Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - Despite the continuing COVID chaos and the mounting protests about China's human rights record, the 2022 Beijing Olympics are proceeding on schedule, just six months after the delayed Tokyo games - and we have your guide to the Jewish athletes who are on their way. In Tokyo, dozens of Jewish athletes competed, and many clinched medals. The Winter Olympics are typically a smaller affair, with fewer sports and fewer countries participating. Nevertheless, we're excited to cheer on these...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Stephen Breyer, the oldest justice on the Supreme Court and one of its minority of three liberal justices, is set to retire, multiple reports said Wednesday. The move would leave Elena Kagan as the only Jewish justice left on the court. Breyer, 83, has come under pressure to retire ever since President Joe Biden assumed office a year ago. Liberals and Democrats do not want to deny Biden the chance to replace a liberal justice with another liberal. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,...
Israeli government officials have begun laying the groundwork for the possible evacuation of Ukrainian Jews as fears of a Russian invasion continue to rise, Haaretz reported. According to the report, representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office, the foreign, defense, diaspora affairs and transportation ministries, the National Security Council and the Jewish Agency gathered on Sunday to discuss the threat level faced by Ukraine’s Jewish communities. They were also joined by officials from Nativ, an organization that maintains ties between I...
Rachel B., a 37-year-old Jewish mother of four, endured years of emotional and physical abuse from her husband. She hoped that ending her marriage was the answer but was afraid of the unknown. She knew that she needed a Jewish divorce, a GET — but she didn’t know her legal rights to obtain a Divorce - could her husband take the kids away from her, how would she support herself, would she be able to re-marry one day, should she proceed through the civil courts or a Beis Din (Jewish court of law) first? In Rachel’s close-knit Jewish community, th...
On Tuesday, Feb. 8th at 6:30 p.m., Eric Ross, senior associate director of the Anti Defamation League’s southern division will be speaking at the Rosen JCC, located at 11184 Apopka-Vineland Rd., Orlando. Today’s ADL is not like it was in the past. It suppresses information on Muslim antisemitism, convenes speakers who defame Israel, refuses to expose antisemites like Farrakhan, and is a proponent of Critical Race Theory. Most Jews today hold the ADL in high esteem as they rely on its good name earned in years passed. Since many Jews are una...
Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando is proud to announce that the 2022 Kobrin Family Scholarship application is now available. This college scholarship is awarded to a qualified, full-time, graduating high school student in the Jewish communities of Orange, Osceola or Seminole County who will be attending the University of Central Florida. The scholarship is available in the amount of $2,500 per year for a maximum of four (4) years. To learn more and apply, visit www.jf...
(JNS) — Jewish groups in California took out a full-page ad in a local newspaper on Wednesday to voice their displeasure and concern with a school-board decision to engage an ethnic-studies curriculum for high school and middle-school students that they say will lead to hostility towards Israel and Jewish students. Appearing in the Castro Valley Forum, the ad reads, in part: “The Castro Valley Unified School District claims it is committed to ensuring the inclusion and belonging of all students and families with its tagline ‘All Means All....
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry has announced plans to allocate approximately 10 million shekels ($3.2 million) to the preservation, rehabilitation, and rescue of heritage sites in Judea and Samaria. Dozens of heritage and archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley have been damaged in recent years by authorities in Ramallah as well as antiquities thieves in the Palestinian territories. Last month, Israel Hayom reported that thieves had caused significant damage to an ancient Roman a...
(JNS) — The multinational firm Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Tuesday that in the wake of severe losses, it will fire 1,500 workers around the world and split off its ice-cream division from its food division. The move follows Ben & Jerry’s decision to break its contract with its Israeli licensee, who refused to stop selling the company’s ice-cream in Judea and Samaria. The U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Colorado and Arizona have decided to remove investments from their pension funds in Unileve...
On Chanukah 2002, four Hercules planes bearing hundreds of people evacuated from Africa landed in Israel. The passengers included Israeli families who had been vacationing in Kenya — some alive, some wounded, and some children returning to their homeland in small coffins. Now, Biden has decided to release Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, an Islamic terrorist who “participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks” from Guantanamo Bay. 2002 had been a bad year in Israel. Four hundred and fifty-seven Israelis were murdered by terro...
(JNS) — The antisemitic hostage-taking in Colleyville, Texas, on Jan. 15 brought to the surface bitter memories of the Holocaust: Jews being singled out simply because they were Jews. Eighty years ago, on Jan. 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference took place on the outskirts of Berlin. In 90 minutes, the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe, calling it the “Final Solution.” They intended to wipe out 11 million Jews across Europe, including in the Soviet Union, England, Ireland and Switzerland. The host was Reinhard Heydrich, known a...
(JNS) — One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on “stolen land.” It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are “on the lands” of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent. That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on “stolen l...
(JNS) — Less than four days after a gunman held four Jews hostage inside a Texas synagogue in a doomed attempt to free a convicted terrorist, the Council on American-Islamic Relations thinks it is ready to renew its campaign to achieve the same objective. “It’s time to push back,” CAIR’s Dallas chapter director Faizan Syed wrote on Jan. 19. “The news coverage around Dr. Aafia Siddiqui over the last few days has been inaccurate, one-sided and made to paint a victim of the war on terror as a terrorist. The ‘Free Dr. Aafia Campaign’ has...
In a recent statement published on the annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, not only misrepresented and defamed Dr. King’s legacy, but he did so using some of the most vile antisemitic tropes singling out the Jewish people and Israel. In his statement, Dr. Nelson wrote of Dr. King’s legacy and overcoming societal inequities in the U.S. and all over the world. Listing a broad range of social problems, Dr. Nelson then seaml...
MORNING MINYANS (Please note, because of the coronavirus, some minyans have been canceled or held virtually.) Chabad of North Orlando and Chabad of Altamonte Springs are holding in-person minyans. Chabad of South Orlando — Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. and 10 minutes before sunset; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 8:15 a.m., 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael — Monday - Friday, 7:30 a.m.; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-644-2500. Congregation Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Daytona — Monday, 8 a.m.; Thursday, 8 a.m., 904-672-9300. Congr...
(JTA) — Whoopi Goldberg apologized for upsetting people by starting a debate on Monday over whether the Holocaust was “about race,” writing that she is “sorry for the hurt I have caused.” But in an appearance that aired that same night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” she elaborated on some of her views on the Holocaust. On “The View,” a show that Goldberg co-hosts, she said “the Holocaust isn’t about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.” As she explained in an apology that she tweeted that evening, and on Colbert’s sho...
(JNS) - At a crucial moment for U.S. President Joe Biden's foreign policy, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken held a virtual policy session with an Atlanta synagogue on Monday night, where tensions regarding a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine's borders were front and center. China was also discussed as another threat to America's interests. The lecture, titled "21st Century Global Challenges Facing the U.S.", was moderated by Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues, who...
(JTA) - A Tennessee school board voted unanimously to remove "Maus," Art Spiegelman's graphic memoir about his father's Holocaust experience, from its curriculum after board members raised objections about curse words, nude drawings and "not wise or healthy" content within it. Spiegelman, who won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for the book, told CNBC that the decision was "Orwellian" and said he doubted that the McMinn County school board's decision to stop teaching his book had only to do with his choic...
(JNS) -Three pendants inscribed with the "Shema Yisrael" prayer and depictions of Moses and the Ten Commandments have been discovered in archaeological excavations in the Sobibor extermination camp over the past decade, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed on Thursday. The findings, made by Wojciech Mazurek from Poland, Yoram Haimi from the IAA and Ivar Schute from Holland, with the assistance of local residents, were made public on Thursday to coincide with International Holocaust...
Oy such talent! ... I'm referring to all the stars I write about. For instance, SARAH SILVERMAN. SARAH is an American comedian, actress, and writer. Her comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics, including racism, sexism, homophobia, politics (politics gives me heartburn!) and religion, sometimes having her comic character endorse them in a satirical or deadpan fashion. Sarah was a writer and a performer on "Saturday Night Live" and also she starred and produced "The Sarah Silverma...
(JTA) - The New York City rabbi who spoke twice to the man who held Jews hostage in their Texas synagogue last week detailed the experience in a sermon Friday night. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue also outlined her anxiety as an American Jew and exhorted her congregants to heed a prayer that the Reform movement has made part of its liturgy on Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day mourning the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem and other traumatic events in Jewish history: "Blessed...
(JTA) — Ambo Anthos, the Amsterdam-based publishing house that printed the Dutch-language translation of a controversial book alleging that a Jew had betrayed Anne Frank, has apologized for not reviewing the material more critically and ceased printing new copies of it on Monday. The book “The Betrayal of Anne Frank,” published earlier this month by the Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, hypothesizes that the teenage diarist and her family were turned over to the Nazis by Arnold van den Bergh, a notary and a member of the Jewish Council, which...
(JTA) — In Orlando, neo-Nazis yelled antisemitic slurs from a highway overpass. In Chicago, a Jewish school and a synagogue were vandalized. In Washington, D.C., a man was arrested and charged with spray painting swastikas on a train station. The turbulent weekend — which also included a rally in Ottawa against COVID-19 vaccine mandates that featured swastikas — comes just a few weeks after the hostage situation at a Texas synagogue left American Jews feeling vulnerable in their synagogues. A video of the Orlando rally that spread on socia...
Rodolfo "Rudy" Silvio Mingelgrun, 81, of Orlando, Florida, passed away on Jan. 21, 2022. Rudy was born in 1940 to John and Fritzi Mingelgrun in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is survived by his wife, Berta "Silvia" Mingelgrun, of 56 years; daughters, Sandra Glenn and Claudia Hopper; two grandsons, Zachary Turner and Jacob Hopper; 1 granddaughter, Sara Glenn; 1 great-granddaughter, Astrid Turner; and his sister, Susana and her husband Rory Brown of Miami, Florida. He also has several nieces and...
(JNS) — Pro-Israel groups working on campus agree that the situation for Jewish students is growing steadily worse. Just this fall, antisemitic incidents erupted at campuses across the country — from vandals desecrating a Torah scroll at George Washington University to a student at the University of New Mexico hospitalized after being attacked by a group shouting antisemitic slurs. “Recently at USC, we saw a member of student government threaten to ‘kill Zionists’ without repercussion while a Jewish member of student government was harassed int...
