Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 25
(JTA) – Israel’s top immigration official says the country will not award citizenship to Baruch Lanner, a rabbi and convicted sex offender from the United States. Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s announcement, made Tuesday to the Jerusalem Post, came a day after nearly 200 American rabbis and Jewish scholars sent a letter to Israel’s prime minister, Yair Lapid, urging him to reject Lanner’s citizenship application. Lanner, an American rabbi and former official of the Orthodox Union’s NCSY youth group, served a three-year prison sentence fo...
(JTA) - To a conspiracy theorist, last week seemed to offer evidence that the Rothschild family is plotting to undermine Elon Musk. It started when the Tesla tycoon bashed the Democratic Party and said in a tweet that he would switch to voting Republican. A user named David Rothschild responded, mocking Musk and portraying him as an entitled whiner because Musk comes from a rich white family that benefitted from apartheid in South Africa. Then, Rothschild himself became the target of ridicule...
(JTA) — Just days before Jews around the world gathered with their families and friends to read the Haggadah as part the Passover holiday, one family of reunited Holocaust survivors filed a lawsuit to reclaim a 700-year-old haggadah that they say was lost to them during the rise of Nazi Germany. Since 1946, the Birds’ Head Haggadah has been in the possession of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem where it has been examined by countless scholars and displayed prominently for millions of visitors who have passed it by. The medieval manuscript fea...
(JTA) – With his livelihood on the line, Rob Lennick texted the wrong Deborah. The CEO of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, Lennick sent a message asking for support of an extension to his contract. He was also asking for a $30,000 forgivable loan from the federation to pay for the repair of a home he was hoping to purchase. Lennick had meant to reach Deborah Boldt, who was serving on the federation’s board of directors — but he reached Deborah Albrycht, the federation’s human resources officer. What happened next set off a crisis in Jewish...
(JTA) – When it comes to antisemitism on social media, the algorithms governing the major platforms shoulder some of the blame for their reach. But the Anti-Defamation League hopes to fight the spread — by creating an algorithm of its own. The Jewish civil rights group announced Tuesday that it has built a system called the Online Hate Index, describing it as the first tool ever developed to measure antisemitism on social media platforms. The program can sift through millions of posts quickly to detect antisemitic comments and aid in their rem...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In an emotional call with American Jewish leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky characterized the Russian invasion of his country as “pure Nazism.” Zelensky also invoked his Jewishness in an appeal for assistance while speaking Monday via Zoom with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. On the call, Zelensky angrily rejected claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia launched the war to “denazify” Ukraine, saying that it was the Russians who were acting like Nazis. “This is...
(JTA) – In early December, Judaism’s Conservative movement sent a disquieting message to dozens of synagogues looking for a new rabbi: Many of you won’t make a hire this year. At least 80 Conservative synagogues anticipated rabbi vacancies —approximately one of every seven affiliated with the movement, the email said. At most, 50 to 60 rabbis would be looking for new jobs. “We are not presenting this information to alarm, but rather to help you prepare for and navigate the challenges of this search season,” said the email, which was signed by t...
(JTA) – Charitable foundations with ties to Jewish federations and Jewish families feature prominently in a new report about the flow of tax-deductible donations to organizations that a leading Muslim civil rights lobby has identified as “anti-Muslim groups.” Titled “Islamophobia in the Mainstream,” the report was published Tuesday by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group and political lobby that is harshly critical of Israel. It follows a different report from 2019 that identified some 1,100 groups CAIR iden...
(JTA) — Just ahead of Chanukah, the Jewish Federation of Broward County in Florida tried to purchase an ad on Facebook, a simple post calling attention to the problem of antisemitism as a part of a new nationwide campaign called “Shine a Light.” But Facebook’s automated system rejected the ad without explanation, leading federation officials to suspect the post was accidentally ensnared by a filter designed to block hate speech. “Unfortunately, Facebook inexplicably rejected our ads, presumably because they contained the words ‘hate’ and ‘anti-...
(JTA) — In what some are heralding as a watershed moment in the Orthodox world, reports of sexual abuse by a prolific author of children’s books have now led multiple booksellers to stop making his work available. Meanwhile, advocates and at least one leading rabbi are urging Orthodox parents to remove books by Chaim Walder from their homes. Many are doing so. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an investigation last week alleging that Walder, a therapist as well as a writer, psychologically groomed multiple minors before proceeding to abu...
(JTA) — In what was seen as a crucial test in Israel’s longstanding governing crisis, the country’s lawmakers managed to approve a national budget for the first time in more than three years on Thursday. A failure to do so by a Nov. 14 deadline would have meant the collapse of Israel’s new government and a fifth national election since 2019. The approval of the fiscal framework marks a victory for the coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett over his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who sought to undermine parliamentary negotia...
(JTA) — An 700-year-old Jewish prayerbook from Germany, offered for sale by a French Jewish organization to shore up its finances, sold at auction on Tuesday for $8.3 million. Known as the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor, the prayerbook easily beat the $4-6 million pre-sale estimate by Sotheby’s New York auction house as four bidders battled one another for five dramatic minutes. The item, which was sold to an unnamed private buyer, comes out of the collection of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a 160-year-old French Jewish organization that...
(JTA) — The sponsor of a bill that would have made Burlington, Vermont, the first city in America to divest from Israel is withdrawing his legislation, citing concerns that it would promote antisemitism. Councilmember Ali Dieng, who sponsored the resolution, said Monday afternoon that he would withdraw it at the council meeting scheduled for the same evening, and refer the resolution for reconsideration at the council’s racial equity committee. The city’s Jewish mayor also publicly expressed concerns about the resolution. Dieng told the Jewis...
(JTA) - At least 150 child sex abuse lawsuits were filed against Jewish institutions in New York over the past two years under a special law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations barring old claims, according to an analysis of the New York court system by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. This look-back window for reviving allegations was created by the Child Victims Act of 2019 and it led to a dramatic wave of lawsuits that peaked just ahead of the Aug. 14 deadline. Survivors took...
(JTA) — The sponsor of a bill that would have made Burlington, Vermont, the first city in America to divest from Israel is withdrawing his legislation, citing concerns that it would promote antisemitism. Councilmember Ali Dieng, who sponsored the resolution, said Monday afternoon that he would withdraw it at the council meeting scheduled for the same evening, and refer the resolution for reconsideration at the council’s racial equity committee. The city’s Jewish mayor also publicly expressed concerns about the resolution. Dieng told the Jewis...
(JTA) — Six months after his internet posts attacking Jews came to light, a U.S. Foreign Service officer remains employed by the State Department while at least 70 of his co-workers sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding his dismissal. The letter, sent July 28, argues that Fritz Berggren is a threat to Jewish employees at the State Department, and has violated department rules and ethical standards, Foreign Policy reported after obtaining a copy. “Not only is his propagation of antisemitic ideas highly disturbing and offen...
(JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has asked Pope Francis to retract a recent comment about Jewish law that it said might lead Catholic listeners to “derogatory conclusions” about Jews. Rabbi Ratzon Arusi, chair of the Chief Rabbinate’s Commission for Interreligious Affairs, sent a letter to the Vatican expressing concerns about an Aug. 11 lecture there on God giving the Torah to the Jews, Reuters reported Wednesday. The Torah is the name given to the first five books of the Jewish Bible. “God offered them the Torah, the Law, so they could under...
(JTA) - As the United States woke up to news of the building collapse in Surfside, Florida, it quickly became clear that the disaster is an American Jewish tragedy. The 12-story building in the heavily Orthodox enclave near Miami Beach collapsed just before 2 a.m. Thursday, as families slept in its 55 apartments just blocks from the beach. As of Thursday evening, almost 100 people are believed missing, and even as rescue efforts continue, officials fear that many of them are dead. At least one...
(JTA) – Pro-Palestinian activists were swarming the social media comments sections of Ben & Jerry's to demand the company boycott Israel. In response, Ben & Jerry's appears to have indeed entered a boycott - of social media itself. The international ice cream brand with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales typically posts to its Twitter, Instagram or Facebook pages daily, including about the many progressive social causes that the company supports. But Ben & Jerry's fell silent on May...
(JTA) — As the world’s attention has turned to the crisis engulfing Israel and the Palestinian territories, a leading media outlet posted a brand-new job opening. The New York Times announced Wednesday that it is looking to hire a reporter who will focus on covering Palestinian affairs. The posting went online just as countless people around the world are wanting to know more about places like the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah, the site of protests and violence over the weekend, and the Gaza Strip, the home of the militant group Hamas, whi...
(JTA) — A detailed account of one of the earliest American diplomatic voyages to Palestine has surfaced as part of an upcoming auction in Jerusalem. The account appears in a handwritten letter from one of the passengers of the USS Delaware, a U.S. Navy ship that visited the Mediterranean Sea in 1834 and made a stop at the port town of Jaffa, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Sent from the Spanish island of Menorca and addressed to Circleville, Ohio, the four-page letter describes several historically significant moments in the s...
(JTA) — In the late 1800s, the Ottoman Empire was looking to conscript men into its army, including the several thousand young Jewish ones who were living in the city of Baghdad. The Jewish community didn’t like the idea of the imperial forces taking away its young men, so it arranged to pay authorities for exemptions. Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin of Baghdad documented the exemptions, carefully jotting each down name in medieval Rashi script. In the following decades, many of those names vanished or morphed as the Jews living there dispersed acr...
(JTA) - New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens has taken on a side gig as the editor of a new limited-run journal of essays about Jewish issues. The journal, titled Sapir, is an initiative of the Maimonides Fund, an increasingly influential force in Jewish philanthropy that supports Jewish identity-building through media, education and Israel engagement. Over the past year, the fund has also become known for its leadership on COVID relief efforts. The first of four print issues...
(JTA) — The Israeli government approved a plan Monday to provide compensation of up to $60,000 to some of the families of children who went missing while in state care in the 1950s. But advocacy groups and several of the families have already rejected the plan, calling it a cynical move designed to silence their larger demands for accountability. They are demanding an official apology, an expansion of the eligibility criteria, and further access to state records that might shed light on the fate of their relatives. The compensation plan — amo...
(JTA) — To many in the Jewish world, the Ruderman Family Foundation is synonymous with efforts to increase inclusion for Jews with disabilities. Based in Boston, but active across the United States and in Israel, the foundation has doled out some $75 million over the past 18 years to support inclusion. Just this month — Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month — the foundation is credited with sponsoring a virtual reading of a children’s book with Chabad and collaborating with Boston’s Jewish federation to make synagogues mor...
