Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — At least four cases of intimidation or assault against Jews have been reported in the United States since Thursday, in a continuation of what many fear is one of the country’s worst spate in years of antisemitic violence. On Saturday, six men assaulted and punched two Jewish teenagers in Brooklyn on 18th Avenue and Ocean Parkway, reported VINnews. The news site interviewed Mitchel Schwartz, the father of one of the teenagers. One of the men told the teenagers “free Palestine” and made additional references to Israel, the report said. Th...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Many thousands of people protested against Israel in major European cities over the weekend as the latest Israel-Gaza conflict reached new heights. Several events featuring antisemitic rhetoric and rioting. In Brussels, London and Vienna dozens of men were filmed at rallies on Saturday shouting in Arabic: “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” The chant relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. It is wi...
(JTA) — A rocket from Gaza killed a 5-year-old child in the Israeli city of Sderot, bringing Israel’s death toll to seven in its exchanges of fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, 83 people have died, including 14 children, according to Save the Children, an aid group with a Gaza office. In addition, four Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank this week. Alongside the fighting between Israel and Hamas, several people have been wounded in clashes that have raged inside Israel between crowds of Arabs and...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Many thousands of people protested against Israel in major European cities over the weekend as the latest Israel-Gaza conflict reached new heights. Several events featuring antisemitic rhetoric and rioting. In Brussels, London and Vienna dozens of men were filmed at rallies on Saturday shouting in Arabic: “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” The chant relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. It is...
(JTA) — “If you haven’t seen the joy of Lag b’Omer on the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, you haven’t seen joy at all,” wrote the author Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israel’s first Nobel Prize laureate. That description reflects an aspect of the annual pilgrimage to Mount Meron in northern Israel that was underlined by the deaths on Friday of at least 45 revelers in a stampede: It is a place whose symbolism reflects a mix of grief and euphoria. Indeed, the tragedy struck during what for many observant Jews is among the happiest days of the year: the c...
PARIS (JTA) - A rumble rose from the 20,000 Jewish protesters at Trocadero Square, then exploded into shrill screams. "I don't even know whether to reassure you or cry out my fury," boomed Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire, the organ of French Jewry responsible for providing Orthodox religious services. "Yes, cry out your fury!" French Jewish events are usually dignified affairs that often end with the singing of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem. But the rally on Sunday...
(JTA) - Prince Philip, perhaps the closest member of the British royal family to Jews and Jewish causes, has died at 99. Buckingham Palace announced his death on Friday, April 9. Philip, who had been married to Queen Elizabeth II for 74 years, since five years before she ascended to the throne, had been in declining health for some time. Also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, Philip's support for Jewish and pro-Israel causes ran deep. His mother, Princess Alice of Greece, sheltered a Jewish...
(JTA) - The BBC has been accused of bias in its coverage of Israel for decades. Now the public broadcaster is taking flak from British Jews for coverage much closer to home. What's causing their biggest dispute in years? It's the broadcast of a debate over whether Jews should be considered an ethnic minority - a panel discussion featuring four non-Jewish panelists and a Jewish commenter as a guest. Monday's discussion touched raw nerves in the organized community, where many Jews feel...
(JTA) — About 200 academics from the United Kingdom and the United States have signed a petition defending a British university lecturer who had called Jewish students on his campus “pawns” of Israel, “a violent, racist, foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing.” Jewish groups and organizations have protested the remarks by David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, made during an online videoconference Feb. 13. Some have called for his ouster. The signatories of the letter published Friday supporting Mille...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - A Torah scroll that disappeared from a Dutch synagogue following the Nazi invasion into the Netherlands has been rediscovered 80 years later and returned to the Jewish community. The scroll, which appears to be intact and has been kept in excellent condition since World War II, belonged to a synagogue in the southern city of Dordrecht, according to Chris den Hoedt, chairman of the Jewish Community of Rotterdam, or NIG. The Pennings family from Dordrecht kept it in storage for...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - Sonja Levy was a positive person who made an excellent first impression and whose important position exempted her from deportation, according to the personal card that the Jewish Council of Amsterdam made for her during the Nazi occupation. But the accolades on the card weren't enough to save Levy, a kindergarten teacher who was in her early 20s when the Germans invaded. Like more than 100,000 Dutch Jews, she was eventually put on a train to the death camps in occupied Poland...
(JTA) - Authorities in Poland, Russia, Hungary and some lawmakers in Britain's Labour Party used anti-Semitism for political means, according to the Anti-Defamation League's anti-Semitism report on Europe published Thursday. In Poland, presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski was the target of "antisemitic rhetoric" this summer during an election in which he lost to the incumbent Andrzej Duda of the right-wing Law and Justice party, ADL wrote in the report titled "Choosing Antisemitism:...
(JTA) — In an annual survey of British Jewish adults, two-thirds said Jews have a future in the United Kingdom — the highest level of confidence since 2015. And the portion of British Jews who said they felt “unwelcome” in the United Kingdom fell from 53 percent last year to 18 percent in 2020. The “Antisemitism Barometer” survey, conducted in November and December by King’s College London for the Campaign Against Antisemitism watchdog group, shows that British Jews are “back from the brink” following the replacement as the head of Labour of...
(JTA) — At the opening of his trial in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher made several uncharacteristically friendly statements about Jews — a people he had devoted his professional life to demonize. Streicher, editor in chief of the Der Sturmer anti-Semitic weekly, claimed that he’d always viewed German Jews as legitimate compatriots and long supported Zionism. “So the Jewish question was for me solved in Germany, but I believed that another international solution will come, that we should meet with Zionists, listen to their demands,” he said on A...
(JTA) - For a movie about the Holocaust, the Belarussian film "Persian Lessons" has some comic potential. Set in a concentration camp somewhere in Western Europe, it involves a Jewish inmate who survives by giving Farsi lessons to a Nazi officer who dreams about opening a restaurant in Tehran. One problem: The inmate doesn't speak Farsi. Instead he comes up with his own language and teaches it to his captor, trying not to raise suspicions. If that sounds like a comedy of errors, it's no accident...
(JTA) — Six years after millions marched across France to protest the killing of 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and another four at a kosher supermarket, a lawyer for the families of four victims said the sense of solidarity that followed the attacks “has all but dissipated.” Patrick Klugman, a lawyer representing the families of the four victims of the attack on the Hyper Cacher market on Jan. 9, 2015, made the comment during a commemorative conference online on Monday entitled “Islamist Radicalization and Terrorist Threat....
(JTA) — Rabbi Moshe Azman, a prominent Ukrainian cleric with ties to several Trump associates at the heart of last year’s Ukrainegate scandal, endorsed Wednesday’s violent attempt to prevent the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election win, comparing the clashes to his own country’s recent pro-democracy revolution. Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, Azman, a Hasidic rabbi who is one of several figures claiming to be the chief rabbi of Ukraine, posted on Facebook that the “Maidan has begun in the USA,...
(JTA) - As one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, Eva Clarke has spent years telling the story of how her mother, weighing just 68 pounds, gave birth to her inside a concentration camp just a month before it was liberated. But this past spring, as COVID-19 shut down public life, Clarke's visits to schools and community centers in the United Kingdom "came to a screeching halt, indefinitely," she recalls. Earlier this month, she got a fresh audience when an RV pulled into her driveway in...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - After Gal Graber and Tal Goldman had a disappointing experience with a store-bought jachnun, the two Israelis living in Amsterdam set out to make the slow-cooked Yemenite bread on their own. "As with many Israelis, jachnun is connected in our minds with Saturday mornings, with quality time," Graber told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "But the frozen ones for sale here are not great. So we decided to make our own." It turned out to be a prescient undertaking. Earlier this year,...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - It was meant as an ode to one of the most courageous yet little-known rescue efforts of Jews during the Holocaust. But a week after its publication, a Dutch-language historical novel is at the heart of a controversy over whether the author twisted the historical record in ways that risk distorting public understanding of the genocide. Critics say "The Nursery," which is based on a daring rescue operation to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children out of Amsterdam and describes itse...
(JTA) - The constant stream of breaking news about American politics and the coronavirus pandemic has hidden a sobering fact: Six prominent Holocaust survivors who had dedicated much of their lives to educating others against hatred have died in Europe over the past month. These are their stories. Esther Cohen One of only 160 people from her native Greek city of Ioannina who survived the genocide, Cohen died there on Tuesday at the age of 96. She had escaped the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp...
(JTA) — The Council of the European Union, which is a key driver of EU policy, “invited” all the bloc’s 27 members to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that includes anti-Israel vitriol. The invitation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition came in a declaration published Wednesday by the Council, which is made up of cabinet ministers from all the bloc’s member states. “Member States that have not yet done so are invited to join the other Member States and endorse the IHRA working definition as soon as possi...
(JTA) - National Independence Day in Poland has served in recent years as a backdrop for anti-Semitic, xenophobic and violent incidents at nationalist rallies. Last week, thousands in Warsaw flouted the coronavirus ban on public gatherings and clashed with police who tried to disperse them. The illegal procession on Independence Day, Nov. 11, included a banner that read "no to Jewish demands" - a reference to the efforts pushing Poland to pass legislation offering restitution for property that o...
(JTA) — The debate on abortion access, which for years has polarized the predominantly Catholic nation of Poland, is now dividing the country’s Jews as well. A high court ruling last month severely restricting access to abortions in what was already among Europe’s least pro-choice countries has prompted a major protest movement in Poland. The backlash has taken aim squarely at the right-wing Law and Justice party, which critics say has eroded the independence of the judiciary in the pursuit of conservative policies. All but one of the 15 justi...
(JTA) - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom whose extensive writings and frequent media appearances commanded a global following among Jews and non-Jews alike, has died. Sacks died Saturday morning at age 72, his Twitter account announced. He was in the midst of a third bout of cancer, which he had announced in October. Sacks was among the world's leading exponents of Orthodox Judaism for a global audience. In his 22 years as chief rabbi, he emerged as the most...
