Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Barry Manilow tests positive for COVID, will miss NYC debut of his musical ‘Harmony’ By Andrew Silow-Carroll (New York Jewish Week) — Singer Barry Manilow tested positive for COVID-19, preventing him from attending the New York premier of his musical “Harmony.” The show, about a real-life musical group popular in Germany in the years before World War II, opened Wednesday night at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. “I am heartbroken to say that I have just tested positive for COVID-19 and won’t be able to attend tonight’s ope...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The director of Amnesty International’s U.S. branch apologized to Jewish lawmakers for claiming to speak on behalf of American Jews. “I regret representing the views of the Jewish people,” Paul O’Brien said in a March 25 letter, first reported by Jewish Insider, to all 25 Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, who had joined to condemn his remarks at a Washington, D.C., luncheon in which he rejected polling that showed the vast majority of U.S. Jews are pro-Israel. “What I should have said,” he added, “is th...
(JNS) — The International March of the Living will resume in person for the first time in two years but with a reduced capacity, due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and only eight Holocaust survivors participating. Organizers made the announcement last week in the United Kingdom House of Lords. The procession along the path leading from the Auschwitz to Birkenau concentration camps in Poland will take place starting on April 24, a few days before Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), as a tribute to the 6 million Jewis...
(JTA) — When it comes to consuming matzah, the Jews of the former Soviet Union are in a league of their own. At the top of the chart are Azerbaijan’s 8,000 Jews, who this year are expected to consume 10 tons of the unleavened bread cracker that Jews eat on the week of Passover to commemorate their ancestors’ hurried flight out of Egypt. That’s a provision of 2.7 pounds per person – a ratio that’s nearly three times what’s on stock for the average soldier in the Israeli army. In Russia, home to about 155,000 Jews, the rate of consumption i...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS) — They will be in shelters, private homes, refugee camps, synagogues and military bases. But come what may, when night falls on Passover eve on April 15, the Jews of Ukraine will pause to eat matzah and bitter herbs, drink four cups of wine, recall the miracles of the Exodus and look forward to better times. After all, even during the harshest of times — when Stalin’s minions hunted down and shot Jews caught passing on Judaism to the next generation — millions of Soviet Jews, half of whom lived in Ukraine, clung t...
Shooting in downtown Tel Aviv leaves 2 dead, at least 4 in serious condition By Ron Kampeas This is a developing story. (JTA) — At least one gunman shot people at different locations along a downtown Tel Aviv street on Thursday night, leaving what Israeli emergency responders said were at least two people dead and four injured in critical condition. Police said they were in pursuit of at least one gunman, and called on people to stay indoors and stay away from windows. Witnesses described policemen running through the city streets, guns d...
(JNS) - The sight of four Arab foreign ministers - from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt - accompanied by the U.S. Secretary of State and hosted by an Israeli foreign minister at the first annual Negev Summit at Kibbutz Sde Boker was more than just the fulfillment of founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's vision to make the desert bloom. The summit demonstrates that the 2020 Abraham Accords pave a clear path to the end of the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict. It also...
Israeli soldiers return fire and kill at least 2 Palestinians in raid as tensions continue to mount By Gabe Friedman (JTA) — Israeli soldiers shot and killed at least two Palestinians after being fired at in a raid on a West Bank refugee camp on Thursday, in the latest instance of rapidly escalating tensions across Israel. Troops entered the Jenin camp to arrest suspects allegedly connected to the terror attack that left five Israelis dead in and around Bnei Brak on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said, and to subdue others who were s...
(JTA) — On Feb. 24, two shipping containers laden with 20,000 pounds of shmura matzah were slated to head out of port in Odessa, Ukraine, on their way to Orthodox Jews in the United States. Two hours before they were to be loaded onto a ship, Russia invaded. The shipment was the last of 200,000 pounds of unleavened bread that Ukrainian matzah bakeries shipped to the United States this year, in addition to what they ship to Europe and Israel. Now, technically outside of Ukraine’s customs zon...
(JNS) - For the first time since the signing of the Abraham Accords, an Israeli research book has been published in Abu Dhabi, announced Tel Aviv University. The UAE's largest public research institute, the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, published "Zionism in Arab Discourse" by Professor Uriya Shavit, head of the Religious Studies Program and the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, both at Tel Aviv University. The book is co-authored by Ofir Winter,...
(ISRAEL21c) - On Tuesday, Israel began accepting patients at its humanitarian field hospital in western Ukraine, where it will treat people affected by the war raging in the country. Situated in the western Ukrainian city of Mostyska and called "Shining Star," the 66-bed hospital is set to be open 24/7 and staffed by more than 60 personnel. It will be able to service 150 patients at a time and includes a triage area, an ER ward, men's, women's and children's wards, labor and delivery...
(JNS) - The first organized humanitarian mission of the North American Jewish community for Ukrainians will be far from the last. This past week, a mission organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) traveled to the Ukraine-Poland border to visit with refugees and evaluate needs on the ground. The task is overwhelming, but something the Federations are working on in tight coordination with its global partners. "It was an important and eye-opening experience to go. We had...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited his family’s Holocaust-era history in explaining a matter of U.S. foreign policy on Monday, it was far from the first time he has done so. “One of my responsibilities as Secretary is determining, on behalf of the United States, whether atrocities have been committed,” Blinken, who is Jewish, said Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he announced that the Biden administration had determined that the Burmese military had committed genocide against the Rohingy...
(JNS) — A report by U.N. Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council accused Israel of apartheid. “The Special Rapporteur recommends that the international community accepts and adopts the findings … that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond,” he wrote. Lynk, whose official title is “Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” will formally release the report on Thursday ahead of a Human Rights Coun...
Netflix to produce a ‘Jewish Matchmaking’ series By Caleb Guedes-Reed (JTA) — Matchmaker, matchmaker — are you going on Netflix? The streaming giant announced a new “Jewish Matchmaking” series on Thursday, modeled after its hit “Indian Matchmaking.” Details are scant, and there is no premiere date, but Netflix’s companion site Tudum says it will feature “singles in the US and Israel as they turn their dating life over to a top Jewish matchmaker.” “Will using the traditional practice of shidduch help them find their soulmate in today’s wor...
(JNS) — A new report by NGO Monitor debunks the accusation of apartheid against Israel and assesses whether apartheid, as previously defined, is applicable to Israel and territories under its military administration. This new report, titled “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing Claims of Apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” and written by legal expert Joshua Kern, and legal adviser and U.N. representative for NGO Monitor Anne Herzberg, expands on a previous report published in December that sought to rectify the lack of a coherent and l...
(JTA) — An international academic organization devoted to study of the Arab world and Israel has voted to endorse boycotting Israel. Members of the Middle East Studies Association voted 768-167 in favor of a resolution “endorsing the Palestinian call for solidarity in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanctions,” known as BDS. The resolution also calls for an “academic boycott” of Israeli institutions, including universities — a term that BDS proponents typically define as severing all formal ties with the institutions. But the association...
(JNS) - As Russia pushes further into Ukraine and threatens its capital Kyiv - and as Russian President Vladimir Putin appears unfazed and undeterred by Western nations willing to sanction Russia through economic means, but afraid to fight militarily to save innocent Ukrainian civilians - the question arises: What could the world have done to deter Putin? And what does this mean for the State of Israel? John Hardie, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — An Amnesty International official said that the organization is opposed to Israel continuing to exist as a Jewish state. “We are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people,” Paul O’Brien, the human rights monitor’s U.S. director, said in a luncheon this week with the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington D.C. Jewish Insider first reported the remarks. O’Brien said late Friday on Twitter that his remarks had been...
(JNS) - Famed Jewish dissident, human-rights activist and former Knesset member Natan Sharansky provided his opinion on the situation in Ukraine on Tuesday, analyzing what could be Russian President Vladimir Putin's motivations for the invasion into Ukraine, as well as the moral obligation Israel and the West have to support Ukraine. In a Zoom session hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and moderated by JINSA president and CEO Mike Makovsky, Sharansky said that he...
Russia bans access to two Israeli Russian-speaking websites for its citizens (JNS) — Russia blocked off access for its citizens to 30 websites worldwide, including two Russian-language Israeli websites, Maariv reported on Wednesday. The two Israeli websites are Channel 9, a Russian-speaking Israeli television station, and Vesti, a Russian-language news website that belongs to the Yediot Achronot group. The decision was taken on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 but only implemented on Wednesday, according to the report. Rus...
(JNS) - As part of a two-and-a-half-day trip to Israel, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Hebron's Jewish community on Wednesday, becoming the most senior international leader to visit the city since it was retaken by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Hebron, where 1,000 Jews live surrounded by 200,000 Arabs, is most notable for the Machpelah,the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, revered by Jews as the place Abraham purchased from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place for his...
(Israel21C via JNS) - IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer is not a novice when it comes to mass disasters. The Israel-based humanitarian aid organization has responded to emergencies in 56 countries since 2001. So you can believe Polizer when he says that the Ukraine refugee crisis is the worst he has ever seen. "I've been in this field for 14 years, including some of the biggest humanitarian crises of the last 20 years - the tsunami in Japan, the Ebola outbreak, the Syrian refugee crisis - but what...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — After months of maneuvering over $1 billion to replace Iron Dome batteries Israel lost in last year’s Gaza conflict, the money is to be included in a bipartisan spending bill Congress will consider this week as it looks to avoid a government shutdown. Also included in the $1.5 trillion Omnibus Appropriations Agreement announced early Wednesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is substantially increased funding for nonprofit security, a key request by major Jewish groups over the last yea...
(JTA) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Israel for its support for his country Sunday, the day after Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett flew to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I am grateful to Israel for their support for Ukraine,” Zelensky said, according to a translation by Sky News published by The Times of Israel. “We need the support of all countries and we were talking about the support we need now and how we are going to cooperate in the future after the war.” Zelensky did not m...
