Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - Almost nine months after Hamas terrorists stormed the Nova music festival, killing more than 360 revelers and abducting 40 others to Gaza, tens of thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv's HaYarkon Park on Thursday evening for what organizers dubbed a "healing concert." The concert was the first official event held by the Tribe of Nova since Oct. 7, when the trance music community became synonymous with Israel's catastrophe. Many survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre attended as part of an...
Boynton Beach, Florida retiree, Jerry Klinger, has dedicated his life to preserving the often-overlooked contributions of Jewish individuals and communities. After a successful career in finance, he founded the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, which has completed over 200 historical projects across 43 states and eight countries, highlighting Jewish heritage and history. Klinger's journey into historical preservation began with an unexpected discovery while searching for the...
(JNS) - More than 2,000 participants on Birthright Israel programs gathered on Monday for a gala evening in central Israel that marks the highlight of the organization's summer trips to Israel. The Birthright Israel Mega Event at Mini Israel Park in Latrun took place in solidarity with the Israel Defense Forces as soldiers continue to fight Hamas in the Gaza Strip, keeping in mind the hostages taken captive on Oct. 7 from Jewish communities in southern Israel who are still being held there. It...
All my life, I was afraid to go to Israel. The stories of terrorism were scary to me. Although many of my family and friends visited Israel, I never understood the attraction to Israel. I did not grow up in a religious family. My son Sam moved to Israel in March 2023, when he was 24 years old. He made Aliyah in the Nefesh B'Nefesh program for young professionals. Sam started in the Ulpan program in Ra'anana to learn Hebrew. Mostly with Russian and Ukrainian refugees, he was one of only two...
Robert Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots and founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, has generously donated $1 million to Yeshiva University in New York City. This donation will establish the Blue Square Scholars program, aimed at promoting inclusivity and supporting Jewish students who feel unsafe at other colleges due to rising antisemitism. The Blue Square Scholars program is designed to provide the necessary infrastructure to accommodate and support top-tier Jewish students rooted in Yeshiva University’s v...
(JTA) — The closed-door trial of American Jewish reporter Evan Gershkovich began in Russia on Wednesday, 15 months after his arrest there on espionage charges widely regarded as spurious. The trial is being held in Yekaterinburg, the city where Gershkovich, now 32, was arrested while on assignment as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in March 2023. He was held in Moscow before being moved prior to the trial, and appeared in court with his head shaven, as is customary in Russia. Jewish activists and organizations have mobilized to support G...
(JNS) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two bills on Monday geared to protect Jewish residents in the state. HB 187, Antisemitism, which went into effect on July 1, codifies the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and its contemporary examples of Jew-hatred into state law “to assist in the monitoring and reporting of antisemitic hate crimes and discrimination and to make residents aware of and to combat such incidents in this state.” The bill passed the Florida House 115-0 on Feb. 29, after h...
(JNS) — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland urging a federal response to the violence that occurred on Sunday at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. “I write urging immediate action against a pro-Hamas mob’s recent assault on a Jewish community,” Cotton wrote on Tuesday. “The mob attacked Jews with bear spray, beat a man until his face and shirt were covered in blood, and chanted ‘intifada revolution.’” Noting that the anti-Israel activists had announced their plans in...
(JNS) — Most of the organized Jewish world is as outraged as the Anti-Defamation League. The decision of Wikipedia to label the ADL as an “unreliable source” on its site with respect to anything related to Israel generated a letter of protest from 43 of the largest and most influential American Jewish organizations, including a sampling of groups on the center, left and right. The notion that the ADL, still considered the authoritative source on the subject of antisemitism by the liberal media, being shut down by the ubiquitous online encyc...
(JNS) — An EMP is essentially a large nuclear bomb that explodes in the outer atmosphere. In a cone-shaped area below, all electricity infrastructures and electronic devices fail. The area can be predetermined by arranging the size of the cone beforehand. So, for example, an attack could be focused on greater Chicago or the entire Midwest. The explosion causes no immediate deaths. But after roughly 10 days, many people will die due to lack of food (because refrigeration is impossible), water (most water is delivered by electric pumps), w...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — On the surface, it makes little sense. How can the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust lead to the biggest rise in antisemitism in modern times? Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? The more Jews die, the more they like us? Like that famous book said, “People Love Dead Jews.” How does one explain that on Oct. 8, right after 1,200 Jews were massacred, mutilated, butchered and raped by Hamas terrorists, 33 Harvard student organizations co-signed a statement holding Israel “entirely responsib...
(JNS) — A malodorous wind has been blowing through our institutions of international jurisdiction. Take, for example, the United Nations. Although erected after World War II upon the loftiest of foundations, an unscrupulous crew of autocracies, tyrannies and unaligned third-world nations—who have long resented the leading role that the United States has taken on the world’s stage—united into a force to be reckoned with, eroding that institution’s eminence. Among these nations is the 56-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the largest w...
(JNS) — As the war in Gaza appears to be winding down and another appears to be winding up on Israel’s northern border, Israeli politics is returning to something like its usual state: angry contention. For many months, the political divisions that threatened to rip the country to pieces in the year before the Oct. 7 massacre were buried by war. The interregnum appears to be over. The street protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have heated up again, with the issue of a hostage deal added to the usual griev...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Growing up in the home of a staunch Republican and an equally staunch Democrat, I became an Independent; it seemed like the sensible choice. The more I began to understand our political system—how partisan it can become, how parties change through the years—the more I remained steadfast in my choice. When I worked at The New Republic in the early ’90s, most of my friends were Democrats because the party still represented classical liberalism: Liberty, justice, equality, pluralism, civil society. With Republi...
