Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(JTA) — When Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister, failed to meet his own deadline to announce a plan to annex portions of the West Bank during the summer of 2020, it wasn’t just his usual critics and advocates for the prompt creation of a Palestinian state who breathed a sigh of relief. The missed deadline was also a relief to insiders at the Trump White House, who knew that annexation would derail their ambitious effort to make peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, the very afternoon of the annexation deadlin...
(JTA) — The Democratic primary next week in Michigan’s 11th District could end a four-decade Jewish political dynasty — and spending by the country’s biggest pro-Israel lobby is playing a significant role. Because of redistricting, the race pits two incumbent Democrats against each other: Rep. Andy Levin, a Jewish Democrat who favors conditioning aid to Israel and counts some of Congress’s most outspoken Israel critics as his friends, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a non-Jewish centrist whose Israel commitments lie mainly in assuring its military...
(JTA) — Yair Lapid might only be Israel’s interim prime minister, but he appears to be determined to maximize the position in the four months he is guaranteed to occupy it. In a speech delivered Saturday night, Lapid laid out a set of beliefs that he said bind Israelis of all ideologies, as well as his diagnosis for why widespread agreement on fundamental ideas hasn’t translated into political harmony. “The answer is politics,” he said in the speech, published in English by the Times of Israel and in adapted form in Hebrew by Lapid on Twitte...
(JTA) - Vladimir Zelenko, the doctor from an Orthodox enclave near New York City who rose to fame early in the COVID-19 pandemic for promoting a drug cocktail, has died of cancer at 48. The foundation that Zelenko launched to advance his theories after he left his family medical practice amid controversy in May 2020 announced his death on Thursday, saying that it would accept donations to continue his work, which included opposition to COVID-19 vaccines. Zelenko, who went by Zev, was born in...
(JTA) — Israelis seeking to end pregnancies will no longer be required to appear before an approval committee, go to a hospital for medication or be asked invasive questions about why they want an abortion. A Knesset committee approved the new regulations on Monday, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade precedent guaranteeing Americans the right to abortion. The regulations fall short of the full abolition of the hospital-based approval committees that Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz had said h...
(JTA) — In the summer of 2020, Gabe Kapler, then in his first season as manager of the San Francisco Giants, joined figures across sports in taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Now, two years later, Kapler has announced that he will not take the field at all for the anthem out of broad dismay over the United States’ direction, spurred by the mass murder of 19 children at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. “When I was the same age as the children in Uvalde, my father taught me to stand for the pledge of al...
(JTA) — The Jewish Telegraphic Agency and our partner sites at 70 Faces Media have answered the question many times over the years, a testament to its persistence in political life and its significance to American Jews: What do Jews believe about abortion? After a new report that the Supreme Court reviewed a majority opinion in February that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the question is relevant yet again. Here’s what we know: American Jews favor abortion rights, more than any other religious group, according to public polling. And tra...
(JTA) - Let's get one thing out of the way: Elon Musk is not Jewish. But his acquisition of Twitter comes amid longstanding problems with antisemitism and hate speech on the platform - and Jewish users fear his free-speech orientation could make things worse. Musk's purchase of the social media company, for a reported $44 billion, will likely take months to complete and could be derailed in any number of ways. And while the serial entrepreneur is known for acting quickly and decisively - sometim...
(JTA) — When Season 2 of “Russian Doll,” Natasha Lyonne’s sci-fi exploration of identity and trauma, dropped on Netflix Friday, it immediately became clear that teasers of the season’s Jewish content were not overblown. In the season, which features New York City subway-induced time travel, Lyonne’s character zips back to 1982, the year of her birth; 1968 New York City; and 1944, when her grandmother was being pursued by Nazis in her native Budapest. In every timeline, she witnesses how layers of Jewish trauma forged the family in which she e...
(JTA) - Of all the issues facing Israel - violence within the country, how to handle Russia's war on Ukraine, Iran - the one that appears to have put the country's delicate governing coalition at risk could appear picayune. When Idit Silman, a member of Knesset from the right-wing Yamina party, surprised government leaders and even her party by resigning Wednesday, she said she was doing so over hospital food. Her decision vaults issues of religious freedom and Israel's Jewish character to the...
(JTA) - The most prominent Jewish figure in Ukraine right now is the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The runner-up may well be another country's famous Jewish leader. Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel and a native of Kyiv whose family fled amid antisemitic violence, has loomed large ever since Russia launched its war on Ukraine late last month. Her words have appeared in pro-Ukrainian memes, been quoted by Ukrainian diplomats and even been pulled from the backpack of a...
(JTA) - The morning after Russian bombs fell at the site of a 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the world's Jews to speak out about what is happening in his country. Russia's attack adjacent to Babyn Yar, the Kyiv site where Nazis and local collaborators executed tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, along with its bombing several days ago of Uman, the Ukrainian city where hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims visit each year,...
(JTA) — The world has had a crash course on Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days, as the Ukrainian president has galvanized his country against an unprovoked attack by neighboring Russia. The broad strokes of Zelensky’s career have long been known to those who pay attention to Ukrainian politics — or to their spillover effects in American government. He’s young, funny, Jewish and committed to a strong democratic Ukraine, even at the risk of death. “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he reportedly told American authorities this week after they offere...
(JTA) — The morning after Russian bombs fell at the site of a 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the world’s Jews to speak out about what is happening in his country. Russia’s attack adjacent to Babyn Yar, the Kyiv site where Nazis and local collaborators executed tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, along with its bombing several days ago of Uman, the Ukrainian city where hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims visit each year, repre...
(JTA) — One week ago, Jews outside of Ukraine knew Volodymyr Zelensky as the world leader on the other end of the “perfect phone call” that resulted in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. But now, after days of watching Zelensky balance humor and gravitas while rallying his fellow Ukrainians to rebuff the Russian army invasion, they know him as a contemporary Jewish hero. “Zelensky gives modern Maccabee energy,” Peter Fox, a writer, wrote on Twitter. Fox was referring to the ancient Jews who, though outflanked in every way, fended of...
(JTA) - Felice Jacobs and Alan Feldstein could have tied the knot in Phoenix, where they met and where his mother worked at the local Reform synagogue. Or they could have held their wedding on the U.S. Army base in Austria where Alan was stationed at the time. Instead, they chose the Eagle's Nest, the Nazis' former mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps - a location that, as far as anyone knew, had never before hosted a Jewish wedding. "We got married there because my husband wanted to thumb his...
(JTA) - Spoiler alert: This story contains details from "Seeing the Light," the season finale of HBO's "And Just Like That," which first aired Feb. 3, 2022. The previews for the season finale of "And Just Like That," the "Sex and the City" reboot airing on HBO, suggested that viewers would get to see a "they mitzvah." And for most of the episode, which began streaming Thursday, that's exactly what seemed like was happening. Charlotte (Kristin Davis), who converted to Judaism in the original...
(JTA) — Emma Saltzberg knew she might invite criticism by competing on “Jeopardy!” From her years of experience in progressive Jewish groups, including IfNotNow, a group founded in 2014 to galvanize American Jews to oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, she knew that her appearance on one of the most popular TV shows in the United States would likely generate negative comments from those who believe criticizing the occupation is antisemitic. So when those comments started to appear on social media, especially after IfNotNo...
