Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - As the French government rolls out a controversial plan that amounts to its most robust crackdown on religious activity in decades, it is enjoying broad support from at least one of the country's faith communities: French Jews. Jewish community leaders have applauded President Emmanuel Macron's effort to counter what he calls "Islamist separatism" with a plan that would require children to attend state-recognized schools from the age of three, effectively barring the practice of Muslim...
(JTA) — Following a suspected terrorist attack that left four dead in Vienna by a shooter who reportedly shouted “Allah,” European rabbis made an unusual appeal for more “control and transparency” over what goes on at mosques across the continent. “It is important to know what is being preached in mosques and other places of worship over here, by whom they are financed, what foreign influences are promoting such terrible deeds and how social media serve as a vehicle for this,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of...
(JTA) — Islamists have declared war on France, a senior leader of French Jews said following multiple assaults, including the murder of three people at a church in Nice. Gil Taieb, the vice president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, made the comments Thursday in reference to the beheading of one woman and the fatal stabbing of two others outside the Notre Dame church of the Mediterranean coastal city. The perpetrator was shouting “Allah hu akbar” — Arabic for Allah is the greatest — before he was shot and rushed to...
(JTA) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of Europe's most prominent nationalist and anti-immigrant leaders, has often faced accusations that he is too soft on far-right anti-Semitism. But now, in an unusual reversal, Orban is trying to level that same accusation at the country's largest Jewish group, Mazsihisz. Orban recently criticized Mazsihisz, a nonpartisan federation of Jewish communities and groups, for not speaking out loudly enough against the candidacy of Laszlo Biro, a...
(JTA) — French Jewish groups have called on their supporters to join a rally Sunday in memory of the schoolteacher murdered Friday after facing criticism for showing caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to his students. The rally in memory of Samuel Paty, who was decapitated outside the school where he worked by an 18-year-old refugee from Chechnya who appeared to have been motivated by videos on social media, is focused on safeguarding freedom of expression. But the Jewish groups say it should also call attention to the threat of I...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Jews’ share of the population of Europe is as low now as it was 1,000 years ago and is declining even further, according to a landmark new demographic study. The study published Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research found 1.3 million people who describe themselves as Jewish in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Russia. That figure has declined by nearly 60 percent since 1970, when there were 3.2 million Jews in the same area, wrote the report’s authors, Daniel Staetsky and Sergi...
(JTA) — A synagogue has opened for the first time in Obninsk, a city near Moscow that was built in 1945 to accommodate the staff of the world’s first nuclear power plant. Around 400 Jews, including some from Moscow seeking to move out of the city, make up the city’s Jewish population, according to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia. The nuclear plant had many Jewish employees and some of their families stayed in the Obninsk area. Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar attended the opening of the synagogue on Thursday. “Or goal is not onl...
(JTA) - As a British resident born in Dubai to a Palestinian father and Lebanese mother, Heba Nabil Iskandarani had plenty of potential national identities. What she lacked, however, was a passport. A 26-year-old lecturer in architecture at Birmingham City University, Iskandarani has been stateless for most of her life, possessing only a Lebanese travel document that defines her as a Palestinian refugee. But after discovering that her Palestinian father had Jewish roots going back to Spain,...
(JTA) - For Flori Dedoni, a member of the tiny Jewish community of Kosovo, the news that his country is establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel is cause for celebration. Until last week, Israel was among the dozens of countries that had not recognized the Muslim-majority territory sandwiched between Albania and Serbia. "When someone learns I'm Jewish, they usually ask sometime during the conversation why Israel doesn't recognize us," Dedoni said. "Now, finally it's happening and the...
(JTA) - On the border of Belarus and Ukraine, Avremi Vitman tried to shake off the morning chill as he prayed earlier this week. Vitman was hungry and uncomfortable after yet another night sleeping in his coat, two weeks after arriving in Belarus en route, he hoped, to Uman, the Ukrainian city that is the site of an annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage for followers of Rabbi Nachman, founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement. "Nights are cold here, we sleep in our coats," Vitman told the Jewish...
(JTA) - If you're looking for a good investment, you should put your money on Ukraine – especially if you're Jewish. That's the message from the office of the country's Jewish president, Vlodymyr Zelensky, about a new campaign that aims to attract new investments to help grow Ukraine's stunted economy. The first video of the campaign, featuring Zelensky speaking in English with a heavy Ukrainian accent, does not mentions Jews. The one-minute film focuses on Ukraine's touristic potential and 5 p...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Under normal circumstances, the queue to enter the Anne Frank House stretches far along this capital city’s Prinsengracht canal. Tourists who had booked their visit at least two months in advance – the only way to guarantee entry — line up at assigned time slots to see the former hiding place of the world’s most famous Holocaust victim. They wait for 15 minutes and, barring delays, enter in one large group the cramped space where Frank penned the diaries that years after her de...
(JTA) — Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, will be recognized with a monument at a site in Lisbon that recognizes the country’s greatest figures. The parliament decreed the honor unanimously earlier this month at the National Assembly in Portugal’s capital. The monument will go in the National Pantheon, a former church. “Aristides Sousa Mendes, as a heroic historical figure, is part of Portugal’s national patrimony,” the resolution reads. “A moral legacy for all, his heritage is f...
(JTA) - Last week, thousands of Jews in Israel and beyond responded to a plea for help in identifying a couple pictured in a yellowing photograph from 1955. "Everyone, I need help. I found this picture on a Tel Aviv street," Ariel Plavnik, a 43-year-old tourism salesperson from Kfar Saba, Israel, wrote in Hebrew and Spanish in a Facebook post with the photograph. "I want to return this old, beautiful photograph. If you share it, maybe we can find the owners! Thanks to all." More than 7,000...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - For the Amsterdam Jewish Historical Museum, Chanukah this year entailed the stressful chore of assembling the world's most expensive menorah. Last week, the Rintel Menorah, a 266-year-old menorah valued at over a half-million dollars, was put back on display at Amsterdam's Jewish Historical Museum following the restoration of its wooden base, which was lost during the Holocaust. Built in 1753, the menorah is a relic from the golden age of a community that was nearly...
(JTA) — The World Council of Churches is asking European diplomats to punish Israel with sanctions if it annexes West Bank lands. The request has triggered a heated debate in Christian circles. The call to punish Israel came last month in a letter to EU foreign ministers from the Geneva headquarters of the council, an umbrella body established in 1948 that now has 350 member churches with about 500,000 followers among them. The Catholic Church is not a member. If Israel annexes land, the letter said, “the EU must surely suspend the EU-...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)—In his native Germany and beyond, Hans Calmeyer is celebrated as a hero who saved more Jews from the Holocaust than Oskar Schindler. As a jurist for the Nazi German forces in the Netherlands, Calmeyer was put in charge of a small team that evaluated pleas by people who tried to save themselves by disputing their classification as Jews. According to Israel’s national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, Calmeyer’s actions in his post, which involved accepting many of these pleas—some were quite flimsy—saved at least 3,000 people. I...
(JTA)-Elisha Nochomovitz, a 32-year-old French Jew, was to be among the 17,000 participants in the Barcelona Marathon on March 15. But the marathon, one of Europe's most popular running events, was postponed to October because of the coronavirus outbreak. Still, Nochomovitz found a way to do what he had been training for despite being forced to spend the past month confined to his apartment in Balma, near Toulouse, under lockdown. (He had worked at a restaurant in Toulouse, but that was shut dow...
(JTA)-Poland's ruling party took a stand on Wednesday against a far-right push to stop the restitution of property owned by Jews and others before the Holocaust. Far-right activists had gathered enough signatures to present a draft resolution to the Sejm, the lower house of Polish parliament, that would prohibit the redistribution of "heirless property"- property that belonged to private individuals, many of them Jews, who were killed in the Holocaust and whose heirs, if they exist, never filed...
(JTA)—A British lawmaker who has said that he supports Zionism will replace Jeremy Corbyn as the head of Britain’s Labour Party. Keir Starmer, who managed the party’s Brexit approach under Corbyn, won 52 percent of the vote in the Labour leadership election, whose results were announced Saturday. His share of the votes was almost double that of the runner-up, Rebecca Long-Bailey, a close ally of Corbyn. In his victory speech Saturday, Starmer apologized for how the party has handled anti-Semitism within its ranks and committed to making chang...
(JTA)—There are about 250,000 Jews in the United Kingdom. They account for only 0.3 percent of its population. But the coronavirus has killed 44 known Jewish victims so far—about 2.5 percent of the total U.K. tally. That means British Jews are overrepresented by a factor of eight in their country’s death toll from COVID-19. The statistics are compiled, released and updated periodically by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella group representing British Jewry. The stats are unique because they are the first centralized attem...
(JTA)-A second carnival in Spain has referenced the Holocaust with Nazi and concentration camp prisoner uniform costumes. The theme was "the same." The Holocaust-themed display at the Feb. 23 event in Badajos occurred amid debate on the appropriateness of festive parades apparently making light of the murder of millions of Jews and Romanis by the Nazis. That was spurred by processions the same week in Belgium and in Campo de Criptana, a town about 80 miles south of Madrid. In Badajos, which is...
(JTA)—The owner of a toy shop near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport infected his wife with the coronavirus, bringing the number of known cases in that country to three. The man, who was not named, spent about 30 hours at the Red Pirate costume shop at the height of costume sales for the holiday of Purim in Yehuda, a suburb of Tel Aviv that borders on the airport’s perimeter fence, The Marker reported Friday. He also attended services at the synagogue of Irus, a town near Rehovot. The man, who earlier this week became the first Israeli diagn...
(JTA)-Like many parents when their small children are a bit under the weather, Ofer Dekel measures his boy's temperature frequently. But in Dekel's case, his concern for his son Liam is exacerbated by living at the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic: Wuhan, China. Dekel, a 56-year-old businessman originally from Haifa, Israel, has lived in Wuhan for many years with his Chinese wife, Nana, who is the mother of his two youngest children, both of whom are under 10. Authorities have placed the...
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA)-As an Orthodox Jew, Aryeh Rov had little interest in this port city's rich and vibrant bar scene. For one thing, most drinks served in Odessa's bars are not kosher, limiting his choice to a handful of certified brands. He also usually doesn't feel "at ease" at a bar. "A person wearing a kippah just stands out in places like that. Certainly an Orthodox Jewish couple," said Rov, who is 40 and married. But that changed in August, when Rov attended the opening of Kosher Bar,...
