Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 676 - 700 of 1075
(Israel21c via JNS) — The closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Sunday brought to an end another Winter Games without a medal for Israel. Nevertheless, the six athletes representing the Jewish state had some high points to celebrate. Barnabas Szollos, 23, said at the start that his goal was to be in the top 30. He skied in five events and placed twice in the top 30, twice in the top 20 and once in the top 10, finishing in sixth place in men’s alpine skiing and setting a new Israeli record in that sport. He was just 1.0...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) -One of Israel's most curious mysteries was solved on Sunday when the identity of the artist who created the small bronze menorah that stands on the Knesset grounds was finally revealed. The Knesset Menorah is one of the most recognized and revered state symbols in Israel's history. Israel's parliament is home to more than one menorah statue. Most famously, a seven-branched menorah stands just outside the Knesset plaza. It towers 4.30 meters high, 3.5 meters wide (14 feet...
(JNS) — “We are together in the fight against terror posed by Iran and its nuclear development,” Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday at the Knesset. Iran “is a threat to the world,” said Pelosi, who is heading a delegation of high-level members of Congress. “Israel’s proximity to Iran is a threat to us all and the responsibility of all of us.” Pelosi was greeted by Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy, who said: “The strategic alliance between Israel and the United States has proven that we know how to stand toge...
(JNS) - The southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel chose a new leader in recent weeks that cements its continued role in the Israeli government. Sheikh Safwat Frij, who previously served as deputy head of the movement and based in Kafr Qasim, was elected over Sheikh Muhammad Salameh Hassan, a religious authority in the movement. He has publicly used harsh rhetoric, saying, "The people of Palestine are united from the river to the sea until the occupation disappears entirely." Frij...
(Israel21c via JNS) — A few years ago, Shani Shukrun began matching people up on Facebook. Not for romantic purposes, but to bring together people in need with donors who could help them. Each time, she’d raise 300 to 400 shekels ($95 to $127) for a weekend shop for a family in need, or store dry goods in an extra room for someone to come and get. “But in 2020, my daughter Oreen was born,” recalled Shukrun, now 27. “She was born a preemie weighing 1.5 kilos at the height of the COVID pandemic, and I was really worried about people coming in...
(JNS) - In its annual strategic survey released in recent days, the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies pointed to a central understanding that has rippled through the region. The United States is focusing its attention and resources on dealing with China (and, more recently, Russia), and is unwilling to be significantly involved in further conflicts in the Middle East. Washington's enthusiasm for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is one such signal of this intention...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have ordered the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria's supreme planning council to halt discussions on the authorization of construction to connect Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem in the E-1 corridor. Construction had been planned for some 3,000 acres of largely government-owned land and was to include some 3,500 housing units. The committee began to discuss the plan, which had been frozen for...
(JNS) — The Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum sent a request on Jan. 16 under Israel’s Freedom of Information Act to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, asking for information and details on his agreement to transfer hundreds of millions of shekels to the Palestinian Authority. The problem, according to Kohelet, is that such a move violates Israeli law, which directly prohibits money transfers to the P.A. as a consequence of its pay-for-slay policy that awards Palestinian terrorists with money if they kill Israelis. In his meeting las...
Thought nonbinary gender was a modern concept? Think again. The ancient Jewish understanding of gender was far more nuanced than many assume. The Talmud, a huge and authoritative compendium of Jewish legal traditions, contains in fact no less than eight gender designations including: • Zachar, male. • Nekevah, female. • Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics. • Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics. • Aylonit hamah, identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics. • Aylonit adam, identified...
(JTA) — Hummus is the glue that holds society together in “Breaking Bread,” a new documentary about Israeli and Arab chefs that strives to be as delicious as its dishes. Unfortunately, the film is missing a few key ingredients. The film’s main protagonist is Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, a microbiologist-turned-chef who organizes a food festival in Haifa, which she sees as a poignant symbol of Arab-Jewish coexistence. There is a special section of both the film and festival devoted to “The Hummus Project,” in which different chefs make different v...
(JNS) - An Israeli hospital has started recruiting volunteers for the world's largest known study for the detection of COVID-19 within the surface of the eye, announced Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer on Thursday. The hospital will be testing if the Tear Film Imager (TFI) developed by the Israeli company AdOM Advanced Optical Technologies, which takes a noninvasive measurement of the tear film, can effectively diagnose and determine if a person is infected with COVID. The tear film is a thi...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry has announced plans to allocate approximately 10 million shekels ($3.2 million) to the preservation, rehabilitation, and rescue of heritage sites in Judea and Samaria. Dozens of heritage and archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley have been damaged in recent years by authorities in Ramallah as well as antiquities thieves in the Palestinian territories. Last month, Israel Hayom reported that thieves had caused significant damage to an ancient Roman a...
(JNS) -Three pendants inscribed with the "Shema Yisrael" prayer and depictions of Moses and the Ten Commandments have been discovered in archaeological excavations in the Sobibor extermination camp over the past decade, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed on Thursday. The findings, made by Wojciech Mazurek from Poland, Yoram Haimi from the IAA and Ivar Schute from Holland, with the assistance of local residents, were made public on Thursday to coincide with International Holocaust...
(Israel21c via JNS) - I expected the office of SpaceIL-the company that created "Beresheet," the first-ever private spacecraft to attempt a moon landing, in 2019-to be in an industrial zone, filled with highly classified, space-age robotics. Instead, it's in an ordinary office building, next to companies geared to earthly pursuits like home decorating and teeth whitening. The only hint of the company's higher aims is in the office's modest conference room, where there is a scale replica of the...
(JNS) — Israel is preparing to test its novel coronavirus vaccine candidate, BriLife, as a booster dose, NRx Pharmaceuticals reported this week. The American company signed an agreement with the Defense Ministry in July to help fast-track the vaccine, developed by the Israel Institute for Biological Research. NRx, which is traded on Nasdaq, was given exclusive worldwide development, manufacturing and marketing rights. NRx met with IIBR experts last week to review data and research related to BriLife’s efficacy against the Omicron variant of...
TEL AVIV - A few weeks ago, Joel Tenenbaum, 81, and Marilyn Berkowitz, 84, arrived in Tel Aviv on an El Al flight from New York ready to start their new lives in Israel. They had met through JDate five years earlier. Each was widowed; Tenebaum had been married for 47 years, Berkowitz, known as Lyn, for 49. A retired New York trial lawyer raised in Brooklyn, Tenenbaum always had felt an affinity for Israel - fueled since childhood by Hebrew school and the movie "Exodus." Berkowitz, a former...
(JNS) — For two years now, since the outbreak of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, hotels in Israel have seen dramatic drops in stays by incoming tourists; tour guides have lost most, if not all, of their business; and restaurants and other business owners who rely heavily on visitor traffic have suffered catastrophic and often irreversible damage, with many forced to close. The question on everyone’s mind is: When will tourism to Israel pick up again? Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahum told JNS that the tourism industry has been mos...
(JNS) — Documents, photos and ancient manuscripts from a monastery in the Sinai Peninsula are now available for free on the National Library of Israel website. The collection from Saint Catherine’s Monastery includes items from the 12th century. The monastery’s library is considerably older as it was founded in the sixth century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian the first and is believed to be the oldest working library. It contains works in various languages including Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and more, which library offic...
(JNS) — Israel abandoned its “red list” of countries last week — those destinations with high COVID-19 infection rates, from which foreign travelers were banned from entering Israel. It’s welcome news to pro-Israel groups whose bread and butter is organizing trips to Israel. They say the travel bans have complicated their mission to connect people to the Jewish state, and no amount of speaker series and digital events can compare to “putting two feet on Israeli soil.” Izzy Tapoohi, president and CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, t...
(JNS) — Just outside the entrance to the United Nations, a famous Jewish prophecy is engraved into the plaza’s Isaiah Wall: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more.” Sadly, wars continue to be fought across the Middle East, and Israel still strives to maintain its Qualitative Military Edge over other nations in the region. Yet more and more, wars are changing form, and the effectiveness of conventional weapons...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — A record-breaking number of Israelis tested positive for the coronavirus in the current infection wave, according to Health Ministry data published on Tuesday morning. Of the 197,402 Israelis screened for the virus in the past 24 hours, 10,644 (5.39 percent) tested positive. It is the second-highest number of daily cases since Sept. 2, when 11,345 Israelis were reported to have been infected — the highest caseload since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The reproduction rate, which refers to the number of peo...
(JNS) — Last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned that Israel will face increasing allegations that it is an apartheid state in 2022, with the foreign minister saying that he fears that opponents of Israel will attempt to target Israel’s involvement in sporting and cultural events. “The concern from the foreign ministry is that you have three or four different legal proceedings in which allegations of apartheid have been made and that at least one of them may end up endorsing these allegations,” Yuval Shany, professor of interna...
This past Thursday, Jeremy Gimpel, one of the founders of the Arugot Farm near Tekoa in Judea, received notice from the IDF that the vineyard that he and his partners planted on state land five years ago is slated to be demolished beginning on Jan. 16, on the week of Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish holiday when it’s customary to plant trees, except during the Shmita (Sabbatical) year. “Nothing like this has happened in Judea in more than 10 years,” said Gimpel, who is completely baffled by this order. “T...
(JNS) — As details emerged from Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Dec. 28 meeting at his private residence in Rosh Ha’ayin with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, many Israelis were left in shock. According to various reports, Gantz had offered Abbas a series of “confidence-building measures” as described by the Israeli Defense Ministry, which included economic benefits to the P.A. with regard to VAT, import taxes and excise duties; a NIS 100 million ($32.2 million) loan; 1,100 entry permits for Palestinian businessmen; and dozens...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister on Monday called for a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestinians, citing concerns that otherwise international organizations may designate Israel and apartheid state. In a press briefing, Lapid said the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet would soon convene to discuss a scenario in which the Palestinian Authority announced it was willing to start talks with Israel. Citing an “intelligence-based assessment,” he said that Israel should expect to see a significant increase in allegations from the Pales...
