Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)-"Cantor Kaufman!" Rabbi Jonah Pesner shouted across the intersection of 3rd and D in Washington's Northwest quadrant, packed sidewalk to sidewalk with women in pink pussycat hats and their male friends. "A song!" Jason Kaufman, the cantor at Beth El in Alexandria, Virginia, draped in a rainbow tallit and in the middle of telling a joke, cocked an eyebrow and pivoted gracefully from the guy hanging with his buddies at Saturday's Women's March on Washington to the religious...
(JTA)-There are plenty of paradigms in the history of humor for how Jews and non-Jews get along, or don't: as persecutors and victims, as saviors and saved, as allies against a common oppressor. All these are fraught with the tensions between the powerful and the disempowered, which makes sense: Fear drives humor. But there is a uniquely American paradigm, one devoid of fear, instead celebrating the Jew as an inextricable part of the national fabric. Its best exemplar was Mary Tyler Moore, who...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—There’s a striking difference between competing bids in Congress addressing last month’s U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. It’s not that they differ on the United Nations—the two nonbinding congressional resolutions under consideration condemn the Security Council, as well as the outgoing Obama administration for abstaining and not exercising the U.S. veto. Here’s the difference: Missing from one of the resolutions are the word “two states.” In the other resolution, the two-state outcome feature...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Barack Obama got his kishkes back. The president, whose alleged aloofness was the signature flaw cited by his rivals, his critics and at times his friends, ended his presidency with an impassioned appeal for the preservation of democracy-his lower lip trembling, a tear streaking his cheek. For sure, Obama could be emotional, heimishe even-remember his tears while speaking with the parents of the children slain in Newtown, Connecticut, or his singing of "Amazing Grace" during...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Reps. Ed Royce and Eliot Engel are that Capitol Hill rarity: a Republican and a Democrat who truly have each other's back. And nothing unites Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Engel, D-N.Y., its top Democrat, like support for Israel. Not simply Israel-Royce and Engel take their cues on the issue from the mainstream pro-Israel community, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Right now, that means...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Ahead of the unknowns a Trump administration will bring to American Middle East policy, the Obama administration allowed a bracing reminder on Friday that the international community does not recognize the validity of Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security Council vote last week was hardly unprecedented, but neither was it entirely consistent with recent U.S. policy. The Obama administration did not quite endorse...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Nearly six years ago, when President Barack Obama was set to elevate one of his top emissaries to the Jewish community to the Israel ambassadorship, Dan Shapiro asked for-and got-the endorsement of one of Obama's fiercest pro-Israel critics. "Dan has always spoken to us, patiently and carefully explaining the administration's position, and he does so with aplomb, with concern, and with intense appreciation of the other side's position," Morton Klein, the Zionist Organization of America president, said at the time. Don't expect...
President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign he wants to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. His nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has said he hopes he will work from an embassy in the city. Trump’s transition team has affirmed the intention to move the embassy, albeit without a timeline. And now, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, in a forceful speech at Tuesday night’s Chanukah party at the embassy here, encouraged Trump to make good on the pledge, saying it was long past due. Dermer last night enume...
WASHINGTON (JTA) Weird paradoxes have been packed into Chanukah observance forever. It's the holiday about killing infidels that is now celebrated as a victory of religious pluralism. It's the unofficial little Jewish holiday that a U.S. congressman once tried to turn into a major American holiday. It's the Jewish holiday with terrible songs written by Jews competing with the Christian holiday with wonderful songs, also written by Jews. Add this to the ironies: When eight or so Jewish...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-A year ago, when several dozen Washington-area Jewish and Muslim religious and lay leaders jostled for spots in a group picture, the mood was convivial. The most novel item on the agenda for that November 2015 confab was bringing in non-Middle Eastern Muslims into the Jewish-Muslim dialogue. The meeting and the venue-an Indonesian-American Muslim center in Silver Spring, Maryland-helped "dispel the myth that Muslims are inherently of Middle Eastern descent," a release said. On S...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Haim Saban, a major Democratic Party funder, said Rep. Keith Ellison's election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee would be a "disaster" for the relationship between Jews and the party, signaling a looming crisis between the party's progressives and the centrist pro-Israel community. The scathing broadside delivered Friday by the Israeli-American entertainment mogul from the floor of the annual Saban Forum, an event he funds bringing together U.S. and Israeli...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Add sweeping school reforms-and with them, funding for private schools that Orthodox groups embrace and secular Jewish groups fear-to the campaign promises that Donald Trump plans to fulfill. Last week, just before Thanksgiving, the president-elect named Betsy DeVos, a billionaire education reform activist and champion of charter schools and public funding for private schooling, as his education secretary. As leader of the American Federation for Children, a group that promotes...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry signaled in a speech that the Obama administration was still considering action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its final days, although it might fall short of a direct intervention on the issue. There's no way to "force-feed" peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Kerry said in a lengthy speech delivered Tuesday at the Women's Foreign Policy Group conference, but there are "other things we can do" to preserve a two-state...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The most shocking thing about talk of Keith Ellison's Israel record as he rises within the Democratic Party is how few think it's shocking. Rep. Ellison, D-Minn., is a leading contender for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, despite a record of tough criticism of Israel that pro-Israel insiders say would easily have disqualified him a decade ago. That he is being seriously considered now-and with the backing of the party's foremost pro-Israel stalwart,...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-In recent months, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have each emphasized what in recent years hardly needed emphasizing: mainstream Jewish support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reiterations of support signify a concern growing among Jewish organizations about deepening partisan differences on what has been since 2002 a rare area of broad political consensus in Israel and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Enforce the Iran deal. Violate the Iran deal. Leave it to Congress. Do nothing. President-elect Donald Trump has an array of options before him when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 21, according to supporters and opponents of the deal. Reached last year between Iran and six major powers led by the United States, the agreement rolled back Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The open question—as are so many questions about Trump’s intentions—is what does the next leader of the free world want to do? His p...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Offer an open hand or a closed fist-or maybe both. Name names. Don't name names, hint. Quietly adjust wording. Welcome to the second week of the World of Trump, Jewish organizational edition. Week 1 was fraught enough, with Jewish statements marking Donald Trump's surprise election ranging from the confrontational to "it's a new day" accommodation. Then President-elect Trump named Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. The appointment of Bannon, formerly the CEO of Breitbart, t...
(JTA)-Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose Jewish-infused work became a soundtrack for melancholy, has died. He was 82. "It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist Leonard Cohen has passed away," his Facebook page said late Thursday. "We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries." It did not give a cause of death but said there would be a funeral in Los Angeles in coming days. Cohen, a Montreal native born in 1934, was...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The top official of the Republican Jewish Coalition said the Anti-Defamation League had potentially compromised itself with its criticism of President-elect Donald Trump's words and actions during the campaign. The attack by the RJC on the venerated Jewish civil rights group-and an implied warning of more to come-signaled fraught times ahead for the more liberal precincts of the American Jewish community as they seek to establish ties with the nascent Trump administration....
(JTA)-Hillary Clinton has been reticent about making Iran a major issue throughout the campaign: It's a hard straddle for her between her skepticism of the nuclear deal reached last year and honoring the legacy of President Barack Obama. (Her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was a prominent backer of the deal, and in a rare tonal differentiation from Clinton, has emphasized the deal as a win.) Yet she was the first to mention Iran in the final debate on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—While the Iran nuclear deal gets fleeting attention in the presidential race, it is shaping up as a key issue in at least nine states integral to Democrats’ hopes of regaining control of the U.S. Senate. Rival pro-Israel factions are pouring money into many of those races, and candidates are using support or opposition to the controversial deal as a means of tarring their opponents. And depending on what happens in November, the election could redefine what it means to be “pro-Israel.” Democrats are seeking four to five wi...
(JTA)-Seven times during the vice presidential debate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said the deal his running mate, Hillary Clinton, worked on had helped "stop Iranian nuclear weapons." Seven times, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said no, it did not. Twice, Kaine said Israel's military "says it stopped." Both times Pence, the running mate to Republican nominee Donald Trump, disagreed. Who's right? It's a mixed bag. The jury is still out on whether the deal has stopped Iran's suspected nuclear weapons quest...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-When President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for what was likely to be the last time as leaders of their countries, the most important thing they said was "see you soon." Netanyahu's invitation to Obama to visit Israel post-presidency augured a thaw in U.S.-Israel relations, which was also seen in remarks by Israel's diplomatic corps and signals from the pro-Israel lobby. Their friendly, relaxed interaction was in marked contrast to meetings like the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-President Barack Obama's near parting gift to Israel, a guarantee of $38 billion in defense assistance over a decade, distills into a single document what he's been saying throughout eight fraught years: I have your back, but on my terms. The agreement signed Wednesday in the State Department's Treaty Room here increases assistance for Israel over the prior Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration and guaranteeing Israel $31 billion...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-A Florida state senator caught up in a boycott-Israel controversy. A Wisconsin state representative who combated anti-Israel bias on his campus. The diversity of Israel-related outlooks among the 63 candidates endorsed by Our Revolution underscores the eclecticism of the left-leaning movement launched by Bernie Sanders. The endorsed candidates represent an opening salvo by Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont to build on the progressive following he earned in his...
