Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nancy Kaufman, the former CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, said this week that she had been in touch with the Biden administration about becoming this country’s newly empowered anti-Semitism monitor. Kaufman revealed her contact in the Forward in a story about how progressive Jewish groups appear to be coalescing around her candidacy. She confirmed it on Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying that a number of people outside the administration urged her to apply for the job, so she made her int...
(JTA) - When Rayhan Asat attended a Passover seder last month, its contours seemed familiar and different at once - especially the tradition of leaving a seat empty at the table. It reminded Asat, a lawyer, of leaving a seat empty for her brother, Ekpar, at her graduation from Harvard Law School in 2016. Ekpar, a member of China's Uighur minority, had been "disappeared" by the Chinese government. Jewish World Watch, an anti-genocide group that hosted the online seder for Uighurs on March 30,...
(JTA) — Steven Spielberg is donating his Genesis Prize earnings to Jewish and non-Jewish groups working to promote racial and economic justice. The prize’s foundation on Thursday announced that the film director would double the $1 million prize with his own money and split it among 10 organizations, including Black Voters Matter and the Jews of Color Initiative. “Judaism and Jewish history begin with two narratives: Genesis and Exodus, stories about creation and liberation from oppression, about the discovery of the moral voice and of human...
(JTA) — Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman known for his firebomb rhetoric, is in big trouble — in part because of the alleged foibles of a Jewish buddy, Joel Greenberg, who has earned criticism previously from his local Jewish community. The U.S. Justice Department reportedly is investigating Gaetz’s alleged sexual relationship with a girl who was 17 years old when the affair took place about two years ago. The investigation, anonymous officials told The New York Times, stemmed from a feder...
(JTA) — There was virtual wine spilled and nostalgia for gefilte fish, as well as a serious message to consider the role of women in the bible. Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’s Jewish husband, hosted the White House’s first-ever online Passover seder on Thursday, two nights before the holiday formally begins. “We are gathered today for the first Passover celebration of the Biden Harris administration, and I’m excited to join you as the first-ever second gentleman, married to the first woman to serve as Vice President of the Unite...
(JTA) - George Segal, whose career as an actor ranged from shattering Jewish stereotypes in his youth to cheerfully indulging them in his dotage, has died at 87. The fact that early in his career Segal had to field questions about why he didn't change his name or fix his nose was a testament to how unusual it was at the time for a Jewish actor who could play a plausible tough guy and romantic lead to present as Jewish. "I didn't change my name because I don't think George Segal is an unwieldy...
(JTA) - Jessica Walter, who specialized in playing women who were both beautiful and predatory, has died. Walter died in her sleep at her home in New York, Deadline reported. She was 80. Walter was best known in recent years as Lucille Bluth, the manipulative matriarch on the TV show "Arrested Development," and voiced a similar role on the hit animated series "Archer" as the matriarch of a spy clan. The role culminated a career in which Walter, known for her impeccable comic timing and dramatic...
(JTA) - Jewish groups are rallying in support of Asian Americans following a string of murders Tuesday at massage parlors in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six Asians. Police in Georgia say the 21-year-old suspect may have been motivated by hatred of women and not anti-Asian bigotry. But in the wake of reports of rising levels of anti-Asian harassment and violence amid the coronavirus pandemic, the attack is likely to exacerbate the community's fear regardless of the alleged...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Some five years after being snubbed for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Merrick Garland is the new U.S. attorney general. In a 70-30 vote Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Garland as the country's top law enforcer. He becomes the fifth Jewish member of President Joe Biden's Cabinet. Twenty Republicans joined the Democrats in backing Garland, reflecting consensus support for the federal judge. In 2016, when former President Barack Obama tapped Garland for the Supreme...
(JTA) - When Ed Stafman was designing the signs he hoped his supporters would plant on their lawns, he debated between two: "Elect Rabbi Ed" or "Elect Ed Stafman." He settled on the version with his last name. After all, he said, "Everyone knows me as Rabbi Ed." Until the election in November, "everyone" meant the people in and around Bozeman, Montana, the thriving college town where Stafman led Congregation Beth Shalom for a decade and remains active in interfaith and social justice...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House of Representatives speaker, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel’s COVID-19 response at a time that Israel is under pressure to extend its vaccination program to Palestinians in the West Bank. “Today, I spoke with [the Israeli prime minister] to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between our nations and Congress’s unwavering support for a safe and secure Israel,” Pelosi said Wednesday on Twitter. “We discussed COVID response and our shared hope for regional peace, incl...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Four weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the “scandal” over the new U.S. leader’s failure to pick up the phone came to a quick and cheerful close. The end of the “will he call?” controversy on Wednesday was evident in Netanyahu’s grin in the photo his office sent to the media to announce the phone call, which lasted an hour. But the scrutiny of the Biden-Israel relationship is just beginning. How the two sides summarized the call was evidence of where they stand on...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly a month into his first term — a time frame that drew criticism from Republicans for its length. Biden appeared to make up for lost time, at least according to Netanyahu’s account on Twitter, and the two spoke for an hour. The conversation was “friendly and warm” Netanyahu said in Hebrew, addressing an Israeli electorate that places a high value on healthy relations with the United States. His tweet, accompanied by a photo of a grinning Netanyahu...
(JTA) — President Joe Biden, saying domestic terrorism was the “greatest threat” in America and white supremacists are the “most dangerous people,” pledged to focus his Justice Department on the rise of white supremacy. Biden, in Milwaukee on Tuesday at his first town hall as president, fielded a question from Joel Berkowitz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about what Berkowitz termed the “ongoing threat” from white supremacists in the wake of the Jan. 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol. A number of far-right groups and figures w...
(JTA) — The Democratic Majority for Israel political action committee has made an endorsement in a special congressional election in Ohio, a sign of how Israel tensions within the Democratic Party have not abated since the party’s sweeping wins in November. The PAC affiliated with the pro-Israel group announced Tuesday that it is endorsing Shontel Brown, a Cuyahoga County councilwoman who has the backing of the party’s establishment and who has cultivated the mainstream pro-Israel community. The field ahead of the May primary for the speci...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Nikki Haley has finally and decisively broken with Donald Trump in a move that puts her at the front of the potential Republican presidential pack for moderate conservatives, including pro-Israel Jews who mainly stuck with the party over the past four years because of Trump's foreign policy. After serving as his U.N. ambassador and not taking a stand for months on what his lies about election fraud would mean for his legacy, Haley made the final cut on Friday in a Politico...
(JTA) - George Shultz, the Reagan administration secretary of state who made it his mission to bring about freedom for Soviet Jewry, has died at 100. The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where Shultz has been a distinguished fellow for decades, announced his passing on Saturday. It did not give a cause. Shultz was a moderate Republican who in a number of economic Cabinet positions during the Nixon presidency advanced affirmative action as redress for discrimination. He was the rare...
(JTA) — The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously rejected an appeal by Holocaust survivors and their heirs who wanted to pursue restitution claims in the United States after failing in the countries where the art was stolen. The opinion published Wednesday, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, agreed with the defense and with the U.S. government, which joined the defense, that allowing the lawsuits to go ahead would contradict international agreements. “As a Nation, we would be surprised — and might even initiate reciprocal action — if a court...
(JTA) - What Donald Trump's lawyer likely wanted: for America to spend this evening talking about how the former president was not responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol. What he got instead: a firestorm of speculation about why he held his hand over his head every time he took a sip of water. David Schoen, one of Trump's impeachment lawyers, already asked (and then withdrew his request) for Trump's trial to pause for the Jewish day of rest. Was the fact that he covered his...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Statements and appearances by U.S. officials suggest the Biden administration's emerging Mideast strategy: reassuring Israel while resuming ties with the Palestinians ruptured by President Joe Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the acting ambassador to the United Nations outlined plans to reverse Trump administration policies concerning the Palestinians. "The Biden administration will restore credible U.S. engagement with Palestinians as well as Israelis," Richard...
(JTA) - Larry King, the iconic Jewish radio and TV interviewer who never met a subject he didn't seem to like, has died at 87. King died Saturday at a hospital in Los Angeles. His company Ora Media released the announcement and did not list a cause, but King had been hospitalized recently with the coronavirus. King often recalled - sometimes with elaborate embellishment - his roots as a poor Jewish kid in Brooklyn, where he was born Lawrence Zeiger. One of his first broadcast employers, in Miami...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Gene Scheer had a deadline looming. He was getting ready for the CD release of one of his Holocaust-related works, timed for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, one week away. But on Jan. 20, Scheer, a Jewish librettist whose works include the operas "Therese Raquin" and "Moby-Dick" and an adaptation of the Christmas classic "It's A Wonderful Life," took time out to watch Joe Biden's inauguration as president. The relief he felt as he watched Biden, who had been his...
(JTA) - Phil Spector, the massively influential rock composer and producer who murdered a woman and spent his declining years in jail, died at 81. Spector died Saturday at a hospital in French Camp, California, of COVID-19 complications, The New York Times quoted his daughter, Nicole Audrey Spector, as saying. Spector was born into a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York. His father committed suicide when Spector was 8 years old, and his mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where they settled...
(JTA) — A Moroccan institution has with official government backing signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the second such agreement in the Arab Middle East. The agreement signed Friday by El Mehdi Boudra, the president of Association Mimouna, and Elan Carr, the State Department’s envoy to combat anti-Semitism, signals the far-reaching ambition of the Trump Administration’s Abraham Accords, to normalize among Arabs the acceptance of not just Israel, but of Zionism. The Memorandum of Understa...
(JTA) — Two days after his election to the Senate helped tip the balance of power in Washington, Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff found another historical echo in his victory. In a Twitter thread, Ossoff described his trajectory from a teenage intern for John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights hero who died last year, to U.S. senator. “And now a Jewish man he mentored and a Black man who was his pastor have been elected to represent the State of Georgia in the U.S. Senate,” Ossoff said. “I know Congressman Lewis is looking down on us t...
