Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Richard Belzer wasn’t just a hard-boiled Jew who rose from a troubled childhood to the top of his field — he played one on TV. Belzer, who died Sunday at 78, was a familiar face because of his longstanding roles on “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Law and Order: SVU” and other TV shows. In each of those series, he played a presumptively Jewish detective named John Munch whose biography overlapped significantly with Belzer’s own. Belzer was born in 1944 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had what he described as a difficult child...
(JTA) — The Israeli minister responsible for relations with Jews in the Diaspora has a message for the government of the country where most of them live: “Mind your own business.” Amichai Chikli made the comment Sunday in a radio interview in Israel, where he was asked to address recent comments by U.S. ambassador Tom Nides, who said he was urging Israeli leaders to “pump the brakes” on their controversial effort to change the country’s judiciary. Nides was echoing sentiments expressed by U.S. President Joe Biden about the judicial reform prop...
(JTA) — One of the Israeli teams dispatched to Turkey to assist after the devastating earthquakes there has headed home after being informed about a “concrete and immediate threat” against them. United Hatzalah told its team of roughly two dozen personnel in Turkey to end their rescue mission and leave the country, the emergency services organization announced early Sunday. Because of a shortage of available planes to evacuate them, the philanthropist Miriam Adelson donated her private jet to facilitate the evacuation, the group said. “We k...
(JTA) — A New Jersey synagogue is crediting recent safety improvements after a Molotov cocktail thrown at its door overnight caused little damage. Still, Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield canceled activities on Sunday as the police investigated, marking the second time in recent months that the suburban congregation suspended activities because of an antisemitic incident. Last November, the Reform synagogue of about 500 families near New York City briefly closed its doors while the FBI investigated a “credible threat” against New Jersey synag...
(JTA) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff extended his focus on Holocaust remembrance by inviting a Washington, D.C.-area survivor to be his guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. Ruth Cohen, who survived multiple concentration camps including Auschwitz, joined Emhoff at the annual policy address in Washington. Emhoff first met Cohen last year before International Holocaust Remembrance Day with his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a press release from the White House. This year, Emhoff spent Int...
(JTA) — A prize established to honor a single inspiring Jew with a lifetime of achievements has been awarded this year to a nameless group whose work is ongoing: Jewish activists in war-ravaged Ukraine. The Genesis Prize Foundation said the war in Ukraine required a change in the approach it has taken since creating the prize, known by some as the “Jewish Nobel,” a decade ago. “Recognizing the extraordinary nature of events dominating the past 11 months, The Genesis Prize Selection Committee has decided to depart from the usual custom of awar...
(JTA) — In 1923 in New York, a Yiddish play that featured the first lesbian scene on a Broadway stage was censored for being indecent. In 2023 in Florida, a play about the first play has been canceled for the same reason. For many involved in the new play, including its Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish playwright and the Florida high schooler cast in a lead role, the déjà vu is alarming. “The 100-year anniversary of Sholem Asch’s ‘God of Vengeance’ being shut down on Broadway is the same week that our production of ‘Indecent’ would have open...
(JTA) — George Santos’ first Chanukah party with the Republican Jewish Coalition was his last. The group said it will not host Santos at any future events after the congressman-elect lied to RJC officials and to the public about being Jewish and the descendant of people who escaped the Holocaust. Santos participated in an event with the group on the first night of Chanukah, Dec. 18, where he was feted as one of two incoming Jewish Republicans in Congress; he had been elected in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The next day, the New York...
(JTA) — Yes, Lionel Messi will forever be the face of Argentina’s long-awaited World Cup championship on Sunday. But the voice of the victory belongs to the Argentinean Jewish sportscaster who cried as he announced the win. Andres Cantor, a prominent soccer announcer, responded to Argentina’s game-winning penalty shot with his signature elongated “Gooooooool!” In a video clip that has gone viral, Cantor can be seen grabbing onto his broadcast partner as he yells “Argentina, campeon de mundo!...
(JTA) - Michelle Williams is one of the only non-Jewish actors with a starring role in "The Fabelmans," director Steven Spielberg's autobiographical film based on his Jewish family. But it turns out that Williams, who plays the Spielberg character's mother, has a Jewish family of her own. She told the Wall Street Journal that she and her Jewish husband, director Thomas Kail, are raising their two young children with Judaism and that she is studying the religion herself. "I can't teach it to...
(JTA) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, the right-wing Israeli politician called a “pyromaniac” by his critics because of his penchant for inflaming his country’s deep tensions, will head Israel’s police forces, under the terms of a deal inked with Benjamin Netanyahu early Friday. The deal would expand the ministry of internal security, the old name of the cabinet position in charge of the police, into the ministry of national security and would also give Ben-Gvir authority over border police in Palestinian territories, according to the terms reported...
(JTA) - Two bombs rocked bus stops at crowded entrances to Jerusalem early Wednesday morning, killing a teenager and sending about 20 people to the hospital, some in serious condition. The fatality was a 16-year-old yeshiva student named Aryeh Shtsupak from Har Nof, a largely Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. He may have held Canadian and American citizenship, according to local media reports. The attacks represented the first time in years that terrorists used bombs in a deadly assault...
(JTA) — It was unseasonably cold on Sunday morning when thousands of rabbis crowded on risers in front of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn to snap a photograph. The group photo is a signature moment during any gathering of the Orthodox movement, allowing the movement to create a visual record of its growth: Unique among Hasidic movements, Chabad is known for sending rabbis and their wives to far-flung locations around the globe to minister to local Jews, regardless of denomination or beliefs. (A picture taken at a smaller gathering o...
(JTA) — The Orthodox Union has endorsed federal legislation that would enshrine the right to same-sex marriage, marking a reversal of its previous positions. When more than 100 Jewish groups endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act this summer, the OU, an umbrella group representing Modern Orthodox synagogues, was not among them. The group had previously sat on the sidelines as well when the U.S. Supreme Court weighed Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, in which the court ruled that same-sex marriage was protected under the Constitution. But things c...
(JTA) — Students at one of Chicago’s most selective public high schools are calling for improved Holocaust education after a classmate goose-stepped across the stage of a Halloween costume contest while wearing a German military uniform. The principal of Jones College Prep, which draws high-performing students from across Chicago, has already been suspended over his handling of the incident, which he initially downplayed. The Chicago school district has launched an investigation into whether the school followed “protocols for processing bias-ba...
(JTA) — Since Feb. 24, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Jewish groups from around the world have flooded the country with support, from food to medical care to evacuations. Now, as temperatures fall and Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid ramp up, those groups are directing their efforts toward making sure that Ukrainian Jews can remain warm and safe in the coming months. A Ukraine response group organized by the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, whose rabbis are the Jewish leaders in many Ukrainian cities, is raising funds to buy...
(JTA) — Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving is defending his decision to promote a movie that argues that Jews were responsible for the transatlantic slave trade, despite criticism from his team’s owner. “I’m disappointed that Kyrie appears to support a film based on a book full of anti-semitic disinformation,” Nets owner Joe Tsai tweeted on Friday, shortly after Irving tweeted a link to the Amazon listing for a 2018 film called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” The film is based on an earlier book by the same name advancing the oft-rep...
(JTA) — As Kanye West extended his antisemitic spree by tweeting about Jewish agents in Hollywood, the rocker John Mellencamp took the stage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and said this about his longtime lawyer: “Allen is Jewish.” The line began an impassioned speech about the importance of non-Jews standing up for Jewish people at a time of antisemitism and anxiety for many of them, especially as white supremacists have taken up West’s comments as a rallying cry. Mellencamp was speaking on behalf of Allen Grubman, a prominent music i...
(JTA) — The athletic wear company Adidas is ending its relationship with Kanye West, days after the rapper boasted that he could “literally say antisemitics — and they cannot drop me.” The brand had faced growing criticism of its continued relationship with West, who is known as Ye, as other brands affiliated with West broke ties with him. Adidas reportedly brings in $2 billion a year through its Yeezy brand, accounting for about 10 percent of the company’s revenue. Now, the brand will stop making Yeezy products and stop all payments to West a...
(JTA) — Australia’s new left-leaning government is reversing the decision made nearly four years ago under a conservative administration to move the country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced in December 2018 that Australia would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The move put him in line with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who had made a similar announcement a year earlier, pleasing his base, and had already opened an embassy in Jerusalem. But it made Morrison an outlier among the vast ma...
(JTA) — Since March, Rabbi Daniel Litvak has been required to appear three times a week at the magistrate’s office in Porto, the Portuguese city where he is accused of submitting fraudulent citizenship applications for Sephardic Jews. His passports were confiscated and he was barred from contacting the lawyer who is the other defendant in the criminal case against him. Now, an appeals court in Lisbon has ruled that Litvak does not need to abide by the stringent restrictions. The court also criticized Portuguese prosecutors for how they hav...
(JTA) — An Israeli soldier very likely fired the gunshot that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May, an analysis released by the Israel Defense Forces Monday concluded. But no one present during the killing, including the soldier considered likely to have fired the fatal shot, will be punished, military officials said, and the army released a statement saying it was still possible that Abu Akleh had been killed by Palestinian gunfire. The official conclusion marked a shift from the Israeli government’s previous pos...
(JTA) — Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen, a symbol of the country’s left, announced during a recent concert in the West Bank that he regretted his past criticism of settlers living there — whom he had long denounced as obstacles to peace. “It’s very moving to be here. I went through a personal journey that was not simple and not short and I understand that me and my brothers — you — were made to separate for any number of reasons including my ignorance, which came from a desire to please part of my audience,” Geffen said during a concert Aug. 24...
(JTA) — Hundreds of Jews from around the world have traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to mark the 125th anniversary of a historic gathering of Zionists there. The event was organized by the World Zionist Organization, a group inaugurated during the First Zionist Congress that Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern Zionism, convened in Basel in 1897. At the 1897 congress, 200 participants from 17 countries voted to adopt as an explicit goal the creation of “a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine” for Jews. “At Basel, I founded...
(JTA) — On Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life,” both Julia Haart and her older daughter Batsheva said they regretted getting married as teenagers, the norm in their Orthodox Jewish community. So when the family landed a spot on “Celebrity Family Feud,” the star-studded version of the classic TV game show, they said anything they won would go to a group dedicated to opposing child marriage. On the episode that aired Sunday night, the Haarts prevailed over a set of personalities from the Bravo reality-TV show “Summer House” and sent $25,000 to VOW...
