Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 60
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Amid the global controversy over President Donald Trump’s recognition last week of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, Israeli and Palestinian leaders actually found rare consensus: They agreed that the development was a win for Israel and a loss for the Palestinians. To be sure, Trump’s concession was not a major one. Israel was always expected to get a recognized capital in Jerusalem under any Middle East peace deal, and the president did not reject Palestinian claims to have their capital in the city, too. Howev...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—President Donald Trump’s official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital may have sent shock waves across the Middle East. But here, in the epicenter of a city where fewer than a million people work, eat, pray and shop, the first day’s reaction was muted. The municipality projected images of the Israeli and American flags side by side on the Old City walls. But in Mahane Yehuda, the bustling produce and everything-else market a few miles into the city’s western side, it was another working day. Jews generally welcomed...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The sufganiyah is the plump, shining star of Chanukah in Israel. During the holiday season, the famed jelly doughnut poses in the windows of cafés and bakeries across the country. It sparkles with oil and sugar, and shows just enough filling to keep fans interested. Every year, top chefs compete to give the sufganiyah an edgy new twist, whether its cheesecake filling, mascarpone topping or a chocolate-filled squeeze tube accessory. Israeli TV channels, newspapers and social...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Israel's national judo team put on a tutorial in sportsmanship last week in Abu Dhabi. Despite being snubbed by opponents and officials alike, the athletes won five medals and treated the tournament and their opponents with respect. Moshe Ponte, the president of the Israel Judo Association, said the team was guided by the Japanese meaning of the word "judo" itself: the "gentle way," or using the strength of one's opponents against them. But if you don't think that sounds like the...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-As Hebrew pop music blares, a half-dozen young Israelis swing around stripper poles. Clad in skimpy spandex outfits, the men and women dance, twirl and flip above the hardwood floor. On the sunny street outside the dance studio, passers-by stop to gawk through the picture windows. Some giggle guiltily, while others snap photos with their cellphones. They could be forgiven for assuming the performance was somehow connected to the strip club located across the beachside plaza. But...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Fifty years since the Six-Day War, 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 150 years since Mark Twain first visited Palestine. This has been a year of big Israel-related anniversaries. To the Jewish state's most diehard Christian supporters, the barrage of milestones is not mere coincidence but rather a harbinger of prophecies being fulfilled. Every half century, many Christian Zionists believe, history makes a concerted push toward its endpoint: the return of the Messiah to...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The Israel Defense Forces takes pride in its status as a "people's army." More than just a military, the IDF embraces its reputation as an equalizing force in Israeli society. Every soldier, rich and poor, is supposed to learn during mandatory army service what it takes to be a successful Israeli. "Israel is a country known as 'a nation of immigrants,'" the army wrote on its blog several years ago. "The leading assumption is that by integration into the IDF, assimilation into...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken a wait-and-see approach to last week's Palestinian reconciliation deal. Netanyahu spoke out publicly and loudly against the move toward unity between the feuding Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, calling it a threat to Israel and a setback to peace. But he quietly indicated Israel could accept reconciliation if Hamas reformed. "Israel insists that the PA not allow any base whatsoever for Hamas terrorist actions from PA areas...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-International fashion model Maayan Keret said she was raped at the age of 12. Since then, Keret said, she has been harassed or assaulted so many times she "stopped counting." Yael Arad, a silver medalist in judo at the 1992 Summer Olympics, said that despite her "image and physical abilities," men have tried to "take advantage of or harass" her three times. Knesset member Merav Ben-Ari said male soldiers on her army base verbally harassed her and touched her inappropriately....
TEL AVIV (JTA)-When it comes to women posing with firearms, the United States is fully loaded. Lithe models can be found showing off weapons at gun shows, in rifle magazines and on dedicated social media pages. Orin Julie may look like just another "gun bunny," as such models are sometimes called, but she is the industry's secret weapon. She is a former Israeli combat soldier who is trained to discharge the weapons she poses with. "I don't stand around in swimwear," she said in an interview at...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In the summer of 1947, when the British turned away the SS Exodus from the shores of Palestine, the world was watching. Before the eyes of the international media, British troops violently forced the ship's passengers, most of them Holocaust survivors, onto ships back to Europe. The resulting reports helped turn public opinion in favor of the Zionist movement and against the pro-Arab British policy of limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. But much else was happening in the...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel's rabbinical courts in recent years have ramped up their practice of blacklisting citizens they deem not Jewish, internal data released Sunday show. With increasing frequency, the courts have placed Israelis, almost all of them immigrants with Jewish heritage, on lists that prevent them from marrying Jews. The courts argue that they are acting to preserve the coherence of the Jewish people. But critics say the rabbinical courts have stepped outside their legal...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Stressing the chance to show off Israel to the world, Israeli officials joined with their Italian counterparts in announcing Monday that three stages of the prestigious Giro d'Italia cycling race will be held in the country, starting in Jerusalem. It will mark the first time that any leg of cycling's Grand Tour races-the Giro, the Tour de France and the Spanish Vuelta-will take place outside of Europe, and just the 12th time the Giro had gone outside of Italy in its 101-year...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Jerusalem therapist Miriam Ballin is the kind of person who takes the initiative. Despite resistance from her haredi Orthodox community, she became a medic. Then she launched a pacesetting psychological first aid unit. Clearly she was not just going to stand idly by while Tropical Storm Harvey flooded her native Houston. So on Wednesday evening, Ballin left her husband to watch their five young children and headed to southeast Texas, where she and six other Israeli mental health...
GIVAT YOAV, Golan Heights (JTA)-Shimon Keinan has a business to run. He doesn't have time to teach you how to blow the shofar. But if you come all the way to his Kol Shofar factory here, Keinan is going to make sure you walk away with the horn that's right for you. "What should I do?" he explained to JTA. "If someone is going to blow one of my shofars on Rosh Hashanah, I have to make sure he doesn't fail." Even now, in the busy weeks ahead of the Jewish New Year, Keinan spends much of his day...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—For many Jews, Nazis are public enemy No. 1, and using Nazi imagery to make a political point is strictly verboten. But some young, right-wing Israelis aren’t buying it. Inspired by the so-called alt-right abroad, their online community makes liberal use of anti-Semitic and Nazi imagery to mock and malign what it sees as the real threat: Israeli and Jewish leftists. “We’re fighting back in a new way,” said Guy Levy, 40, the manager of an advertising office in Beersheba and a member of the community. “Our messages aren’t poli...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel's defense minister reignited the emotional national debate over what price the country should be willing to pay for the return of kidnapped soldiers, particularly the bodies of those who have been killed. Avigdor Liberman said Sunday that Israel must not repeat the "mistake" of the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, in which it released more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the return of its soldier from Hamas. The argument, which never really ends here, was...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The arrival of U.S. fighter jets in Israel, part of a month-long arms drop, was critical to turning the tide of the Yom Kippur War in favor of the Jewish state. But for the American pilots who volunteered to deliver the aircraft, it was just another mission. Alan Chesterman, part of a U.S. Navy squadron that flew a handful of the jets, said he had little knowledge of Israel or its security situation when he landed here in October 1973. "We knew we were flying into a combat zone,...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-When Nedal Sader first heard the crackle of automatic weapon fire Friday morning, he couldn't believe it was coming from the Temple Mount. As a Muslim, he regarded the complex just outside his apartment as a sacred and peaceful place. He prayed there nearly every week. But as a seasoned first responder, he knew what gunshots sounded like echoing off the stones of the Old City. He finished dressing, threw on his medic's jacket and raced to the scene. Sader, a 37-year-old nurse and...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel has already defeated the Palestinians. All that's left is for them to surrender. That, at least, was an argument being made in Jerusalem last week. Led by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, pro-Israel leaders and analysts gathered here to highlight local support for their aim of reframing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict internationally. "After more than a century, the conflict is really over," Daniel Pipes, the forum's president told JTA. "As an American, I would...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Liberal American Jews are feeling thwarted in their years-long campaign for the right to pray as they wish at the Western Wall. Long frustrated that the plaza in front of the wall is run as an Orthodox synagogue, they were doubly incensed when Israel's political establishment scrapped an agreement that would have boosted access to their own space nearby. Meanwhile, another group of Jewish worshippers has gained public approval and political traction by setting their sights a bit...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-An internal Palestinian dispute has left Gaza's nearly 2 million Palestinian residents dangerously vulnerable to a heat wave, but Israel could get burned, too. The West Bank Palestinian Authority has recently spearheaded a sharp reduction of electricity to the coastal enclave with Israel's cooperation, resulting in the exacerbation of Gaza's already dire humanitarian crisis and hints of new alliances that could lead to new military conflict with Israel. The electricity cuts are...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Haredi Orthodox Jews agree with their non-Orthodox brethren on one thing: The future of the Jewish people is at stake in the debate raging over who controls the Western Wall and conversion in Israel. Other than that, though, there is little common ground. According to Nachum Eisenstein, the chief rabbi of eastern Jerusalem's haredi Maalot Dafna neighborhood, Reform and Conservative Judaism threaten to undermine the survival of the Jewish people. "The reason why Judaism is the...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israeli politicians rushed to condemn their government's decision Sunday to freeze a plan promoting pluralistic prayer at the Western Wall. Voices from across the political spectrum, including members of the governing coalition, criticized the vote by the Cabinet as a reckless affront to American Jewry. They warned it could weaken the community's support for Israel. "Canceling the deal constitutes a severe blow to the unity of the Jewish people and communities as well as the...
PSAGOT, West Bank (JTA)-Psagot Winery calls its Sinai wine an "unassuming but distinctive blend" of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Like all its wines, the bottle is stamped with the image of a coin dating to the first century C.E. found in a chalky cave near its namesake West Bank settlement and inscribed in Hebrew with the words "For the freedom of Zion." The coin, its catalog explains, "symbolizes the preservation of winemaking tradition-offering you a taste of our history." For Yaakov Berg,...
