Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 226 - 250 of 477
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...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The Orthodox Union will not penalize its member synagogues that already employ women as clergy, but it has reaffirmed a policy that prohibits other synagogues from hiring women in rabbinic positions. A statement adopted at the umbrella Orthodox synagogue association's board meeting last night and obtained by JTA states that while the O.U. prohibits synagogues from hiring women as clergy, the four synagogues that already employ women clergy will be allowed to remain members...
NEW YORK (JTA)—During a combative news conference in early August, White House adviser Stephen Miller told reporters that the United States should prioritize immigrants who speak English. “Does the applicant speak English?” Miller asked, describing a bill to reduce the overall number of immigrants and reform immigration requirements. “Can they support themselves and their families financially? Do they have a skill that will add to the U.S. economy?” But if English proficiency had been an immigration requirement a century ago, Miller’s...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The share of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians is falling fast, while Republican sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians is spiking. So says a new poll by the Pew Research Center. But experts are divided on what it means, and whether pro-Israel activists, and Democrats, should be worried. Do the results indicate that Democrats are abandoning Israel en masse? Is it another sign of political polarization, which makes it harder for one party to...
NEW YORK (JTA)—It wasn’t long after Nahum Amir began working for Delta Airlines as a mechanic that he says his manager started calling him “the Jewish guy.” Then Amir says the manager accused him and other Jews of “killing kids in Gaza.” During the same period, Yaron Gilinsky was working as a Delta flight attendant on flights from New York to Tel Aviv. Except, he says, his non-Jewish co-workers would call it “Hell Aviv.” Gilinsky remembers some, including managers, making fun of haredi Orthodox Jews’ beards and sidecurls. One non-Jewish fellow...
(JTA)-If a Palestinian appears to be committing a terror attack, do they deserve to die on the spot? The answer is yes, says Michael Oren. The former Israeli ambassador to the United States, now a deputy minister in Israel's Cabinet, tweeted last week that the Israel Defense Forces should change its rules of engagement, such that soldiers should "shoot to kill" suspected terrorists, instead of just incapacitating them. "Soldiers who catch terrorists while carrying out attacks must be ordered to...
(JTA)-Is it true that Judaism doesn't accept converts? Is it true that Jews have to wash their hands before they pray? Is it true that Jews have historically killed their prophets? These are just a few of the questions Elhanan Miller has heard over the years. A fluent Arabic speaker and former Arab affairs correspondent for the Times of Israel, Miller saw that many Muslims he knew didn't have a clear understanding of Jewish practices and beliefs. So he decided to start teaching Muslims about...
(JTA)-This hasn't been a good year for Israel and American Jews. The two poles of world Jewry, each boasting about half of the globe's total Jews, have never quite seen eye to eye on everything from religion to politics. But this year-particularly the last six months-has seen those disagreements balloon into public spats over the future of the Jewish people and Jewish values. Compromises have been scratched, meetings canceled, donations redirected. A leading American rabbi demanded that an...
(JTA)-It's a shame Al Franken has to go, Minnesota Jews say. But he has to go. That's the feeling Minnesota Jewish leaders expressed a day after the Democratic senator announced he would resign his seat in the coming weeks following a string of sexual harassment allegations against him. Eight women have accused Franken of inappropriate conduct, and many of his Democratic colleagues called on him to step down. Franken denies some of the allegations. "Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus...
NEW YORK (JTA)-When Chris Doeblin agreed to buy 100 copies of a children's book to help an author friend, he didn't expect to become enmeshed in a controversy over international relations and free speech. But that's what happened after Doeblin, the co-owner of Book Culture, a chain of independent bookstores in New York City, purchased and held a reading of "P is for Palestine," which came out last month. Written by Golbarg Bashi, an Iranian-born author who has held Persian-language readings of...
(JTA)-When Israeli security guards roughed up the head rabbi of the Reform movement at the Western Wall, ripping his suit jacket and shoving a can of mace in his face, Rabbi Jen Lader had a dilemma: How could she talk about the violence without being boring? Lader, a spiritual leader at Temple Israel in suburban Detroit, had already preached about the Israeli government's apparent disdain for Reform Jews. She had spoken about how Reform Jews cannot marry or perform conversions as they choose in...
