Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA)—A person calls a Jewish institution, makes a bomb threat and hangs up. The call lasts no more than a minute, the caller’s voice is disguised and the call is made to look as if it came from inside the building. How do you catch the culprit? That’s the question the FBI is facing in investigating the 65 bomb threats that have hit JCCs and Jewish federations in three waves throughout January. The latest string of threats, targeting 17 JCCs across the country, occurred Tuesday. The first waves across the country came on Jan. 9 and 1... Full story
(JTA)-One Jewish group that joined the Women's March on Washington has seen its online donations double since the election of Donald Trump as president. Another has twice as many guests as usual attending its annual conference. A third has seen its social media engagement skyrocket. And after bringing thousands of Jews to the streets on Saturday, they're all asking the same question: What now? A range of liberal Jewish groups took part in the Women's March, which drew more than 3 million people... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—The FBI and Department of Homeland Security will be assisting local Jewish community centers in bolstering security after 16 JCCs received bomb threats on the same day. On Wednesday, officials from the FBI and Homeland Security will conduct a conference call with U.S. Jewish communal leaders to discuss Monday’s incidents, what they stem from and how to craft protocols to handle such incidents in the future. Some communities already receive federal grants to provide for security. The bomb threats, none of which appear cre... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Some couples argue over movies, others disagree about how to squeeze the toothpaste. But one of the earliest debates Yaelle Frohlich and Yair Shahak had was over which biblical figure was the most tragic. Shahak chose Jeremiah, the ridiculed and ignored prophet of doom. Frohlich picked Leah, Jacob's neglected wife. Nine years later, on a chilly Monday night in Manhattan, the couple sat in the library at Yeshiva University engaged in another spirited discussion-this time about Sams... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Conservative Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom has been expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement's rabbis' association, for performing interfaith weddings. An ordained Conservative rabbi for 44 years, Rosenbloom was expelled last month by unanimous vote, with abstentions, after a hearing of the R.A.'s Executive Council. Since 1972, the Conservative movement has prohibited its rabbis from officiating at or even attending intermarriages. Rosenbloom told JTA a council member sugges... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-When Northwestern University's student Senate passed a resolution in February 2015 asking the university to divest from six corporations they said contributed to the violation of Palestinians' human rights, freshman Ross Krasner was hurt and surprised. The rhetoric of the measure, portraying Israel as an oppressor, was more extreme than what he had expected. Krasner decided to become more involved with the campus pro-Israel group, Wildcats for Israel, and became its president... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Thirty years ago, it would have been safe to say the American Jewish community agreed on the need to fight for Israel and against anti-Semitism. It may still be true that most American Jews support those causes. But now, apparently, some people aren’t so sure what either of those things mean. One Jew’s support of Israel is another’s attack on the Jewish state. And as we’ve seen this week, one Jew’s condemnation of an alleged promoter of anti-Semitism is another’s smear on a purported defender of the Jews. Nowhere did this emer... Full story
(JTA)-For years, whenever Jews and Muslims engaged in dialogue and activism, it usually concerned one issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Donald Trump's ascent to the presidency, that appears to be changing. Regardless of what's happening across the ocean, Jews and Muslims in the United States are joining together to fight for shared domestic concerns. "It is a perhaps growing recognition that [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] cannot define how American Jews and American Muslims... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-After Brett Parker's great-grandfather fled the pogroms in Europe and came to the United States, he opened a drug store where he sold comic books. Each week he would give his grandson, Parker's father, five comic books to take home. Growing up during the early years of Superman instilled in Parker's dad a lifelong love of comics, many of them written by Jews, that he passed on to his son. "Imagine if he kept them," Parker said laughing, picturing the first editions of Superman... Full story
(JTA)-For years, I've told anyone who would listen that the Cubs were the team of the Jews. I've written two blog posts about it during the past month alone. Long suffering. Faithful. Bound to tradition. Hoping for redemption, to no avail. It was all there. Until now. For the first time since my great-grandfather's bar mitzvah, the Cubs are World Series champions. So as I was leaping around my living room at 12:30 this morning shrieking in joy, an uncomfortable thought passed through my head:... Full story
CHICAGO (JTA)-The same week Tamar Manasseh's African-American son was going to become a bar mitzvah, gang violence killed two 13-year-old black boys who were also from Chicago's South Side. As she picked out the bar mitzvah suit for her son, Manasseh couldn't shake the image of the slain boys' mothers, who were likely also picking out suits-for their sons to be buried in. Manasseh, a lifelong Chicagoan who attended Jewish day school and is now studying to be a rabbi, has always been proud to be... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-American Jews are likely to vote for Hillary Clinton in November, but American Jewry's fastest-growing community is likely to go the other way. A solid majority of haredi Orthodox Jews will vote for Donald Trump, say experts and Republican operatives in the haredi enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn. While poll data isn't available on the fervently Orthodox vote, observers say the haredim are attracted by Trump's hawkish foreign policy, pugnacious personality and image as a successf... Full story
ELIZABETH, N.J. (JTA)-Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man who police say planted four bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey-including one in the train station here-used to come to the One Stop Kosher Market to buy snacks. The market is a couple minutes' walk down Elmora Avenue from First American Fried Chicken, the fast food restaurant run by Rahami's family. Rahami stopped by a couple times, employees told Yaakov Weiss, who manages the market and works at the adjacent kosher restaurant, Avenue Grill and... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—When Rosh Hashanah came around last year, Rabbi Aaron Gaber wanted to grapple with an issue roiling the country. So he decided to focus his sermon on racism. But several members of Brothers of Israel, a 120-family Conservative synagogue in suburban Philadelphia, weren’t pleased. “Some of the feedback from some of my congregants has caused us some consternation,” Gaber said. Congregants accused the rabbi of calling them racists, he recalled, “which I didn’t do.” This year, with the presidential election looming just one month afte... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—It’s never been easy for Jewish Republicans. Jews have broken overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates since Woodrow Wilson. Despite rising American Jewish affluence, usually a harbinger of conservative voting patterns, a plurality self-defines as liberal. Republican Jews have poured millions into upping their share of the Jewish vote in recent elections, portraying the GOP as the pro-Israel party and telling largely affluent Jewish Americans to vote their economic self-interest. The needle has only moved a little, despite tho... Full story
CLEVELAND (JTA)-An issue of historical concern to American Jews drew waves of applause when Donald Trump Jr. preached about it Tuesday night from the stage of the Republican National Convention. It wasn't Israel, Iran or the fight against anti-Semitism. It was a call for the government to assist with private school costs, referred to as "school choice." Echoing Republican orthodoxy, the son of the party's nominee said it would promote competition and raise educational standards. American public... Full story
CLEVELAND (JTA)- On the day Donald Trump wrapped up the Republican primaries, Marc Zell was ready to resign his position as vice president of Republicans Overseas, the party's expatriate group. Zell, who lives in Israel, was put off by Trump's inconsistent statements regarding the country. In particular, he felt insulted when Trump, at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum last December, said, "You're not going to support me because I don't want your money." He felt that the Republican... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Voters who have their hearts set on supporting a left-wing secular Jew running an insurgent campaign still have a candidate. Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party candidate, is making another run. And this year, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both earning historically low popularity ratings, she hopes she can attract at least some of Bernie Sanders' 13 million Democratic primary voters. With a far-left platform, Stein advocates government-guaranteed full employment, a national... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Being an American Jew, more than anything else, means remembering the Holocaust. That's what nearly three quarters of Jewish Americans said, according to the Pew Research Center's landmark 2013 study on American Jewry. Asked to pick attributes "essential" to being Jewish, more Jews said Holocaust remembrance than leading an ethical or moral life, caring about Israel or observing Jewish law. If anyone personified that consensus, it was Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Three months after Israel's Chief Rabbinate rejected his authority to perform conversions, one of America's most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis joined with Natan Sharansky to advance a message: The rabbinate needs to become more open. But not too much more. A widely respected rabbi in New York's Orthodox community, Haskel Lookstein saw his credentials called into question when a conversion he performed was deemed invalid by a rabbinical court in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Eve Goldberg's son, Isaac, was in a panic. He had to get out of college. Isaac Goldberg Volkmar had been at the University of Rhode Island for less than a semester in 2009 when he called his mother desperate to escape. He had joined a fraternity, where his brothers got him to take the pain medications Percocet and OxyContin. After a few months the New York teen knew he was addicted and needed help. From there, Isaac was in and out of rehab in Pennsylvania and New York. He... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-Instead of visiting the Western Wall, they visited Ellis Island. Instead of hiking in the Negev Desert, they took a day trip to a Habonim-Dror summer camp. Instead of basking in the sun on the Tel Aviv beach, they watched clips of the Three Stooges mocking the Nazis. And instead of Birthright, a 10-day trip meant to acquaint American Jews with Israel, a cohort of Israeli graduate students participated in a 10-day trip to get to know American Jews. The trip, which began June 18,... Full story
(JTA)-Here a plan, there a plan, everywhere a peace plan. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Authority may not exactly seem conducive to peace-Israel just formed what may be its most right-wing government ever, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging and becoming less popular. Yet peace plans have been coming at the region from all sides. No less than three Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals have been put forward in recent weeks, spanning a range of countries, leaders... Full story
PARDES HANNA, Israel (JTA)-When Yoel decided, at age 8, to begin observing Shabbat, there was one problem: It meant he couldn't join most of Israel's youth soccer teams, which played games on Saturday. Yoel, now 12, has always lived in the increasingly large gray area between Israel's starkly divided religious and secular Jewish societies. His father observes Shabbat, his mother doesn't. He attended a religious elementary school, but transferred to a secular school this year. He enjoys how... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—He was an outspoken politician with little military experience, appointed by a rival and promising to bring a new approach. Current and former officials at the Defense Ministry called his appointment an “enigma,” fretting that “it will take some time until he understands how things work” and that “he’ll have to undergo basic training.” The subject of that criticism wasn’t Avigdor Liberman, the hard-line nationalist with scant army experience who was offered the defense portfolio in a surprise move Wednesday. It was Amir Peretz,... Full story
