Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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This is a developing story. The Israeli military has confirmed that the two deceased children released by Hamas Thursday are the hostages Ariel and Kfir Bibas. But the military said that a third body is not that of their mother, Shiri. The military said the country’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine, in collaboration with police, could not identify the body. “During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an ano...
(JNS) - Some 3,500 Jewish teens from 50 countries gathered in Denver on Thursday night for the opening ceremony of the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization International Convention, kicking off the youth movement's annual weekend-long retreat. Organizers told JNS that it is the largest annual gathering of Jewish teen leaders worldwide. The event includes leadership training, cultural programs and guest speakers, bringing together thousands of teens to connect, learn and celebrate their Jewish...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump held a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the two leaders agreed to hold talks to end the war in Ukraine. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump described the call as “lengthy and highly productive.” “First, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote. “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s nations. We h...
There is a dilemma for Jewish students who attend Lake Mary and Lyman high schools in Seminole County. Both schools scheduled their senior proms for April 12, the first night of Passover. Noelle Rivers, parent of a Lake Mary student, said her daughter came home upset, saying she has to weigh going to prom or being home with the family for Passover. Karin Barth, mother of a Lyman freshman, said “no student should have to choose between celebrating their faith and enjoying an important event like prom. Teenagers look forward to prom as a c...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump might be surprised to learn that long before he proposed moving Arabs from Gaza to Jordan, Yitzhak Rabin recommended the exact same thing. It happened in 1973. Rabin, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army, was serving as Israel’s ambassador in Washington. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, on Feb. 16, Rabin discussed the question of what should be done about the large number of Palestinian Arab refugees residing in the Gaza Strip. Much of Gaza’s population consisted of Arabs who had set...
(JNS) - Three Israeli men regained their freedom on Saturday, after 498 days of captivity in the Gaza Strip. The hostages were handed over to representatives of the Red Cross at a staged event in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, shortly after 10 a.m., and to the IDF and the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) at approximately 10:30, and were being escorted to Israeli territory for an initial medical examination. Alexandre ("Sasha") Troufanov, 29, who has dual Russian citizenship, had been...
Have you ever walked into a room with a specific task in mind, only to freeze and wonder, “Why did I come in here?” If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This phenomenon is called the doorway effect, and it’s something many people experience, especially as we get older. What is the doorway effect? The doorway effect occurs when you enter a new space, like walking into a different room, and suddenly forget what you were doing or why you went there in the first place. It can happen when you leave a store, board a plane, or even just walk fr...
(JNS) — During a meeting with European Union ambassadors in Israel on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned that Jerusalem would resume military actions in Gaza if Hamas does not release the hostages. “We discussed today Hamas’s announcement of its intention to violate the framework for the release of the hostages. A decision by Hamas not to release the hostages is essentially a decision to return to war. So far, we have not taken any unilateral actions,” Israel’s top diplomat said. FM Gideon Sa’ar to EU ambassadors: “If Hamas doe...
(JNS) — Jewish groups have expressed outrage after a man was sentenced on Wednesday to community service for hassling New York City subway riders last summer. “A mere four hours of community service and an anti-bias course for blatant antisemitic harassment? This is not justice—it’s a disgrace,” Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, a grassroots watchdog organization, told The New York Post. “Anas Saleh’s threats against fellow passengers on the NYC subway warranted real consequences, yet he walks away with a slap on the wrist. Th...
(JTA) — The Palestinian Authority will no longer pay stipends to the families of convicted terrorists and other prisoners, in a gesture to President Donald Trump. The longstanding program determined the size of the stipend based on the length of a prisoner’s sentence, meaning that those who were convicted of the worst offenses often received the largest stipends. While Palestinians often view the thousands of prisoners with admiration as the front line of resistance against Israel, the payment program had been maligned for years by Israeli and...
(JNS) — A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), introduced a resolution affirming that Hamas should no longer be allowed to exercise political or military control of the Gaza Strip. “One of the defining moments for the future of the Middle East and the world at large is to state directly and with moral clarity that Hamas—a terrorist organization—will no longer have political or military control of Gaza at the end of this conflict,” Graham stated in a press release announcing the measure. Besides launching the terro...
(JNS) — Or ben Sima Geula. I’ve said that name every time I prayed, three times a day, for the last six months. At some point during Or Levy’s 491-day captivity, my son’s school — in an attempt to personalize the names of the unfathomable 250 hostages—gave each child a person to pray for. Our youngest returned from school with a passport-sized image of Or that has lived in our home since. “Aba, will you pray for him?” my son asked me. Of course, I agreed. In the latest hostage-prisoner exchange, Or and two others came home—well, what...
(JNS) — On Saturday, as Sagui Dekel-Chen, his face marked by suffering, buried it in the blonde hair of his wife—whispering the name of their new daughter, Shahar-Mazal, born as he languished in captivity—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shattered a long-standing stereotype. For years, he had been accused of prioritizing war over the lives of hostages. But in a decisive move, he chose the hostages. This time, Netanyahu had not only the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump to resume a full-scale war against Hamas but also his activ...
(JNS) — President Donald Trump’s call to move the Arab population in Gaza to Egypt, Jordan and other countries is a winning strategy. He is the first president to come up with a realistic and humane solution to one of the world’s greatest and most vexing problems. The Arab world, with all its riches and oil wealth, has purposefully kept Gaza poor, underdeveloped and a hotbed of Muslim hatred of Israel and the West for its own selfish reasons. Had the money that was poured into Gaza for the building of tunnels and weaponry to attack Israe...
(JNS) — Hope or despair? Solutions or causes? History or revisionism? At its core, these are the questions being debated as U.S. President Donald Trump brings a wrecking ball to the conventional wisdom of the Palestinian question. The president’s specific policy prescriptions for resettling the residents of Gaza or undertaking an American effort to build condos on the Mediterranean coast are utterly irrelevant. What matters is that he is trying to change the lens through which the world views the Palestinian question and, in so doing, give hop...
(JNS) — As I viewed the recent press conference with Jordanian King Abdullah II and President Donald Trump, I couldn’t help but reflect on the history of Jordan and the king’s namesake and great-grandfather, Abdullah I. After Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem, in 1948, it sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas, which it proceeded to rename the West Bank of Jordan. On Dec. 1, 1948, it organized a conference in the town of Jericho that was attended by representatives of numerous con...
(JNS) — For decades, Palestinian activists and their Western enablers have pushed the narrative that resettling Gazans is an unthinkable crime. The irony? Hundreds of thousands of Jews, including my own family, were expelled from Arab lands, and no one lifted a finger to help. There were no global protests, no calls about a “right of return,” no international aid agencies keeping us in permanent refugee limbo. We weren’t given the luxury of relocation; we were forced to rebuild from nothing. Now, as Gazans are being handed a golden ticket...
MORNING 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. Congregation Ohev Shalom — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-298-4650. GOBOR Community Minyan at Jewish Academy of Orlando — Monday – Friday, 7:45 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Temple Israel — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3...
(JNS) - For the first time since being released on Feb.1 as part of the ceasefire deal, former hostage Keith Siegel, an American-Israeli, released a video on Friday detailing his experience in captivity. "My name is Keith Siege,l and I am a 65-year-old American citizen," the video began, featuring Siegel in a blue sweater with a yellow hostage pin. "I love country music, and I love pancakes on Saturday morning. But that was my previous life. Since Feb. 1, I am a newly released Hamas hostage. I...
(JTA) — An American-Israeli released from Gaza during the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire is exhorting President Donald Trump to press for the release of the remaining hostages. “President Trump, you are the reason I am home alive. You are the reason I was reunited with my beloved wife, four children and five grandchildren. Thank you,” Siegel says in a video released by his family and hostage advocacy groups. “Thank you for your continued fight against terror and for your bold leadership that has brought me and many others back home, to our fam...
(JTA) - This story contains spoilers for "Apple Cider Vinegar." Early in the new Netflix miniseries "Apple Cider Vinegar," the central character of Millie Blake is diagnosed with a rare cancer and told she must amputate her arm. Desperate for another solution, Millie seizes on an "alternative" treatment: at a center called the Hirsch Institute, in Mexico. The center is run by the daughter of a German Jewish refugee from the Nazis. Decades after her father's death, she tells her patients that...
(JNS) — The three latest returnees from Hamas captivity in Gaza reunited on Saturday with their families in heartfelt scenes of elation and relief. American-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, met with his wife, Avital, and his parents at the IDF’s Re’im camp just outside the Strip before being flown by helicopter to Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer in Ramat Gan. During the reunion, Avital informed him of their third daughter’s name. She was seven-months’ pregnant when Dekel-Chen was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. “Do you remembe...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — A recently released hostage has provided the first confirmation in months that Omri Miran, 47, held captive in Gaza, was alive and in relatively stable condition as of July. “We received confirmation of Omri’s condition through one of the returned hostages,” his brother Boaz revealed on Tuesday, speaking about Omri, who has now been in captivity for 495 days. “They shared that his condition was generally stable during their time together, when they were being held in b...
Three more Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for 491 days were released last week. The three men returned home emaciated, gaunt, and with signs of suffering from severe malnourishment including complex cardiac issues and infections. Seeing them paraded by Hamas in a dehumanizing public spectacle before thousands of armed terrorists and jeering “innocent civilians,” it was impossible to avoid the analogy that they looked like people who had survived Nazi concentration camps 80 years ago. In addition to deliberate starvation, there are mul...
