an artist-made poster with characters from the film. The symbolic "girl in the red dress" is featured most prominently, standing on train tracks overlooking the Auschwitz death camp. Beside her float the heads of Liam Neeson, as German factory o...
(JTA) – The online design marketplace Redbubble said it had “restricted” sales of a “Schindler’s List”-inspired design on its site after the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on a pair of leggings featuring characters from the movie that lit up the Internet this week. “The artwork referenced in this article has been restricted and we are adding additional monitoring measures as a result,” Redbubble spokesperson Marissa Hermo told JTA in a statement. The leggings in question, which were first spotted at a Los Angeles thrift store, sported...
(JTA) - A new Boston-based foundation dedicated to Holocaust memory plans to build the city's first Holocaust museum. The Holocaust Legacy Foundation, which couple Jody Kipnis and Todd Ruderman founded after a 2018 March of the Living trip to Auschwitz, announced Thursday that it had purchased a 15,000-square-foot building near Boston Common, on the city's American Independence-themed series of historical markers known as the Freedom Trail. The couple intends to turn it into a museum devoted to...
(JTA) - With Allied forces swiftly approaching during the liberation of the concentration camps, Nazis barricaded Gerda Weissmann Klein and other Jewish survivors inside a barn, planting a time bomb outside. A sudden rainstorm disconnected the bomb's wiring, and American forces found the barn and unlocked the door. Weissmann Klein told the first rescuer she saw that she was Jewish. He responded that he was, too. Then he held the door open for her. A few years later, the two - the survivor and...
(JTA) - The Oscars went on as usual- although you wouldn't know it from the morning-after conversation. A violent altercation between celebrities became the most-discussed moment of the evening (more on that below), and general reviews for the show itself were dismal, full of criticism for its slapdash presentation and pre-taping of several awards categories. But there were a few Jewish moments to be had in the three-and-a-half-hour evening. Here were the highlights: 'CODA' nets a Best Picture...
(JTA) - Mayim Bialik has become arguably the most visible Jewish face on TV, thanks to her gig hosting "Jeopardy!" and her presence on ever-present "The Big Bang Theory" reruns. But for her latest project, "As They Made Us," Bialik stepped behind the camera to write and direct a semi-autobiographical, low-key melodrama about a Jewish family encountering death and dysfunction. Will it have tearjerker moments? Well, it is produced by Chicken Soup for the Soul (via its film distribution arm,...
(JTA) — In 2016, Colorado’s state pension fund passed a law pledging economic loyalty to Israel. That law is now being invoked as the state becomes the seventh to punish ice-cream company Ben & Jerry’s over the company’s 2021 pledge to stop selling ice cream in “occupied Palestinian territories.” The board of Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association voted unanimously Friday to begin a procedure to divest its holdings from Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, the Denver Post reported. The association drew upon the 2016 law, sig...
(JTA) — An international academic organization devoted to study of the Arab world and Israel has voted to endorse boycotting Israel. Members of the Middle East Studies Association voted 768-167 in favor of a resolution “endorsing the Palestinian call for solidarity in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanctions,” known as BDS. The resolution also calls for an “academic boycott” of Israeli institutions, including universities — a term that BDS proponents typically define as severing all formal ties with the institutions. But the association...
(JTA) — A best-selling children’s novel that the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum has said “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust” is getting a sequel. John Boyne, the Irish author of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” announced Wednesday that he would be publishing a follow-up to the 2006 blockbuster about a 9-year-old German boy’s friendship with a Jewish child imprisoned at Auschwitz. The new book, he said, would be told from the perspective of the German boy’s sister, Gretel. The announcement co...
(JTA) — Five years after raising the age limit for Israel tour participants, Birthright Israel is reverting to a policy of funding free trips only to young adults 26 and under. This summer will be the last chance for Jews aged 27 to 32 to participate in Birthright, with the exception of anyone older who had registered for a trip that was canceled because of the pandemic, according to a spokesperson for the nonprofit organization. The trips, designed to give young Jews (mostly Americans) a crash course in Israeli history and culture in the h...
(JTA) — The University of Washington has put its five-year-old Israel Studies Program on hold after a major donor, angry about a professor’s criticism of Israel, took her money back. Becky Benaroya, a prominent Seattle philanthropist, gave $5 million in 2016 to create the program. But after a professor who held the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies was among hundreds of Jewish studies and Israel studies professors to sign a widely circulated statement criticizing Israel last year, Benaroya became concerned about wha...
ANN ARBOR, Michigan (JTA) – In the latest twist in the long-running legal saga over a small group of protesters who have gathered weekly outside a Michigan synagogue for the past 18 years, a judge has ruled that Jewish worshippers who lost a lawsuit against the protesters must pay them more than $150,000 in legal fees. U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ruled on Jan. 25 that the two plaintiffs - including one who is a Holocaust survivor - and their lead attorney who had sued the group o...
