Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 32
BERLIN (JTA) - Alongside Munich's river, construction workers made a sensational discovery last week: Stone tablets carved with the Ten Commandments from the city's former main synagogue, which was torn down in the summer of 1938 on Adolf Hitler's orders. The find was announced almost exactly 85 years after the building was destroyed. The object - along with 150 tons of rubble from the synagogue, including parts of columns - had likely lain on the banks of the Isar River since the 1950s, when...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden blamed increasing tension in Judea and Samaria on the "lost credibility" of the Palestinian Authority as well as on "extreme" ministers in Israel's government. In a televised interview on foreign policy with CNN host Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, Biden also again declined to say when he would invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. Biden has pushed off scheduling that meeting due to friction between the two men regarding...
MARGATE, Fla. — EL AL Israel Airlines, which recently relocated its regional headquarters for North America to Margate, Florida, is proud to announce that it is continuing to expand its activity in South Florida. Effective on Sept. 13, 2023, EL AL will begin seasonal service from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to Tel Aviv. The new non-stop flights will operate on selected days of the week to accommodate the Jewish High Holidays through October. In addition to this year’s seasonal service, year-round Tel Aviv service to and fro...
(JTA) - Alan Arkin knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five. "Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was," he wrote in his 2011 memoir, "An Improvised Life." What he was was the son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1934. But over the course of a long and unusually peripatetic career, he managed to turn himself into a conflicted Russian submarine officer ("The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,"...
In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars, and community leaders decided to fight back. Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, this clandestine group vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda not with guns or fists but with pen and paper. They detailed life in the Ghetto from the Jewish perspective. They commissioned diaries, essays, jokes, poems, and songs. They documented Nazi...
Heritage received a story about this wonderful couple, Theda and Bob Levinn, and ran it in the June 30 issue. Since then, we have learned that story was not accurate at all. This is what really happened! Theda and Bob Levinn are truly remarkable people. Bob is 98 years old and Theda is 94 years old. They are living proof you can find love at any age. Bob and Theda were married in 2019. Their ketubah hangs on the bedroom wall. The two met in the 1990s when Bob and his then-wife came with his sist...
On June 21, 2023, a potluck luncheon was held at the home of Jeff and Marci Gaeser in Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach. Thirty women, members of the Chavurah of the Chood, a Jewish friends group, attended and brought non-perishable foods for the food bank of the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler Counties. The Federation is headed by Executive Director Rabbi Dr. Robert Lennick and President Marvin Miller. The women enjoyed fellowship and discussed future charitable efforts. All the wo...
(JNS) — JNS reported last April that Morningstar and its subsidiary Sustainalytics had flagged 26 companies for doing business beyond the so-called Green Line in Israel. Its “controversy ratings” could dissuade socially-conscious investors from placing funds in those companies. Under pressure from a growing list of state-level investigations for potential anti-Israel BDS practices, Morningstar and Sustainalytics, an environmental, social and corporate governance rater, have trimmed the list down substantially. Multiple sources told JNS that...
(JNS) — A day after the Israel Defense Forces completed its extensive security operation, it appears the goal of squashing Jenin’s image as a terrorist safe haven has been accomplished, with some caveats. The IDF, backed by Shin Bet intelligence and Border Police officers, seized more than a thousand pieces of armament in Jenin camp and surrounding areas, including bombs, ammunition and guns. Security forces questioned over 300 suspects; some 120 of them were detained. Fourteen command posts and hideouts used to coordinate terrorist activity we...
(JTA) — The BBC has apologized for an on-air interview in which one of its anchors told former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children.” The journalist, Anjana Gadgil, was interviewing Bennett on Tuesday about the Israel Defense Forces’ incursion this week into the Palestinian city of Jenin. Twelve Palestinians, including a number of children, and one Israeli were killed in the operation, which lasted two days. Israel conducted the operation to root out terror cells in the city and maintai...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a case that drew support from a broad array of Jewish groups, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers had to show a “substantial” burden to deny workers religious accommodation. In a decision released Thursday, the court sided with Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian mail carrier who asked not to work on Sundays, his Sabbath. Jewish groups that do not often line up on the same side of church-state issues before the court were of a single voice in this case. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion, sought to...
(JNS) — How could the notoriously antisemitic Council on American-Islamic Relations have ended up — embarrassingly — as a “resource” in President Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism? CAIR was launched in 1994 by a Muslim Brotherhood-related Hamas support group called the Palestine Committee. The organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 trial that convicted five former officers of the Holy Land Foundation for funneling millions of dollars illegally to the murderous terror group Hamas. Moreover, CAIR’s stat...
(JNS) — After decades of vacillation, the Supreme Court of the United States has finally and firmly declared that the Constitution does not permit publicly funded universities to consider race, as such, in their admission processes. This is a decision that many, including this author, have been advocating for since the 1970s, when my first law review article appeared, calling for affirmative action to be based on non-racial criteria and individual accomplishments. The Supreme Court has been moving in this direction for some time now, but it h...
The bus ride to Birkenau took only 15 minutes since the two facilities were less than two miles apart. The next day we would be marching that same route from the gates of Auschwitz to the entrance of Birkenau as part of the March of the Living. Birkenau was built closer to the main rail line; and a train track spur was added from the main rail line directly into the Birkenau death camp, bringing it very close to the gas chambers and crematoria. The intent was to divert the freight trains carrying their human cargo directly into the camp so as...
(JNS) — The international reaction to the recent surge in Palestinian terrorism and Israel’s operation in Jenin to take out the gunmen and infrastructure of the groups responsible for the bloodshed has been as predictable as it is depressing. Though the Biden administration has paid lip service to the notion that Israelis have the right to defend themselves, the general tone of press coverage and commentary from Washington and the international community has been the usual mantra about a pointless “cycle of violence” and worries about the dec...
(JNS) — “If necessary, just as we prevented the fall of Assad, we will prevent the fall of Putin.” This brazen claim was posted to a Telegram channel linked with the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps last Saturday, as an amazed world watched a mutiny unfold in Russia that was quickly snuffed out before any significant violence unfolded. The IRGC has every reason to remain loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has deepened his military alliance with Iran in tandem with his aggression against Ukraine. Russia has bee...
MORNING MINYANS 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. Congregation Ohev Shalom — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-298-4650. GOBOR Community Minyan at Jewish Academy...
(JNS) — A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, which advises U.S. President Joe Biden, released a statement on Monday in support of the Israel Defense Forces’ ongoing counterterrorism operation in Jenin. “We support Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups,” it states. The council added that it is monitoring the situation closely. Sources said on Tuesday afternoon that the operation was getting close to winding down. But Israeli officials said it would pro...
K2 Medical, a prominent healthcare organization, recently hosted a special breakfast event for sponsors of the Jewish Pavilion in Maitland. The primary objective of the occasion was to facilitate networking among healthcare professionals who actively support the Jewish Pavilion's endeavors. Members of the Jewish Pavilion's board were also in attendance, lending their support and fostering a sense of community within the healthcare industry. The event was a resounding success, bringing together a...
(JNS) — Sometimes, kids just need a hug. That’s especially true of children who have endured the horrors of war. In 2006, Israeli psychologists invented a plush dog called Hibuki—Hebrew for “hug”—to help kids cope with trauma from the Second Lebanon War. The stuffed toy, with its elongated arms and sad eyes, has expanded globally. Last year, it was introduced in Ukraine, and now Hibuki is comforting many Ukrainian refugee children who have made their way to New York, at a Brooklyn school that...
(JNS) - Residents of the Jenin refugee camp are blaming the Palestinian Authority and Hamas for this week's two-day Israeli military incursion, laying bare divisions within the Palestinian terrorist groups. Significant numbers of Hamas operatives feel betrayed by their leaders in Gaza and have quit in anger. The aftermath also exposes a widening rift in the Strip between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On Wednesday morning, after Israeli soldiers left the camp, the enormous extent of the...
(JTA) — Israeli actress Gal Gadot, best known for her role as Wonder Woman in the eponymous 2017 film and franchise, will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year, joining the more than 2,700 members of the entertainment industry who have been immortalized with a Hollywood star. Gadot will be the first Israeli actress to receive a star on the Walk of Fame. Haim Saban, the Israeli media mogul, creator of the “Power Rangers” TV show and major Democratic donor, received a star in 2017. Other Jewish figures awarded stars for 2024 incl...
Estimates indicate that approximately one third of people with dementia and 1 in 7 of those with Alzheimer’s disease lives alone. A diagnosis of dementia does not automatically mean a person cannot safely live independently. Some people may be able to live on their own for some time after the initial diagnosis. Others may be at too much risk to continue living alone. It is common for people living with dementia to go through a series of stages from complete independence to living with someone or needing a long-term care placement over the c...
(JNS) - It has been nearly ten years since General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi came to power as president of Egypt following a military coup. July 3, 2013, began as a regular day in Cairo, with demonstrations held against then-President Mohamed Morsi, but ended in his dramatic ouster. The Egyptians had taken to the streets for seven long months. Some due to Morsi's attempt to reinstate an Islamist-led parliament, others due to the energy crisis. Following the coup, there were suspicions that the...
(JTA) - A Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli soldier when security forces stopped the gunman while he was driving near the Kedumim settlement in northern Samaria. The gunman was killed after the attack. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, noting that Kedumim is where Bezalel Smotrich, the minister responsible for Judea and Samaria, lives. "Tell the criminal Zionist Minister Smotrich that al-Qassam almost knocked on your door," the Jerusalem Post quoted Qassam Brigades, a...
