Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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In the summer of 2014, my 17-year-old daughter knocked on my bedroom door late one night shortly after my wife and I had gone to sleep. She asked us not to come downstairs, saying that she had just brought two guys home. This was not an announcement I ever expected, except she didn’t use the word “guys.” She said soldiers. Israel was embroiled in what became known as Operation Protective Edge which began a few weeks after the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, one of whom was our neighbors’ nephew. The seven-week-long battle saw the Isl...
The Feast of Tabernacles is how many Christians refer to Sukkot, the biblical festival we celebrated this past week. It is also a multi-day event known in shorthand as “the Feast,” organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, arguably Israel’s largest annual tourist event, drawing thousands of Christians from all over the world since 1980. As I have done for years, this year I celebrated both. But this year, all the more so, I celebrated the thousands of Christians who came to Israel to celebrate with us all the more so, in li...
Perhaps you've heard the news. Fires torching hundreds of properties. Entire households burned to the ground. Every personal belonging lost. Thousands of lives destroyed. The devastation has been unprecedented, and it will take years to rebuild that which can be rebuilt. But the personal tragedies and lives lost may never heal. If you're in the West, you may have heard about the tremendous loss in Maui, Hawaii. Wildfires have left a trail of death and destruction. As horrible as that is, that's...
Israel’s former Prime Minister, Golda Meir, once said that there would only be peace when the Arabs loved their children more than they hated ours. Unfortunately, that is still true. However, there is an early 21st century addendum made no less true by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent diatribe at the United Nations: There will only be peace when the Arabs change their narrative so theirs is not mutually exclusive to, a rejection of, and in existential conflict with ours. Conflicting narratives are one thing, but when one...
On May 15, Palestinian Arabs and their supporters commemorated what they call the “Nakba,” the catastrophe. This year, sadly, it was even commemorated in the halls of the U.S. Congress. Indeed, Palestinian Arabs have suffered many catastrophes, although what they are commemorating and what the reality is are miles apart. What are the real catastrophes we need to recognize? Despite having declared statehood, and dozens of countries recognizing if not even having diplomatic relations with the “State of Palestine,” rather than celebrating their in...
If a book were a candy store and I was a kid, "Every Generation's Story: 75 Years of American Christian Engagement with Israel" would be my kid in a candy store scenario. As I read page after page, I couldn't help but be inspired and drawn into one author's story after another, wanting more and more. As an Orthodox Jew called to build bridges between Jews and Christians, I am blessed by many, many deep friendships with Christians who love and support Israel unconditionally. Biblically. Even...
Good morning from the Judean mountains. I slept well last night but when I woke up I realized that just 30-40 miles from my home, for hundreds of thousands of Israelis it was a horrible night. Again. Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza fired over 60 rockets at Israeli communities, trying to kill, maim, and terrorize as many Israelis as possible. Despite the Iron Dome that typically shoots down 90 percent of all incoming rockets aimed at Israeli communities, some broke through and there have...
Throughout the streets of Efrat, the Judean mountain town of about 12,000 in which I live, on Sunday afternoon, thousands of people stood silently, in reverence and grief, to provide comfort. Praying. We had been asked to line the streets as the Dee family drove from their home in my neighborhood to the cemetery just a few miles away, to bury Maya (20) and Rina (15) who had been murdered in a terrorist attack two days earlier. Entire families stood silently, even with children too young to know why they were standing there. Among the thousands...
This article was sent to Heritage right before Passover but was too late to make it in one of the two papers that come out during Passover. Still, we felt it should be shared because it is so timely. There are many things that are charming about Jerusalem. Once, I read a book titled "Letters From Jerusalem 1947-1948" by a woman who lived here in the 1940s, fought during the War of Independence, and spoke about many of the challenges of living in Jerusalem at that time. One thing that struck me w...
At 9:34pm Thursday, I got a strange message from my daughter in our family WhatsApp group. “For all those who asked, I am ok and alive.” Since nobody asked, her sarcasm coupled with a little fear were evident. I had been recording a podcast and didn’t know what she was talking about. None of us did. It seems that there was another terrorist attack, this time in central Tel Aviv. I hadn’t heard. Three people were injured, one shot in the neck and as of this writing in critical condition. One terrorist was killed on the spot but there are rep...
I just returned home to Israel after an extraordinary 10-day trip in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, a massive country in central Africa. I had always wanted to visit Africa but until several months ago, Congo was not on my top 10 list, or even on my radar. I visited in the context of my work as president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, which builds bridges between Jews and Christians and Christians with Israel in ways that are new, unique, and meaningful. Most Israeli Jews like myself wh...
This week, much of the world got uptight over the visit of a Jewish man to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jordanian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders and entities referred to it as the “storming of Al-Aksa” and “violating its sanctity.” Itamar Ben-Gvir is a newly installed cabinet member of the Israeli government, however its not the first time that he’s visited the site, and it’s not the first time that a minister in Israel’s government has done so. So why all the fuss now? After reuniting Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel restor...
Last week, Jews around the world read the Torah portion about Noah (Genesis 6:9-10). Noah is fascinating. God doesn’t say he was a great guy. What happens after the ark comes to rest, after the floodwaters subside, planting a vineyard and getting drunk, is a great example. The Torah says he was righteous in his generation, which means he was better than others, deserving of being saved along with his family, and reliable enough to gather every species of animal to repopulate the world. Even though God made a covenant never to destroy the world...
This week in 1986, U.S. President Ronald Regan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met at a summit in Rekjavik, Iceland. With the nuclear threat of Vladimir Putin today, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had world leaders who could sit down and debate over a few words regarding nuclear disarmament as was done in Rekjavik, rather than brash statements in response to Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. I wasn’t in Rekjavik but made my presence felt. My issue was not nuclear weapons, but rather saving Soviet Jews. In that con...
Jonathan Feldstein was one of the first people who reported about the arrival of the five red heifers in Israel just over two weeks ago. His initial Facebook post drew hundreds of comments and was shared over 13,000 times. He also was the first to interview two of the main people behind this, Byron Stinson and Rabbi Chanan Kupietzky, an Evangelical Christian and Orthodox Jewish Rabbi respectively. American Airlines flight 146 touched down at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on time, arriving from New York’s JFK airport as one of the dozens of fli...
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. As far as I know that’s not a Jewish adage, but is one that’s accurate and which the publisher of “The Jewish Book of Knowledge” learned and understood well. When I opened the book, my first thought was “stunning.” Everything about it screams high quality from the paper, the pictures, the charts, the cover, and even the binding. Yes, I checked. But before cracking the book itself, first I had to get to it. It comes as a beautiful p...
News this week in Israel included the death of two Arab journalists, in different locations, under different circumstances, and unrelated. But the circumstances, accusations, and double standards are glaring and need to be discussed. This week, months after Palestinian Arab-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed in Jenin, following a lengthy investigation, Israel has affirmed that she was likely killed by an Israeli bullet. Other than her unfortunate death, the problem with this is that before the blood had dried, before...
(JNS) — Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once famously said, “When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we’ll be a state just like any other.” Ben-Gurion’s vision of Zionism was to “normalize” the Jews. His “normal” meant having a country with a Jewish flavor that is still a state like any other, with all the vices inherent therein. This was a great aspiration at the time given the urgency of restoring the Jewish people to sovereignty in the Land of Israel. However, it would have been nice if Ben-Gurion had referred to other s...
I can’t count the number of pastors who had confided in me about issues relating to modesty in their churches. Many will tell me how distraught they are when they see their members out at the mall or in some other setting, dressed in ways that would never correspond to the religious values they espouse. Some of them even tell me that this is an uphill battle in their own churches. Most confide in me as a friend, and as an Orthodox Jew aware that Jewish tradition places a high value on modesty. I am also “safe” to have these conversations with...
I'm relaxing on the beach in Tel Aviv reading a book that I've been enjoying. More than enjoying, it's an important piece of our history as a people, specifically related to the struggle to free the Jews of the Soviet Union of which I was active in my teens and early adulthood, and which is so important to remember. "Hijack for Freedom" is the memoir of Mark Dymshits (Gefen Publishing). Unlike other memoirs written to be a book, Dymshits' writing was only discovered after he died, and only then...
Speaking to students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a foolish, unnecessary, and strategic mistake of opening an antisemitic battle as another front distracting from his very real war against Russia. Though Zelensky himself is Jewish, doing so he continues the antisemitic tradition that has marred Jewish life in Ukraine for generations. This is not Zelensky’s first time calling out Israel for not doing enough to help Ukraine in their war with Russia. By singling out Israel to standards b...
The United States was founded by deeply religious Christians, and its tradition is rooted in what’s known as Judeo-Christian values. Other countries also are founded on, and embrace, biblical values as well. It should go without saying that Israel, as the Jewish state, was re-established on biblical Jewish tradition that is played out in almost every aspect of Israeli society. When soldiers are inducted into the IDF they are given a Bible. Shabbat is not just the cornerstone of the weekend, it’s a weekly affirmation of God’s creation and the n...
My wife and I, and five of our children, had a discussion over Shabbat dinner recently about giving up our U.S. citizenship. Five of my six children were born in the U.S. On my father’s side, I’m a second generation American. On my mother’s side, fourth or fifth. When we moved to Israel, our children’s ages ranged from 11 to 3. A year later our youngest son was born in Jerusalem. He’s an American because we are. Some are surprised to know that we choose to keep our U.S. citizenship or that we’re even allowed to. Others ask why we’d want t...
Earlier this month I was watching a U.S. report about the war in Ukraine, which I have been following with a degree of obsessiveness. It’s hard to imagine that an unprovoked war is happening at all, much less destroying entire communities. The human tragedy is underscored with more than five million, over 10 percent of Ukrainians, having fled their country. Because I am Jewish and Israeli, I tend to look at this through a Jewish/Israeli prism. This relates to common experiences of war, which Ukrainians are suffering and which Israel has s...
If there was ever proof that Israel is not an apartheid state actively discriminating against its Arab minority, all one needs to do is look at the recent statement of Israeli Arab Knesset member Ayman Odeh. Not only does this reflect the reality that Israeli Arabs are equal parts of Israel’s democracy, that he can make statements that go against the interest and security of the state shows what a hyper-democracy Israel in fact is. As all this has unfolded, the thought I cannot shake is how much Israel’s Arabs deserve better. Odeh used the occ...
