Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 251 - 275 of 462
NEW YORK (JTA)-After the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, voices abounded calling the demonstration an affront to American values. Rabbi Shai Held called it an attack on God. "One of the most fundamental claims Judaism makes about the world is that every human being on the face of the earth-black and white, male and female-is created in the image of God and is therefore infinitely valuable," Held wrote last week in an essay on CNN.com. "An attack on other people's humanity is by...
(JTA)-They believe the "white race" is in danger. They believe the United States was built by and for white people and must now embrace fascism. They believe minorities are taking over the country. And they believe an international Jewish conspiracy is behind the threat. These are the people who were rallying in Charlottesville. The "Unite the Right" rally Saturday saw hundreds of people on America's racist fringe converge in defense of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and brawl...
(JTA)-Is it OK to punch a Nazi in the face? That's the question animating much of the discussion of Saturday's white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which quickly devolved into a brawl between rally-goers and a contingent of anti-fascist counterprotesters known as antifa. Following the clashes, a white supremacist rammed his car into the counterprotest, killing Heather Heyer, 32. Leaders and activists across the spectrum have unequivocally condemned the racist, anti-Semitic...
(JTA)-He has a firm grip on the government, but a mounting political scandal might bring him down. Officials from his own party have begun to distance themselves from him, but he remains defiant. Oh, and his son is in trouble, too. Just one more thing Benjamin Netanyahu has in common with President Donald Trump. Except there's a difference: While Trump faces one sprawling scandal, the Russia affair, Israel's prime minister is embroiled in at least two. Police are conducting two additional corrup...
NEW YORK (JTA)-If Jared Kushner is the only person who can deliver Middle East peace-as his father-in-law Donald Trump said-he comes off as a reluctant savior. In a speech delivered Monday to a group of congressional interns and leaked to the media, Kushner expounded on the Trump administration's efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace. What emerged was an outlook that at once was resolutely pro-Israel and skeptical of the chances of success. "So what do we offer that's unique? I don't...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Six years ago, the Israeli government released a series of controversial ads to show its expatriates that they would never feel at home in the United States. But last year, Israeli Cabinet members lined up to address a Washington, DC., conference celebrating Israeli-American identity. The ad campaign, which was pulled following a backlash from Israelis and Jews abroad, represented Israel's traditional attitude toward citizens who left its borders. Emphasizing its image as the Jewi...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Since it came out in 2013, the "Pew study"-a landmark survey of American Jewish demographics, beliefs and practices-has been at the center of American Jewish scrutiny and handwringing. Now it's American Muslims' turn. On Wednesday, the Pew Research Center released a survey of American Muslims focusing not only on numbers and their way of life, but also on how the community has responded to the election of President Donald Trump. Comparing the two studies shows a Muslim sector in A...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Yaakov Seltzer remembers a different world, when he would sell his customers prayer books, then hand them an invitation to his daughter's wedding. When they would come in to Seltzer's store to order a kippah for their new grandson, then ask him to attend the bris. Or they would stop in on a Friday afternoon with nothing to buy, just to wish him a good Shabbat. But though the Upper West Side of Manhattan is still heavily Jewish, the world Seltzer longs for has disappeared. And...
MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. (JTA)-When Michael Steinhardt strolls around his 55-acre backyard for 90 minutes every morning, one of his favorite animals to see is the scimitar-horned oryx, whose antlers sweep back from its head like the swords for which they are named. But Steinhardt didn't much like finding out that a (literally) horny oryx had stabbed a zebra to death during a testosterone-fueled mating season three years ago. The zebra incident is, thankfully, an outlier on his sprawling estate about...
(JTA)-The Israeli chief rabbinate says that its list of foreign rabbis has been misconstrued, and that the list does not imply that those rabbis cannot be trusted to vouch for the Jewish identities of their followers. On Saturday, JTA reported on a list of some 160 rabbis whose efforts to confirm the Jewish identities of immigrants were rejected by Israel's haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate. In order to get married in Israel, immigrants must provide the rabbinate proof of their Jewish...
(JTA)-What do you think of when you think of Italy? Maybe you picture beautiful works of art set against rolling Tuscan hills. Maybe a steaming plate of spaghetti topped with marinara sauce served with a deep red wine. Now what do you think of when you think of Israel? If you're like most Americans, you picture walls of concrete enclosing an austere and strict country. The men wear black hats, the women long skirts. Everyone looks pretty serious. That's what Brand Israel Group, a group of...
(JTA)-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shelved a controversial bill that would have made the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Netanyahu's office announced Friday that the legislation will not be considered for six months while a "team" he will appoint comes up with recommendations for an "arrangement" on the issue. The decision comes after an outcry by the Reform and Conservative movements and American Jewish...
(JTA)-American Jewish leaders are calling it a betrayal. They say that 17 months after achieving an historic agreement to provide a non-Orthodox space at Judaism's holiest prayer site, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged in a Cabinet vote Sunday, effectively canceling the deal and caving to the interests of his haredi Orthodox coalition partners. Netanyahu disagrees. Far from killing the compromise, he believes the vote has given it new life. And far from betraying Diaspora Jewry,...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For years, Laurie Grauer had waved a rainbow flag emblazoned with a Jewish star at the Chicago Dyke March, sometimes marching near activists waving Palestinian flags. It had never been a problem. But this year, Grauer was confronted by the LGBT parade's organizers, questioned about her support for Israel and asked to leave because she was carrying the flag. She was one of three women with Jewish flags kicked out of Sunday's parade. Grauer says she was used to Israel being a...
(JTA)-Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders are fighting again over an age-old question: Who counts as a Jew? And who gets to decide? This week, Israel's government inflamed simmering tensions over Jewish conversion when a Cabinet committee advanced a bill that would further empower the country's haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. The measure declares that the rabbinate is the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Defenders of the bill say it consolidates the...
(JTA)-They've tried strongly worded statements. They've tried private meetings with the prime minister. They've tried negotiations, protest and prayer. But for the past five years, despite broad internal consensus and consistent pressure, the American Jewish establishment has been unable to persuade Israel's government to create an equitable space for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall. The latest setback in that fight came Sunday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Eighty percent of Jews live in two countries—Israel and the United States—but Jewish organizations are spending more and more of their money elsewhere. Jewish aid to the developing world—the impoverished set of countries your zayde called the “third world”—has grown quickly in the past couple of decades. What used to be a handful of groups has grown to become a constellation of organizations working on anything from solar power in Rwanda to agricultural sustainability in Nepal. Together, the groups aid millions of people. Jewish...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The vast majority of Reform and Conservative rabbis affiliate as Democrats, according to a new study. The study, published Sunday by Yale University, found that more than 80 percent of Reform rabbis, and about 70 percent of Conservative rabbis, affiliate as Democrats. Both were among the top five most Democratic clergy of the Jewish and Christian denominations in the United States, with Reform rabbis topping the list. Among Orthodox rabbis, nearly 40 percent identify as Democrats...
(JTA)-One of Israel's strongest condemnations of Donald Trump wasn't about the peace process. It didn't concern Trump's broken promise to relocate the U.S. embassy, or his reported leak of Israeli intelligence. It was about climate change. After President Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris accords, the landmark 2015 agreement to fight global warming, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz joined the chorus of international leaders criticizing his decision. "Even if...
NEW YORK (JTA)—“Voluntary dues” may sound like an oxymoron, but the idea may soon be coming to a synagogue near you. According to a new study by the UJA-Federation of New York, the number of non-Orthodox synagogues nationwide that have eliminated fixed annual dues has more than doubled in the past two years. Instead of charging a set membership fee, these synagogues are telling congregants to pay what they want—and they’re succeeding. The nearly 60 Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues that have stopped charging mandatory...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Shavuot is the “Rodney Dangerfield of Jewish holidays,” says Rabbi Shira Stutman of Washington, D.C.’s Sixth and I synagogue. Meaning: It gets no respect. Considered by Jewish tradition to be on par with the fall and spring festivals of Sukkot and Passover, Shavuot is sometimes ignored because it is six days shorter—the holiday celebrating the biblical giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai is one day in Israel and two outside of it. Shavuot, which this year starts on the evening of May 30, also lacks iconic, family-ce...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Ten days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked visited the Jewish settlement in Hebron. A community of several hundred ensconced in a city of 150,000 Palestinians, Hebron's Jewish residents are considered to be among the most extremist and controversial Israeli settlers. Shaked, 41, wearing black jeans and a loose fleece, had come to support them. "No more excuses-in 10 days we need to keep building in Hebron!" she wrote on Facebook,...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On the morning of June 5, 1967, as Arab armies and Israel clashed following weeks of tension, Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg sat anxious amid his congregants at daily prayers-fearful that the Jewish people would face extinction for the second time in 25 years. "One of the people said, 'They're going to wipe out Israel. What's going to be?'" recalled Greenberg, then the spiritual leader of a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. "I said, 'They're not going to wipe out...
(JTA)-Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States soared 86 percent in the first three months of 2017 after rising by more than one-third in 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League. There has been a massive increase in harassment of American Jews, largely since November, and at least 34 incidents linked to the presidential election that month, the ADL said Monday in its annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents. This year has seen preliminary reports of 541 anti-Semitic incidents through...
CHICAGO (JTA)—The platter, served during Passover, contained a green, a bitter herb, an egg and matzah. But it was no seder plate. Instead, it was the appetizer served during a six-course prix fixe meal at Aviv, a pop-up, kosher-for-Passover restaurant housed for one night at Rodfei Zedek, a Conservative synagogue in the Hyde Park neighborhood on this city’s South Side. The course, a pickle platter, featured pickled cucumbers, pickled asparagus tips and beet-pickled eggs, along with olive tapenade, citrus-carrot horseradish and—de rigue...
