Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - At least 45 people were crushed to death and at least 150 wounded Thursday night in a stampede during a celebration that drew tens of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews to the northern Israeli mountain village of Meron. Meron is home to the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, an ancient sage associated with the Jewish holiday of Lag B'Omer, which began Thursday night. More than 100,000 people had reportedly traveled to the town, in the largest gathering in Israel since the onset of the...
(JNS) — Ahead of Israel’s 72nd Independence Day, the Central Bureau of Statistics has published the nation’s latest population figures. The Jewish state is home to 9,327,000 people, among them 6.894 million Jews (73.9 percent of the population), 1.966 million Arabs (21.1 percent) and 467,000 citizens of other ethnicities (5 percent). Demographic growth projections indicate that in 2030, Israel’s population will stand at 11.1 million, and in 2040 at 13.2 million. By the time Israel marks its 100th Independence Day in 2048, its populat...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard on Monday night dedicated a Torah scroll that he brought to Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. He commissioned the writing of the Torah scroll 12 years ago, while he was in a U.S. federal prison, serving a 35-year sentence. Pollard traveled to Samaria with his wife, Esther, and the Shomron Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. "I feel a very personal connection to this place and to Joseph who is buried here, and everything he went through,"...
(JNS) - Threats by Iran to retaliate against what it said was an Israeli sabotage attack on its Natanz nuclear site on April 11 and the reported attack on an Iranian command ship in the Red Sea on April 6 should be taken seriously, observers in Israel say, but they also indicate the distress that the Iranian regime is feeling as it absorbs one blow after another. Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism and the Middle East, and a senior...
(JNS) — The head of Public Health at Israel’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that the COVID-19 virus was “dying out” in the country, albeit slowly. Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of Public Health at Israel’s Health Ministry, said on Tuesday that the coronavirus in the country is “dying out” at a slower pace. “We currently have a little over 300 daily COVID cases. This is a very significant decline. Most of the localities in Israel have low morbidity. Meanwhile, there are almost no significant virus concentrations and no hotspots at all...
(JNS) — The former CEO of Israel’s Walla news website on Tuesday resumed his testimony before the Jerusalem District Court in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Ilan Yeshua is a key witness for the prosecution in Case 4000, in which Netanyahu is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust for allegedly promoting regulatory decisions that favored the interests of Shaul Elovitch, then the controlling shareholder of telecom giant Bezeq, in exchange for positive coverage in Walla, which was then owned by Bezeq. The c...
(JTA) - Following yet another Israeli election, voters are getting to know an unlikely kingmaker: Mansour Abbas, an Arab-Israeli lawmaker who might be the one to break Israel's two-year political stalemate. Abbas, head of the United Arab List political party, is not the kind of politician who usually wields power in the Jewish state. He's an Islamist who has more in common ideologically with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood than with any of Israel's establishment political parties. But through...
Matnat Chaim has facilitated 1,000 donations since it was founded in 2009 (Israel Hayom via JNS) Israel celebrated a special milestone Sunday, as the Matnat Chaim nonprofit organization, which encourages and facilitates living kidney donations, is about to break a world record by marking its 1,000th transplant. Since Matnat Chaim, Hebrew for “Gift of Life,” was founded in 2019, the number of kidney donations in Israel has quadrupled. The organization’s data reveals that about two-thirds of the donors are men, a third are women and 40 perce...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Arab Israeli terrorist Rushdi Hamdan Abu Mukh was released from prison on Monday upon completion of his 35-year prison sentence. According to local media reports, following his release, Abu Makh, a member of a cell that abducted and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984, returned to his home in Baka al-Gharbiyeh, where locals waving Palestinian flags were waiting to welcome him. In an interview with Army Radio on Monday, Moshe Tamam's brother Oren demanded that Is...
For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll. The scroll, which is written in Greek, includes portions of the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, including the books of Zechariah and Nahum The verses, from Zechariah 8:16–17, were discovered in a cave where Jewish refugees hid almost 1900 years ago. They read: "These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your g...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Israel's Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich announced on Tuesday that he plans to recommend that Israel's President Reuven Rivlin task Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the next government. "Based on the prime minister's commitment that he will form a right-wing government that will safeguard Israel's Jewish identity, bolster the Judea and Samaria settlement enterprise, and pursue the necessary reforms in the judiciary, the Religious Zionist...
(JNS) - An 11-year-old Israeli boy has uncovered a rare, 2,500-year-old amulet during a family excursion in the northern Negev Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Tuesday. Zvi Ben-David of Beersheva came across the pottery figurine in Nahal Besor. He showed it to his mother, a professional tour guide, who contacted the IAA. According to Oren Shmueli, the IAA's district archaeologist for the western Negev, the statuette, depicting a bare-breasted woman wearing a scarf, was believed...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponents have no clear path toward a Knesset majority, Israeli election results show, indicating that the country's political gridlock will continue. The results of Tuesday's election confirm that Netanyahu's Likud Party won the most seats, 30, his bloc of right-wing, and religious supporters only have 52 seats, while the parties opposed to the Israeli leader had 57 between them. While the right-wing Yamina Party (seven seats) and the...
(JNS) - Frimet and Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki, a U.S. national, was murdered in August 2001 in the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, published a new video this week calling on the Biden administration to pressure the Kingdom of Jordan to extradite Ahlam Ahmad Tamimi, the Hamas terrorist who orchestrated the bombing, so that she can stand trial in a U.S. federal court. The release of the video came out four years to the date since the United States announced terrorism...
With most of the votes counted and no decisive outcome as far as who the next prime minister will be, or if Israel will be headed to an unprecedented fifth national election in less than three years, one thing is clear, the big winners in Israel’s national election this week were Israeli Arabs. One might have said that a year ago, after Israel’s third national election in (what was then) a year. Then, the “Joint Arab List,” a faction made up of four Arab political parties running together, won a striking 15 seats in Israel’s Knesset (parliame...
Israelis do not make islands in the shape of palm trees, nor towering skyscrapers, nor expensive hotels, nor do their leaders use cars with solid silver bodies (a clear allusion to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates). The pride of the State of Israel is that its technologies will soon be able to be used by all humanity: 1. The University of Tel Aviv is developing a nasal vaccine that will protect people from Alzheimer’s and stroke. 2. Technion, Institute of Technology (Haifa), developed a simple blood test capable of detecting different t...
(Israel Hayom) — Israel’s coronavirus reproduction rate continues to drop, according to Health Ministry data released on Wednesday, and now stands at 0.59. Of the 41,443 COVID-19 tests that the ministry conducted on Tuesday, 679 came back positive, placing the infection rate at 1.7 percent. There are currently 14,403 active cases in Israel. Some 762 Israelis are hospitalized; 500 are in serious condition; and 207 are on ventilators. Of those hospitalized: 74 percent are not vaccinated; 15 percent have received their first jab; and 11 per...
By Howard Blas (JNS) - As Deni Avdija and the Washington Wizards mark the halfway point of the season and celebrate his selection to the 2020-21 NBA Rising Stars World Team roster, 21-year-old Wizards super-fan Matan Karudo could not be happier. For Karudo, Avdija is a source of Jewish and Israeli pride; more than that, Avdija has even helped created special family bonding time in the Karudo household. The resident of Long Island, N.Y., first learned about the 20-year-old Israeli basketball...
The fourth attempt in two years to unseat embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have failed once again, with Netanyahu securing his largest-ever electoral victory over his rivals. Exit polls show Netanyahu's Likud receiving a strong 30 to 31 mandates. The tally is at least 12 seats higher than the next largest party: the left-wing Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid. While official vote totals will only be completed in the coming days-with the potential to alter Knesset...
(Israel Hayom) - Workers at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem on Tuesday conducted the site's customary biannual clearout of all the notes stuck between the stones over the course of the previous six months. The notes are traditionally collected before Passover, which this year begins after Shabbat on the evening of March 27, and on Rosh Hashanah. Mindful of public-health regulations, workers wore gloves, masks and used disposable wooden sticks to remove the notes. These will be buried on...
(JNS) — Two events of religious and historical significance that very nearly took place last week point to a deeper layer in Jordan and Saudi Arabia’s struggle for guardianship of Islamic holy places on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israel has now been dragged into this struggle against its will. Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein, King Abdullah’s son, was about to enter the gates of the Temple Mount on March 10 to perpetuate Jordan’s formal status as the Muslim world’s guardian of the site. However, the visit was canceled at the last minute, supposedl...
On March 23, Israel will hold its fourth national election in two years. This is a result of political stalemate and politicking that's placed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against most other parties, with his Likud party showing one of its lowest polling projections in the past three elections. It is not the first election since the pandemic, but the pandemic will play a more significant role than the previous election a year ago. In addition to the pandemic, there are several other issues...
(JTA) — Israel must grant citizenship to Jews who converted to Judaism in Israel under non-Orthodox auspices, its Supreme Court ruled Monday, possibly igniting another round in the long-running government battle over who the state should recognize as Jewish. The decision, written by Chief Justice Esther Hayut, comes less than a month before national elections. Israel’s Law of Return offers automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent. The state also generally recognizes those who converted to Judaism under Orthodox sta...
(JTA) — The Israeli government approved a plan Monday to provide compensation of up to $60,000 to some of the families of children who went missing while in state care in the 1950s. But advocacy groups and several of the families have already rejected the plan, calling it a cynical move designed to silence their larger demands for accountability. They are demanding an official apology, an expansion of the eligibility criteria, and further access to state records that might shed light on the fate of their relatives. The compensation plan — amo...
RAANANA, Israel (JTA) — Rio de Janeiro and Raanana are now sister cities, a longtime aspiration of Brazilian immigrants who have turned the upscale Tel Aviv suburb into their new home. “It’s the result of the great relationship between Israel and Brazil and the fact that Raanana is home to the largest population of Brazilian immigrants in our country,” the mayor of Raanana, Chaim Broyde, wrote on social media on Monday. “I intend to exploit the connections, promote economic, commercial and cultural issues between our cities.” The sister citi...
