Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA)—Former presidents recently served as eulogizers for Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, and U.S. Sen. John McCain, the “maverick.” Barack Obama and George Bush spoke for McCain, a former rival of both, while Bill Clinton did the same for Franklin, who performed at his 1993 inauguration. Neither funeral escaped controversy. Liberals quickly rebutted the notion that for all the high-minded rhetoric about bipartisanship, McCain’s memorial represented a rebuke of Donald Trump. Conservatives, and Jews of various political stripes...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Are Jews too powerful to be considered “victims” of racism? Some progressives think so and have been downplaying accusations of anti-Semitism in light of a debate over prejudice and power. This week, The New York Times took heat for hiring Sarah Jeong, a technology writer, to its editorial board. Some have called her racist against white people, pointing to past tweets in which she proclaimed that “White men are bullshit” and “#CancelWhitePeople.” The debate over her tweets often centered around the very notion of anti-white ra...
Spoilers for "BlacKkKlansman" below. NEW YORK (JTA)-In 1965, two young Jewish men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered along with black activist James Chaney by Ku Klux Klansmen in a Southern horror memorialized in the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning." My own Jew-adjacent summer camp showed the film to us when we were about 12, with a non-Jewish camp director adding in an impassioned speech that while the days of the violent Klan had passed, it was our responsibility, as...
(JTA)-The election of former cricket star Imran Khan as Pakistan's new prime minister has raised eyebrows across the globe. He has promised a "new Pakistan," running on a light-on-policy nationalistic anti-corruption platform. Khan "is known for running a team of one, making impulsive decisions, contradicting himself and then using his enormous reserves of self-confidence and charisma to dig himself out," Jeffrey Gettleman wrote in The New York Times. Critics have questioned the legitimacy of...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried the “occupation of Palestine” during a television interview. Appearing July 13 on PBS’s “Firing Line,” Ocasio-Cortez, 28, also described herself as “a firm believer in finding a two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, upset 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in last month’s primary in New York’s 14th Congressional District, which straddles Queens and the Bronx. Although she has commented...
NEW YORK (JTA)-After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world by defeating longtime New York Rep. Joseph Crowley in a Democratic primary last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez quickly aligned himself with the former political outsider, saying on a radio show that "she represents the future of our party." If so, that future appears to include the kind of sharp criticism of Israel once considered taboo in both major parties. Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Not an hour after Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement as associate justice on the Supreme Court, the National Council of Jewish Women tweeted its dismay. "Justice Kennedy's retirement could drastically shift the balance of the Supreme Court, and threaten the very rights and liberties we've fought so hard to protect," NCJW tweeted Wednesday. "We need a justice who will stand up for all of our rights, not just the wealthy and powerful." NCJW's is a voice of the Jewish liberal...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Anthony Bourdain was quick-and often willing-to publicly offer his own flaws. "Until 44 years of age, I never had any kind of savings account," Bourdain said in 2017. "[I] always owed money. I'd always been selfish and completely irresponsible." Despite or maybe because of such flaws, Bourdain would stumble into fame, parlaying his latent talent as a writer into hosting three increasingly sophisticated variants of the same food-oriented travel show-first on the Food Network, then...
