Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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LONDON (JTA) - At a reception of faith leaders at Buckingham Palace the day after Queen Elizabeth's death in September, King Charles pulled Britain's chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, aside for a word. The reception was pushed earlier in the day than originally planned to accommodate Mirvis, since it fell on a Friday. But it ran long and Shabbat was approaching. According to Rabbi Nicky Liss, head of the Highgate Synagogue, Charles asked Mirvis what the rabbi was doing sticking around - didn't he...
(JNS) — Israel and the United Kingdom struck a landmark deal last month to heighten trade, technology and security ties for the next seven years. The 2030 Roadmap for U.K.-Israel Bilateral Relations, which was signed on March 21, pledges £20 million (nearly $25 million) in joint funding commitments for technology and innovation projects, which will enable both countries to “remain at the forefront of the technological revolution,” stated the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The announcement of the new agreement came as Eli Coh...
(JTA) — Among the many honors accruing to King Charles III coronation was a new version of a traditional prayer performed by a British-Jewish children’s choir. United Synagogue, the union of British Orthodox synagogues, commissioned a new recording of “Adon Olam,” a prayer perhaps most recognizable as the conclusion of Shabbat services, and dedicated it to the new king. The rendition was composed by a British-Jewish musician who teaches at a Jewish school and was arranged by the brothers in the indie rock due Portnoy, according to the Jewish...
(JNS) — In one image, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shown, with a Star of David on his forehead, consuming children’s blood. “Can’t get enough,” a caption reads. Another post praised a convicted terrorist and a third included a video declaring the Holocaust a hoax. These were among the items that Canadian realtor Tariq Khan, a realtor in Canada, posted on social media. Khan, a failed 2021 city council candidate in Calgary—the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta—was also a member of Calgary’s multicultural cou...
State funds $1.5 million of Florida Holocaust Museum’s $7.5 million request (JNS) — Having requested $7.5 million to improve security, among other things, the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg received $1.5 million in funding from the state senate for 2023-24. In 2022, it received $5 million for the same reasons. The money is for “facility improvements, remediation and related costs to expand, preserve and secure the museum’s environment, and resources for students, teachers, scholars, descendants and visitors.” Per the museum’s approp...
TEL AVIV - Young people with substance-abuse dependencies often face a stark challenge when trying to overcome their problem: Any kind of lapse is seen as a failure, and if they backslide even occasionally they start to see themselves as hopeless recidivists. "This 12-step idea says that once you're an addict, you're always an addict - that as soon as you touch drugs, you're off the wagon," said psychologist Tamir Rotman. "But it's very detrimental to teens at such an early stage of their lives...
(JNS) - While "dialogue" was a central theme of the "Israel at 75 General Assembly," the annual gathering of the Jewish Federations of North America, held this week in Tel Aviv to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Israel's birth, several of the key discussion topics appeared overwhelmingly one-sided. This was especially evident when it came to the foremost political issue of the day-judicial reform-a topic that has consumed Israel's political landscape for the past three months. Federation...
(JNS) - Member of Knesset Simcha Rothman, one of the key figures behind the government's judicial reform initiative, was continuously interrupted by hecklers during a panel discussion at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in Tel Aviv. Although the panel discussion at the Expo Tel Aviv convention center was not on judicial reform but rather on issues related to the Law of Return, protesters, many identifying with Achim L'Neshek ("Brothers in Arms"), an extremist group...
(JNS) — Fourteen Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), urged U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 13 to condition U.S. aid to Israel. “We call on your administration to ensure that all future foreign assistance to Israel, including weapons and equipment, is not used in support of gross violations of human rights, including by strengthening end-use monitoring and financial tracking,” wrote the lawmakers. The other signers were Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.)...
(JTA) — Frankfurt’s administrative court ruled that the city can’t cancel a Roger Waters concert after calling him “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.” Waters, the former frontman of the band Pink Floyd, took legal action and prevailed on Tuesday after Frankfurt officials said in February they would cancel his concert in May. The city can appeal the ruling. The Frankfurt court ruled that because Rogers “did not glorify or relativise the crimes of the Nazis or identify with Nazi racist ideology” in past concerts, it...
‘Leave New York’s yeshivas alone,’ writes Wall Street Journal (JNS) — “Are Jewish moms and dads who send their children to religious schools lawbreakers? Or are they exercising their right to live by their beliefs—even if those beliefs are out of fashion with modern American sensibilities?” So asks William McGurn, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, in an op-ed in the paper. The piece comes to the defense of Orthodox Jews, who have come under regular fire in The New York Times, and who are being investigated by the state’s educa...
(JNS) - There are no words to describe a trip to the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The camps are surprisingly well-preserved and are a living testament to the most heinous crime in modern human history: the systematic extermination not just of every Jew, but of the attempt to annihilate every single one to the extent that shockingly detailed records were kept on so many of the 6 million killed. Visitors to the camps witness the cruelest of inhumane living conditions of the...
(JNS) - Holocaust distortion and trivialization and banalization are on the rise around the globe, even as outright denial is relegated to the fringes of society, the head of Yad Vashem said. The remarks come at a time when multiple European countries seek to whitewash their roles in World War II by highlighting the heroes among their countrymen while obscuring or outright denying the actions of collaborators who participated in the murder of six million Jews. "The good news is that outright Hol...
(JNS) — U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will lead a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel later this month and become the second-ever House speaker to address the full Knesset, his Israeli counterpart Amir Ohana announced on Tuesday. Ohana described McCarthy as a “steadfast supporter and longstanding friend of Israel,” and noted that it would be the top Republican official’s first trip outside the U.S. since assuming his post in January. “This is a clear expression of the strong and unbreakable bond between Israel and its closest a...
Omar no longer a speaker at US Commission on Religious Freedom event (JNS) — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has compared boycotts of Israel and of Nazi Germany, was slated to deliver opening remarks at a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom event on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims, according to a listing shared on Twitter. But the event is now slated for May 1, without the congresswoman on the docket. Rabbi David Saperstein, director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Jud...
(JNS) - This year's March of the Living, the annual tribute to the 6 million held at the site of the former German death camp Auschwitz in Poland, was conducted under the theme of "Honoring Jewish heroism in the Holocaust." The event took place April 19, on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was the first time since the global pandemic that the March was held in its full format, with delegations from well over 25 countries and 10,000 participating. It falls one day before the historical...
(JNS) — Victims and relatives have yet to claim millions of belongings that Nazi authorities stole from Jews and others during the Holocaust, a British official said on March 28 during an international conference of Holocaust representatives in London. Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom government’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, complained that international auctioneers are profiting from stolen artwork and other valuable artifacts as survivors who can identify their previous possessions dwindle. “We need to get a grip on this in the n...
(JTA) — When Israel and Poland agreed to resume Israeli youth trips to Polish Holocaust sites last month, their agreement stipulated that new sites be added to the students’ itineraries, including some that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, is now calling those additions “inappropriate” and “problematic.” In statements to Haaretz published on Monday, leading historians condemned the development, arguing that the new trip rules advance what they call Poland’s trac...
(JTA) — Berlin police are investigating a pro-Palestinian rally where demonstrators allegedly chanted “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel,” phrases that if verified could be criminal offenses under Germany’s strict post-World War II hate speech laws. Hundreds of people showed up in the Kreuzberg and Neukölln neighborhoods on Saturday at a rally organized in response to the police clashes with Muslim worshipers at the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last week. In video captured by a watchdog called Democ, many were also sh...
Palestinian terror cell arrested in Jenin (JNS) — Israeli forces on Tuesday arrested a terrorist cell in Jenin, in northern Samaria, that intended to carry out an attack “in an immediate time frame.” Five terrorists were detained during the operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Border Police, according to a statement from the IDF. The IDF’s Duvdevan undercover counterterror unit, a paratrooper patrol and a Shin Bet-directed military unit conducted the morning arrests, seizing ammunit...
(JNS) — Nearly half a century ago, the U.S. Congress proclaimed 1978 as a year of education, and over the next four and half decades the president has annually proclaimed Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s Hebrew birthday, the 11th of Nissan, as education day in his honor. Now, following the bipartisan tradition, U.S. President Joe Biden has announced that day, which this year fell on April 2, as a national “Day of Education and Sharing” to commemorate the life of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe. “On Education and Sharing Day, we honor the memor...
Over the last few weeks, while Israel has been roiled by demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, and President Isaac Herzog has warned about the possibility of civil war, American Jews have been watching with grave concern. Even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a delay in the government plan to overhaul the judiciary that sparked the mass protests, tensions in Israel remained high. It was precisely at this fraught moment that UJA-Federation of New York decided to bring a group of rabbis from the New York area...
Biden administration floats Iran agreement that would ease some sanctions (JNS) — Move over JCPOA. There could be a new Iran nuclear deal in town. Biden administration officials have been floating a proposed agreement with Tehran among European and Israeli partners. The terms “would include some sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran freezing parts of its nuclear program,” Axios reported. An Israeli official and a Western diplomat told Axios that Iran has rejected the proposal. The Republican Jewish Coalition also rejected it. “The Biden a...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A law passed by Israel’s government yesterday has sparked a strong rebuke from the Biden administration, words of caution from some of Israel’s strongest supporters in the Senate — and damage control from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new law repeals a portion of Israel’s 2005 disengagement, in which it withdrew settlers and troops from the entirety of the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank. While much of Israel and the world focused on the evacuation from Gaza, opponents...
(JTA) - Even though he hasn't officially declared his Republican presidential campaign (yet), Ron DeSantis has been pitching his governance of Florida as a model for running the United States - telling Fox News last week, for example, that "we can get America back on track and back on our foundations" by following Florida's example. This week, he repeated the pitch with a twist: His close relations with Israel are a template for the U.S.-Israel relationship, he said - and he's ready to make...
