Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
(JTA)-As hurricane Harvey swept over Houston, Chava Gal-Or counted herself lucky. The water rose up to her door and a little bit seeped in, but her home did not flood. However, many in the Reform synagogue where she works had it much worse: Twenty-nine families lost their homes-about 15 percent of the congregation's members. At first, Gal-Or despaired the extent of the damage and how little she could do to help. "I can't rebuild their houses," said Gal-Or, the director of congregational...
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA)-Lyla Maymon and Jane Shvartzman went to interview officials last year at the Larkin Street Youth, a local organization fighting homelessness among young people, to see if their programs were worthy of a philanthropic grant. Maymon and Shvartzman asked all the right questions, like what percentage of the group's budget was used for overhead and how it planned to spend the money. They had looked up its financials on GuideStar, a database of nonprofit files. So, perhaps not...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Stephen Bannon, the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump, called himself a "Christian Zionist" at the Zionist Organization of America's annual dinner. He also praised Republican Jewish megadonor Sheldon Adelson for his help in guiding Trump through a sexual assault scandal. Bannon, at what may have been his first speech at a Jewish event since becoming associated with Trump last year, received a standing ovation and loud applause throughout his speech on Sunday in Ne...
(JTA)-Mark Zuckerberg wrote last December on Facebook that for him, "religion is very important." Looks like he meant it. The Facebook co-founder has been invoking Judaism a lot lately. In May, he quoted a Jewish prayer at Harvard's commencement. Two weeks ago he posted a picture of his daughter with a family kiddush cup. And on Saturday night, he posted a public apology at the end of Yom Kippur. It's quite a transformation for a public figure who once defined himself as an atheist. Although he...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Are Jewish millennials the most religious generation? And do one-fifth of them think Jesus was God in human form? Yes and yes, says a new survey of 599 Jews born from 1984 to 1999. The survey creates a contradictory portrait of Jewish millennials: These young adults describe themselves as religious, and practice Jewish ritual, but are unaffiliated. They value tradition and family, but don't plan on marrying only Jews. They are proud to be Jewish, but don't feel that contradicts...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The Orthodox Union is founding its own division to advance women as congregational leaders, as well as to promote Jewish study and communal participation for women in Modern Orthodoxy. The announcement comes nearly nine months after the group, an umbrella association of centrist Orthodox synagogues, issued a ruling banning those synagogues from hiring women for clergy roles. The Department of Women's Initiatives, which will launch Nov. 1, aims to increase women's participation in...
CHICAGO (JTA)-Three days after a gunman killed 59 people in Las Vegas, a post in a Facebook group for Chicago Jews displayed a blurry photo of survivors fleeing the bullets. Next to it was a flier advertising ChiDefense Firearm Training with a Hebrew phrase underneath denoting that the company is closed for Shabbat. The post got a few "likes"-and plenty of hate. One commenter called it "vile and distasteful." Another wrote sarcastically that it displayed "impeccable logic." Another called for...
(JTA)-When Dr. Avi Rivkind landed in Las Vegas three years ago to lecture as a trauma care expert, he saw something that troubled him. The airport, McCarran International, felt too open, almost exposed. He felt no less comfortable on the city's Strip while watching crowds flow from hotels to casinos to shops to the street-with little security in sight. "I felt there was a lack of presence, from the ease of getting around there, from the casinos, from how easy it is to enter all the malls," he...
(JTA)-Days after joining a pro-Israel group, Melissa Landa knew something had gone wrong: She said her mentor stopped working with her, pulling out of a conference presentation just days in advance. Landa didn't know that her mentor, John O'Flahavan, would then stop taking her calls. Or that O'Flahavan would soon dismiss her from teaching the education course she designed. Or that one year later, she would be fired from the college where she had taught for more than a decade. But in the late...
(JTA)-After he managed to bribe three van drivers to load their vehicles with aid supplies and drive him and his crew from the San Juan airport, Eli Rowe felt his humanitarian mission was off to a good start. Gas was scarce in Puerto Rico, but now all the food, medicine and hygienic supplies he had flown over from the mainland was making it into the Caribbean island's capital. Then he laid eyes on the city. It was devastated. "We saw sheer destruction everywhere," said Rowe, the CEO of Jet911,...
(JTA)-A few weeks ago, Holly Davies was getting ready to homeschool her kids and preparing the family for the High Holidays. When Hurricane Harvey hit, she helped evacuate 150 people from her neighborhood by airboat and shelter nearly 100 people in a local church. Then came the hard part. For the past three weeks, Davies has been leading a force of up to 300 volunteers who have mobilized to repair homes and synagogues in and around the heavily Jewish housing development of Willow Meadows....
NEW YORK (JTA)-Picture services for the High Holidays: A roomful of congregants sitting with heavy books in their laps listening to a rabbi sermonize or a cantor chant is what likely comes to mind. Baking pizza? Embracing a chicken under a tree? Not so much. But those are some of the things that Jewish clergy, educators and activists want Jews to do during their holiest days of the year. Aside from attending synagogue or dipping apples in honey, the extensive body of High Holidays traditions...
(JTA)-As Hurricane Harvey bore down on Houston Friday, Vicki Samuels Levy dashed over to the offices of the Houston Jewish Herald-Voice, took the proofs of this week's newspaper and went to her mother's house. Then mother and daughter spent all night editing the paper. And as the waters rose and they had to be evacuated to a neighbor's house the next day, the proofs were in hand, ready for the printer. "We want to help each other as family members, then we have to stop and do things for the...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The mayors of America’s largest cities are launching a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to combat hate and bigotry. Nearly 200 mayors have joined the agreement, which was announced Friday, since it was first circulated Tuesday night among the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The mayors are agreeing to explicitly condemn racism, white supremacy and bigotry, and to implement educational and public safety programs to safeguard vulnerable populations and discourage discrimination. Signers include the mayors of New York Cit...
NEW YORK (JTA)—On the night of Rosh Hashanah, thousands of people will leave work, gather in congregations across the globe and worship God, the ruler of the world. Ten days later they will begin a fast and gather again to pray, this time atoning for their sins. On both occasions they will praise Jesus Christ and pray for his return. They are not Jews, nor are they Jews for Jesus. Rather, these congregants are members of an evangelical Christian movement called the Living Church of God. On the days Jews know as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, t...
