Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA) - The holiday of Sukkot isn't complete without a lulav and an etrog, the four species that Jews are commanded to wave on the harvest holiday. But according to a new book, it wasn't until the Second Temple period that Jews started using the lemon-like etrog as part of their Sukkot celebrations. In ancient times, people would simply use whichever fruits they had harvested in that season, such as pomegranates, grapes, dates and figs, says Rabbi David Moster, who has been researching...
(JTA) - Ebrahim Dahood Nonoo, the leader of Bahrain's tiny Jewish community, was among the Gulf country's approximately 50 Jews who thought peace with Israel would never arrive "in our lifetimes." "It just didn't seem possible," Nonoo told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Manama, the capital city where he lives with his wife. Tuesday's signing of the agreements called the Abraham Accords is expected to open up routes for collaboration, trade and travel between Bahrain and Israel, which had...
NEW YORK (JTA) - The truth is, there is no commandment in Judaism to dip an apple in honey on Rosh Hashanah. But what would the Jewish New Year be without the custom? It's a question that bedevils vegans, many of whom won't eat honey because it's an animal product. So what's a mock chopped liver/seitan brisket/vegetarian stuffed cabbage kind of Jew to do? Jeffrey Cohan, the executive director of Jewish Veg, explains all the ways that honey production is problematic. In order to produce as much h...
(JTA) — In a diplomatic breakthrough, Israel and the United Arab Emirates are normalizing ties. The deal was finalized in a phone call on Thursday, Aug. 13, between President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. In a joint statement by the United States, Israel and UAE posted by Trump on Twitter, it said that this was a “historic diplomatic breakthrough” and will “advance peace in the Middle East.” As part of a peace deal, Israel will pause its plans to...
By(JTA) — The Reform movement has received a $600,000 multi-year grant to support racial equity, inclusion and diversity work. The Union for Reform Judaism said Wednesday that it had received funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fight racism and back inclusion across its institutions. Reform is the largest Jewish denomination in the United States. The movement will work to recruit a more diverse staff and board with a focus on racial justice, a statement said, while also addressing discrimination against LGBTQ, disabled and l...
(JTA) - Bari Weiss, the Jewish opinion writer and editor who has been a lightning rod for left-wing critics, has resigned from The New York Times. The author of a much-discussed recent book on anti-Semitism, Weiss announced her resignation in a blistering letter to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger posted to her website Tuesday morning. She wrote that the newspaper had become a place where "intellectual curiosity - let alone risk-taking - is now a liability" and said she had been subjecte...
(JTA) — Many New York City restaurants are closing for good as their owners are unable to pay rent during the state’s shutdown, which has now gone on for more than eight weeks. In addition to the city’s high rents, eateries catering to observant Jews have to shoulder additional costs. Kosher products, especially meat, is pricier than nonkosher counterparts. Kosher certification can cost more than $1,000 a month and many eateries hire full-time kosher supervisors. Most kosher restaurants are also closed on Shabbat, which means they lose a cruci...
(JTA) - When she's not busy with her four kids, Ellie Balouka can usually be found in her kitchen at home in Paris, where she makes colorful salads, creative stuffed baguettes and poke bowls that have become the rave among kosher-keeping locals. The 33-year-old American-born chef has become so popular since starting a kosher catering business last year that now she's working to open her own kosher restaurant in the French capital, where she lives with her husband and kids. But earlier this...
(JTA)—On a typical day, the art center at Kohelet Yeshiva High School in suburban Philadelphia is filled with students working on a range of projects—from making ceramic bowls on the pottery wheels to creating wooden sculptures. They use the 3-D printer and laser cutter to build parts for the robotics team. But since the school went virtual more than two weeks ago, the 1,300-square-foot center has been used to make an entirely different project: face shields for medical professionals treating coronavirus patients. Since starting production las...
(JTA)-As the coronavirus continues to spread, synagogues, Jewish centers and other organizations that serve as gathering places for the community around the world have closed. But even while communities cannot come together physically, some are still organizing projects to provide support to those who are suffering or at perilous risk amid the pandemic. From phone counseling to sewing face masks to buying kosher food for Jewish doctors and nurses, there's no shortage of ways to help. Here's a li...
NEW YORK (JTA)-A hand-drawn portrait of a young man in a French internment camp. A photo of a Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust by hiding in a monastery. A letter detailing efforts to improve life for Jews in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. These are just a few of the 250 artifacts that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has collected recently through a drive launched last month-around the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-to collect Holocaust-era artifacts...
(JTA)-Larry Rothwachs, a rabbi in Teaneck, New Jersey, walked into the meeting Wednesday night between local Jewish leaders and health officials with one set of ideas about how his community should respond to the coronavirus. He walked out later that evening certain of another one: that drastically curtailing Jewish traditions and rules is essential to stem the spread of the deadly disease. "I don't think everybody was on the same page coming in. I was not on the page I am at right now,"...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The run-up to Passover is the busiest time of the year for Masbia, a nonprofit that operates three kosher soup kitchens in Brooklyn and Queens. The organization has to order all kosher-for-Passover food and scrub one of its locations' kitchens so it can prepare food without any trace of bread or other leavened products. Right before the holiday is also when most people show up to stock up on groceries-swelling from 2,000 families in a typical week to about 4,000. "Before...
MIAMI BEACH (JTA)-Palm trees line the entrance to the Cuban Hebrew Congregation, where on a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen elderly people gathered for services. Congregants greeted each other in Spanish inside the building, whose Western facade features an impressive Gaudi-esque wall with irregularly shaped stained glass windows. At the front of the sanctuary, the flag of Cuba hung from a pole beside those of Israel and the United States. Cuban Jews founded this congregation in 1961 as i...
NEW YORK (JTA)-New York City is hoping that a new ad campaign will make Jewish New Yorkers feel comfortable despite a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks. The campaign, launched Wednesday by the city's Commission on Human Rights, consists of four ads each featuring a photograph of a different Jewish New Yorker and a bold proclamation: "Jewish New Yorkers belong here. Anti-Semitism does not." Ads using text only will appear in three Orthodox publications-Hamodia, Jewish Press and Mishpacha Magaz...
(JTA)—Reactions to President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled Tuesday took a predictable path, with Jewish groups on the right praising the much-anticipated proposal and those on the left criticizing it. The proposal, which Trump presented at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would give Israel the Jordan Valley and parts of the West Bank while freezing for four years the areas that the U.S. proposes as part of a future Palestinian state. A Palestinian state would be made up of Gaza and the...
(JTA)-President Donald Trump's long-awaited peace plan has been met with plenty of skepticism since its release on Tuesday. Could Trump actually be the one to settle a decades old conflict where so many other American presidents have failed, with a plan that was devised without consulting the Palestinians? But some critics zeroed in on a much more specific aspect of the plan: the proposed high-speed railway connecting the West Bank and Gaza, the two geographically distinct territories of a...
TEANECK, N.J. (JTA)-Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump's former Middle East negotiator, made his first public speech since leaving the White House on Sunday night. Greenblatt, 52, who worked as a lawyer for Trump for two decades prior to joining the administration, spoke at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck, New Jersey, the Modern Orthodox synagogue where he is a member. The event was raising money for a new Holocaust memorial in the township, which has a significant Jewish population....
NEW YORK (JTA)-In the wake of several attacks on Jews in the New York area in recent months, seven House Democrats representing districts of New York City held a news conference to emphasize that they are committed to stamping out anti-Semitism. But in addition to discussing initiatives designed to help decrease anti-Semitic attacks, the lawmakers admitted that finding specific root causes of the recent incidents is proving difficult. Reps. Max Rose, Yvette Clarke, Eliot Engel, Hakeem Jeffries,...
(JTA)—A Board of Education member in Jersey City has sparked controversy with social media comments following the shooting last week at a kosher market there. “Where was all this faith and hope when Black homeowners were being threatened, intimidated and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the jewish community? (sic) They brazenly came on the property of Ward F Black homeowners and waved bags of money,” Joan Terrell wrote on Facebook, according to a screenshot circulating on social media. Terrell was commenting on an article about an...
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA)-President Donald Trump slammed American Jews who he said did not sufficiently "love Israel." "So many of you voted for the people in the last administration. Some day you will have to explain that to me because I don't think they like Israel too much," the president said Saturday evening at the Israeli-American Council's annual conference. More than 4,000 people gathered at the Diplomat Beach Resort here for the four-day conference, which concluded Sunday, Dec. 8, and featu...
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (JTA)—Hours after gunfire that started in a cemetery and ended in a shootout at a kosher supermarket here left six dead on Tuesday, there were more questions than answers. As of Tuesday night, the crime scene was cordoned off, keeping onlookers far from the scene. Some two dozen area residents, several reporters and many more police vehicles lingered outside the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, on the western side of Jersey City. Some of the residents took video or livestreamed the scene on Facebook. I...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of playing absurd comedic characters, from the dopey Brit Ali G to the Kazakh journalist Borat to the Israeli veteran Erran Morad. He rarely gives interviews and stays relatively far from the movie star limelight. But on Thursday, Cohen tossed aside the humorous facade to excoriate the social media industry and the "autocracy" he says it promotes in a non-ironic speech. After receiving the international leadership award from the...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On a recent Friday night, about 20 people gathered for Shabbat services at the Actors' Temple, a synagogue just a few blocks from Times Square. Rabbi Jill Hausman greeted each one by name with a kiss on the cheek and a "Good Shabbos." Some sang along and others listened as she led the small crowd in a service using a prayer book and a packet she had printed out just minutes earlier in her upstairs office. It's a far cry from the era when some of the biggest celebrities in the...
(JTA)—Time magazine is building on its list of the most influential people of the year by releasing a list of “rising stars,” or what it calls the Time 100 Next. The list features what the publication says is an increasing number of influential people who aren’t establishment types—the world leaders, CEOs of big companies and blockbuster actors that make up its Time 100 list. The new list includes a diverse range of figures, from pop star Camila Cabello to the viral rapper Lil Nas X to presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg. Among them are a few...
