Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) - An array of Jewish groups across the country are kickstarting into action to protest and potentially challenge the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that had enshrined the right to an abortion in the United States. The 6-3 decision released Friday has many Jewish activists buzzing about how to respond to the bombshell ruling that they find a major setback to women's rights and in some cases an infringement on religious Jewish law. The...
The Orlando Torah Academy had a wonderful turn out at the 12th anniversary Annual Dinner, held on June 13. Shown here are (from left to right) Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Spector, Rabbi Avraham Wachsman and Rabbi Yehuda Schepansky, guests of honor Dr. Alan and Shari Wladis and Richard and Lauren Ward (Shari’s mom and stepfather). In addition to the guests of honor, Rabbi Michoel and Elisheva Rennert received the Amud Hachesed Award, who are shown here holding the award with Rabbi Yehuda Schepansky (left) and Rabbi Avraham Wachsman....
The World Maccabiah Games, first held in 1932, are an international Jewish and Israeli multi-sport event now held every four years in Israel. The Games were declared a "Regional Sports Event" by, and under the auspices and supervision of, the International Olympic Committee in 1961. Not to be confused with the JCC Maccabi Games, which is the largest organized in-person Jewish teen sports experience in America sponsored by the JCC Association of North America and held every year in the United...
(JTA) - After nearly a year of legal and financial battles, Ben & Jerry's will continue to be made and sold in Israel and the West Bank, as its parent company Unilever announced Tuesday it had reached an agreement with its current Israeli licensee to assume ownership of the brand in the region. Under the terms of the new agreement, Unilever is selling its Israel business interest in the ice cream maker to Israel-based American Quality Products, Ltd., which has owned Ben & Jerry's Israel factorie...
In the article "10 big Jewish inventions," published June 17 in the Heritage, the third entry, "Sam Born, the Candy Man," is about my grandfather. I recently retired as CEO of Just Born Quality Confections. The article was mostly factual, but I do want to offer one correction: Sam Born, creator of Just Born, did not create Goldenberg's Peanut Chews, rather, Just Born purchased the Goldenberg Candy Company (based in Philadelphia, Pa.) in 2003 from the fourth generation Goldenberg family. In...
The Florida Holocaust Museum responded to a request from the Heritage Florida Jewish News for a statement concerning the mapping project in Massachusetts. Solomon Howard, FHM senior account executive, replied that they are “as alarmed as any by the Mapping Project” and sent the following statement: There is a healthy debate about when criticism of Israeli policy becomes antisemitism, but no such debate exists with The Mapping Project. Its authors turn their antizionist political crusade into a wholesale allegation of collective guilt against Je...
Are you hearing "I'm bored" already from children this summer break? Try to have one to two things for them to look forward to each week. Don't worry, these don't have to be big lavish trips. They can be as simple as make-your-own-pizza night or a movie and board game night. Not only will this approach add some fun to your summer, but often it will also help children work on delayed gratification and patience. Want more tips for putting you and your family's wellness first this summer? JFS...
Most people notice changes in their thinking and memory as they grow older. Neurologists tell us that some older adults develop dementia, most memory changes are age related and normal. Staying physically active benefits every organ in our bodies - and that includes the brain. Our brains also need a good mental workout. Studies show that cognitive decline can be reduced through a combination of daily activities like using a computer and playing word games. Mental stimulation encourages new...
(JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s has come out against its own parent company’s decision to sell the ice cream maker’s brand in Israel to an Israeli company that pledges to continue selling the products in both Israel and the West Bank. “While our parent company has taken this decision, we do not agree with it,” the Vermont-based frozen treat makers said on social media, hours after Unilever announced it would sell its Israel business interests in Ben & Jerry’s to the Israeli company American Quality Products Ltd. The Ben & Jerry’s statement also...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett won’t run in his country’s upcoming elections this fall, his office announced Wednesday, after he served as head of a fragile, now collapsing Knesset coalition for a little over a year. The announcement caught many in Israel by surprise given that Bennett had led the country for just a year and, as the leader of the right-wing Yamina party might well have won a role in any future government coalition. He indicated in his final speech to the Knesset that he would continue to support Yair Lapid...
(JTA) — Ahead of his first presidential visit to Israel, Joe Biden congratulated Yair Lapid on becoming prime minister on Thursday, following the resignation of his predecessor Naftali Bennett. “Congratulations to @YairLapid, Israel’s new Prime Minister, and thank you to Alternate Prime Minister @NaftaliBennett for your friendship over the past year. I look forward to seeing you both in July to celebrate the unbreakable U.S.-Israel partnership,” Biden wrote on Twitter shortly after Lapid assumed the premiership. Biden is scheduled to visit I...
(JNS) — Joe Biden’s first eight years in the U.S. Senate (1973-1981) overlapped with the final years of his colleague Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, a fellow Democrat. Biden and Ribicoff were friends and political allies, and the newcomer benefited from the wise counsel of the elder statesman. So I wonder what the late Sen. Ribicoff would think about now-President Joe Biden visiting a foreign region where there are numerous public sites named after the terrorist who murdered Ribicoff’s niece. Next month, Biden will become the first...
(JNS) — Despite managing to raise $160 million in New York on Thursday, at a pledging conference of the Ad Hoc Committee of the U.N. General Assembly, the head of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was not pleased. Trying to sound grateful for the ill-deserved windfall, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini simultaneously boasted about the international community’s “firm commitment” to the organization and bemoaned that the funds pledged were far from sufficient to keep the place running past the end of the...
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe v. Wade, the five justices of the United States Supreme Court who voted in favor of the reversal embraced Mississippi’s statutory definition of a fetus as an unborn human being. This definition is not an accredited scientific definition, but is based on religious doctrine. It gives the Court leeway, however weak, to exclude the right to abortion from constitutional protection afforded to other rights, which the Constitution is obligated to secure. In...
Speaking to students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a foolish, unnecessary, and strategic mistake of opening an antisemitic battle as another front distracting from his very real war against Russia. Though Zelensky himself is Jewish, doing so he continues the antisemitic tradition that has marred Jewish life in Ukraine for generations. This is not Zelensky’s first time calling out Israel for not doing enough to help Ukraine in their war with Russia. By singling out Israel to standards b...
(JNS) — “Why not?” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asked that simple question last week after the normally publicity-mad Council on American-Islamic Relations told him it had nothing to say about a Boston BDS organization’s promotion of a “mapping project” that has been condemned as antisemitic and possible incitement to violence. The interactive map posted online earlier this month “mapped” the addresses of dozens of Jewish institutions and organizations in Massachusetts. Its stated goal was “to reveal the local entities and netw...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Now that Roe v. Wade has been officially overturned and it becomes clear that the pro-choice community doesn’t have any more of a plan on how to protect abortion rights than it did to protect Roe from its critics, it might be a good time for pro-choice believers to look for guidance from the strongest abortion rights advocate and most prominent feminist voice to ever serve on the Supreme Court. So, the question to ask now is WWRBGD? — What Would Ruth Bader Ginsburg Do? Given Ginsburg’s strong credentials on this is...
(JNS) — An anti-Israel activist who shared a number of social media posts with anti-Semitic content has campaigned with multiple Democrats over the past year. Mahel Abdel Qader has come under fire for repeatedly promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In 2017, he shared a graphic that included the names of dozens of Jewish members of Congress, implying that they have a dual loyalty to Israel and the United States. The Daily Caller reported that, in 2018, Qader shared an anti-Semitic video that claimed Jews are “satanic” and control the m...
(JNS) - If he isn't already, Rabbi Ari Sitnik will soon be the most-seen rabbi in the history of the internet, all because of a single video. The Brazil-born Sitnik, 52, appears at the beginning of Drake's new music video for his song "Falling Back," which has already garnered more than 11,000,000 views on YouTube. The video begins with former NBA center Tristan Thompson telling the Canadian-Jewish rapper and singer (whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham) in a side room that he can call off...
(JTA) - Vladimir Zelenko, the doctor from an Orthodox enclave near New York City who rose to fame early in the COVID-19 pandemic for promoting a drug cocktail, has died of cancer at 48. The foundation that Zelenko launched to advance his theories after he left his family medical practice amid controversy in May 2020 announced his death on Thursday, saying that it would accept donations to continue his work, which included opposition to COVID-19 vaccines. Zelenko, who went by Zev, was born in...
BUDAPEST (JTA) — For the last few months, a lakeside palace linked to a major political scandal in Hungary has been home to Jewish refugees from Ukraine. Just before Passover, six weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Hungarian government signed off on an effort to makes the palace in Balatonőszöd, a resort town on the the lakes of Lake Balaton some 80 miles away from Budapest, kosher for the holiday. Now, the palace will be renovated to accommodate at least 664 people with a kosher kitchen able to feed hundreds more daily, according to a s...
(JNS) — More than 80 scholars of Jewish and Israel studies have joined together to form an initiative to combat on-campus anti-Zionism: The Jewish Studies Zionist Network. The organization is the brainchild of Jarrod Tanny, an associate professor of Jewish history at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. The scholars who signed up for the initiative include Israeli political philosopher and author of The Virtue of Nationalism Yoram Hazony of the Herzl Institute, the University of Florida Holocaust historian Norman J.W. Goda and G...
What a surprise!... I’m referring to the late, great Madeline Albright who passed away at the end of March. She was brought up as a Christian, but her parents converted from Judaism to Christianity, which is understandable since they (and Madeline) were from Czechoslovakia and were around during the time of Hitler. (Madeline was never told that her parents once were Jews.) Madeline and her family came to the United States in 1948 after the Communist coup in Prague. When she grew up she became the first woman to reach such a high position as U...
(JTA) — The head of the Jewish Community of Porto, Portugal said that a criminal investigation stemming from the organization’s role in vetting Jews with Sephardic ancestry for Portuguese citizenship amounts to antisemitic persecution by officials. In an unusually harsh letter to lawmakers last week, Gabriel Senderowicz said the probe was perpetrating a “Holocaust against families.” And in a sign of splits among the country’s Jews, a former leader of the Jewish community of Lisbon dismissed Senderowicz’s allegations as baseless and “absurd.” S...
(JTA) - Leonard Cohen wrote around 150 verses to "Hallelujah," or so the scholars claim. The beloved Canadian folk singer, who fused Jewish mysticism with pop mythology for a global audience, wrote several hit songs over his 50-year career, including many, such as "Who By Fire" and "You Want It Darker," that are unmistakably Jewish in content. But none of them were as successful, or as pored-over, as "Hallelujah," which has been covered around 300 times and played at weddings, funerals, church...
