Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 462
TEL AVIV (JTA)—One of the biggest days of the year for Ronaldo and Bernadette Lopez is Christmas. They open up their Filipino restaurant in South Tel Aviv, and their friends bring their families, crowd the place and eat embutido, a rolled pork dish from their shared home country. But this year may be different because the Lopez family no longer celebrates Christmas. In April, they converted to Judaism. And as of May, they still hadn’t told their Filipino friends about the decision, which followed a year-and-a-half of study and an oral exam the...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Growing up in Imperial Japan during World War II, Isaac Shapiro's best friend was a member of the Hitler Youth. The friend wore the organization's brown shirt uniform to their international school every day, but not because he wanted to-he was German and Japan was an ally of the Nazi regime, so he was expected to project support for the Fuehrer. Instead of instilling fear into his classmates, however, the uniform had the opposite effect-his non-German peers gently teased him. "We...
(JTA)-When Mary McCabe explains America's immigration courts to children who have been separated from their parents, she tries to make it interactive. She draws a sketch of a courtroom and asks kids to identify the figures in the room-like the judge or the lawyers-and where they sit. For younger ones, ages 6 or 7, she brings a box of crayons and a sketchpad for doodling. Older kids sometimes play with a toy that drips colored oil into water. Anything to give them a little diversion from her...
(JTA)-Seven Supreme Court justices sided with a Colorado baker in his legal fight with a gay couple. And seven major Jewish groups weighed in on the decision. Six of the Jewish groups disagreed with the decision. But one Jewish organization, the Orthodox Union, dissented from the rest, calling the ruling a victory for religious freedom. "Too many pundits and politicians have lately engaged in rhetoric that seeks to paint religious liberty in a negative light, especially as they seek to advance p...
(JTA)—Israelis want nothing more than for their country to be considered normal. That may have to wait. A much-anticipated soccer game between the Argentine and Israeli national teams was cancelled Wednesday because, Israeli and Argentine officials say, of physical threats made to the Argentine players—including megastar forward Lionel Messi. The exhibition game was set for Saturday night in Jerusalem, less than a week before the beginning of the World Cup. Beyond the disappointment of tens of thousands of Israeli soccer fans, the can...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-In another life, Kobi Frig would have been sitting behind vats of spices in Jerusalem's bustling, labyrinthine Mahane Yehuda market, hawking paprika, zaatar and cinnamon like his grandfather and father did before him Instead, Frig obeyed his father's wishes, went to college, and started a chain of events that transformed the market and led to the closure of his family's shop. He became a community activist, organizing art and music fairs in the market that opened it up to a...
(JTA)—Jewish converts in America may have a much harder time being accepted in Israel because of a new set of regulations proposed by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. If adopted, some activists in Israel say, the new guidelines for religious courts could drive a deeper wedge between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. The Chief Rabbinate, which controls Jewish marriage, divorce, conversion and burial in the Jewish state, is largely run by haredi Orthodox leaders. For years it has clashed with rabbis in America, even Orthodox ones, who have more liberal int...
(JTA)-When Aviva Schwartz started praying publicly for Palestinians at her Jewish summer camp, she knew it would be controversial. Schwartz had grown up ensconced in the Conservative movement, had attended three of its Ramah camps and had moved up the ranks as a staff member at Ramah Wisconsin. When Israel's war in Gaza broke out in the summer of 2014, she was the unit head for incoming seventh-graders, a position reserved for staff veterans. She was also a college student who, after a lifetime...
(JTA)—I never did anything like that with liver, but when I read “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I knew it was about me. Not the actual me, because I would never do any of the things that Alexander Portnoy confesses in the 274-page rant about lust, parental guilt, lust, neurosis, non-Jewish women and lust by Philip Roth, who died Tuesday at 85. The misogyny threaded throughout the book and its constant, universal treatment of women as either sex objects or domineering authorities, or both aimed to shock in 1969 and is reprehensible. But the deeper...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-As he strolled on his leafy, narrow street overlooking what is now the United States Embassy in Israel, Ben Katz stepped back to dodge the side-view mirror of an oncoming truck, which had jutted onto the sidewalk. A few hundred feet past Katz's garden apartment, four security guards lounged under a tent. Below them, adjacent to a walking path leading to a small park, was the U.S. diplomatic compound that, on Monday, became the embassy. "For practical purposes, it's a question of...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Despite growing condemnation for the deaths of 60 Palestinians on the Gaza border yesterday, Israel defended its military's actions as an act of self-defense in the face of a mass attack. "We didn't want it to happen, but we understood these were Hamas' intentions," Dani Dayan, Israel's consul general in New York, told reporters Tuesday. "We are not going away. We will defend our border. We will defend our population. If they invade Israeli communities, we will have to take much...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-When war broke out on Israel's northern border in 2006, Avigdor Guy remained calm. He lived in the northern port city of Haifa, but he didn't think the war would hit home-until, that is, it did. "Twelve years ago, they asked me if I was worried, and I said no, of course I'm not worried," Guy said. "And then missiles began to fall in Haifa, and it felt really bad." Now, as fears of a war on Israel's northern border heat up once more, Guy again feels fine. But this time, he says...
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you’re an Orthodox Jew with a mortgage from Quicken Loans, you might be in trouble. Agudath Israel of America, a major haredi Orthodox organization, issued a Jewish legal ruling last month prohibiting Jews from taking out loans from the company because it is majority-owned by Jews. Quicken Loans, which claims to be America’s largest mortgage lender, also owns Rocket Mortgage, the online mortgage agency. Jewish law, known as halacha, forbids Jews from charging interest to other Jews. So Jews are allowed to own mortgage agenc...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Gino Bartali had already won the Tour de France once and the Giro d'Italia twice when he started taking the most dramatic bicycle rides of his life. Bartali was an Italian cyclist who grew up in a Tuscan village and whose championships in the mid-1930s were the pride of the nation-and Benito Mussolini's fascist government. But the admiration was not mutual: Bartali refused requests to dedicate his Tour de France championship to the dictator, and later began working to undermine f...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Three Jewish organizations are accusing the Zionist Organization of America of inappropriately criticizing them. And the ZOA is accusing one of them right back. On Wednesday, the various spats will have a formal hearing at a committee meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, an umbrella association for Jewish groups. The Presidents Conference by-laws, according to the Forward, prohibit its members from attacking each other with "insults, ad...
(JTA)-Israel attacked Syria, just like it (reportedly) has countless times before. The difference now is that Russia is angry about the strike-and showing it. Russia has called out Israel publicly, condemned the attack and summoned the Israeli ambassador to "discuss developments." The alleged strike, which the Israeli government has not acknowledged, came soon after a Syrian chemical weapons attack on civilians. But the two attacks might not be connected. Here's a quick rundown of why Israel is...
(JTA)-In "7 Days in Entebbe," which hits theaters on Friday, Daniel Bruhl plays a German leftist terrorist tortured by the fact that he's hijacking a plane full of Jews and taking them prisoner. The movie, about the 1976 Israeli rescue operation that freed the mainly Jewish and Israeli hostages of a hijacked plane in Uganda, focuses on the conflicted experiences of the two Germans-played by Bruhl and Rosamund Pike-who allied with Palestinian terrorists to hijack the Paris-bound plane. Even as...
(JTA)-There's no reason Hodaya Koskas and Barrett Brickell would know each other. Koskas, 14, is a high school student from a small city in central Israel who takes ballet classes and hopes to be a dancer. Brickell, 71, is a retired schoolteacher from Ottawa, Canada. But they've been video chatting every week since September. The unlikely pairing begins by having Koskas read a one-page English description of a place in Israel, perhaps the Western Wall or a mall. Then they shift into talking...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Vice President Mike Pence said that unless the Iran nuclear deal is fixed in the “coming months,” the United States would withdraw from it. Pence made the promise, to cheers, during his address Monday night to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. The deal, which was signed in 2015 by Iran, the United States and a group of other world powers, curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. President Donald Trump opposes the agreement. In October, he declined to...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—On the second floor of the downtown convention center here, hundreds attending the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee packed a standing-room-only hall. A bouncer stood outside to control the overflow crowd. It wasn’t a session on boycotts, Iran or the peace process. It was mincha, the Jewish afternoon prayer service. Outside, smaller groups of Orthodox men gathered to form their own prayer quorums. High school students in kippahs and long skirts sat against the walls chatting. Meir Raskas k...
(JTA)-Seven survivors of the Parkland school shooting were among thousands of Jewish high school students who attended the annual conference of the Chabad movement's youth group. Responding to the Feb. 14 shooting became an impromptu theme of the conference, which was hosted in New York City by CTeen, the teen arm of the Hasidic outreach movement. CTeen, which has 100,000 members worldwide, has eight chapters in the South Florida area surrounding Parkland. The shooting, which killed 17 students...
(JTA)—Benjamin Netanyahu is in trouble. Maybe. The Israeli prime minister is engulfed simultaneous in four separate scandals, and each day seems to bring him more bad news. Netanyahu could be indicted or pushed out of office -- or both. Whether this is the beginning of the end of the Bibi Netanyahu era, or just the latest challenge to a seasoned political survivor, is the hot topic in Israel. First, Netanyahu was accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts from a wealthy American. Then he was accused of making a s...
(JTA)-They volunteered. They played soccer. They went to camp. They were sweet, mature and easygoing. They were just beginning their lives, or helping others on their way. And one died so that others could live. Jewish students and staff were among the 17 people who were killed when a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting. Among the Jewish victims are first-year students Jaime Guttenberg, Alex Schachter and Alyssa...
(JTA)-As he leads the police response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is likely enduring some of the toughest days of his career. And he's probably looking to his Judaism to guide him through it. Israel is the county's first Jewish sheriff, and it's an identity he has embraced. A 2016 campaign flier reported on that year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel centers on the role that faith in general, and Judaism in particular, plays in his life. "My...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Eva Lavi's earliest memories are of the Holocaust. She remembers how her mother made her hide outside in below-zero weather, clutching a standing pipe, as Nazis searched her home in Poland. She remembers her father telling her to swallow a spoonful of cyanide-better than death at the hands of the Nazis-only to have her mother object at the last minute. She remembers seeing her twin cousins shot to death as they ran up a hill at a labor camp. Lavi was 2 years old when Nazi Germany...
