Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 1920
(JTA) — After Oklahoma approved a request by the Catholic Church to open a charter school in 2023, lawsuits quickly followed. Courts at both the state and federal levels ruled against the church, finding that a publicly funded school promoting religion would be unconstitutional. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the case, signaling that the justices are willing to consider overturning a longstanding legal precedent protecting the separation of church and state. If the court allows St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to become...
(JNS) — The Cleveland Jewish News Foundation’s “Educate the Educators” initiative aims to combat antisemitism and misinformation spread on college campuses around Ohio by sending a free copy of the award-winning Cleveland Jewish News each week to top college officials. Mark Bogomolny, board chair of the foundation, said the first round of newspapers was sent the week of Nov. 19, 2024, to 92 schools and universities, including public, private and technical schools across Ohio. Some of the recipients include Oberlin College, Case Western Reserve... Full story
At the recent Jewish Chamber Breakfast on Feb. 6, a brief news clip was shown highlighting the opportunities available to Jewish business owners, including newly available minority grants. The news clip explained that the U.S. Department of Commerce has now officially recognized Jewish-owned businesses as minority business enterprises. This designation will enable Jewish entrepreneurs access to federal programs, contracts, loans and grants that previously were not available to them. In the past, Jewish businesses were not eligible for minority...
(JNS) — Several American Jewish groups congratulated U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance on his inauguration on Monday and stated that they look forward to working with him on a variety of issues, including fighting Jew-hatred. B’nai B’rith International cited collaborating on “combating antisemitism, safeguarding Jewish communities, ensuring Israel’s security, strengthening the vital U.S.-Israel alliance and other key policy priorities.” The American Jewish Committee mentioned working together “to strengthen Is...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — American students volunteering in Israel launched an initiative to show appreciation to wives of IDF reservists serving in Gaza and Lebanon. The project is a collaboration between the IS-Resilient organization and the OU-JLIC (Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus) student association. The volunteers, mostly university students, visited the homes of soldiers from reserve units stationed on the Gaza and Lebanon fronts. With the wives managing their households alone, the students provided them with much-needed support b...
(JTA) — A performer unfurled a banner showing the Sudanese and Palestinian flags and the words “Sudan” and “Gaza” during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Sunday. The performer, who was not immediately identified, was detained on the field and will be barred from all NFL stadiums for the rest of his life, the NFL said in a statement. The football organization and Roc Nation, which produced the halftime show, said the flag had not been part of any plan or rehearsal. “The individual hid the item on his possessio...
One of the flight attendants killed in the recent plane crash in Washington, D.C., was an alumnus of a Jewish youth group with a passion for travel and a talent for comedy. Ian Epstein, one of the four flight attendants on American Eagle Flight 5342, was an alumnus of the pluralist Jewish youth group BBYO, the group posted to Facebook on Thursday. He is one of 67 victims of the crash Wednesday night over the Potomac River, in which an army helicopter collided with a passenger plane. "Our hearts...
(JNS) — Harvard University has resolved two federal lawsuits alleging antisemitic discrimination on campus with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education. As part of the agreement, Harvard will incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, and the contemporary examples appended to the definition, when evaluating whether alleged discrimination violates the university’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies. Harvard Unive...
(JTA) — Police in Tennessee are investigating whether an antisemitic manifesto posted online was written by a teenager accused of carrying out a fatal school shooting in Nashville on Jan. 22. The alleged shooter at Antioch High School appears to have posted a livestream of the shooting as well as content on his social media accounts prior to the attack, in which one student was killed. The material was removed after its connection to the shooting became known. According to The Tennessean newspaper, the materials attributed to the shooter, i...
President Donald Trump said he is “not confident” that the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war will last, adding that the United States could help rebuild Gaza. Trump, sitting in the Oval Office, made the comments following his inauguration Monday. A reporter asked whether he was confident he could “keep the ceasefire in Gaza and conclude the three phases of the deal.” “I’m not confident,” Trump responded. “That’s not our war, it’s their war. I’m not confident.” Then, presumably referring to Hamas, he added, “But I think they’re very weaken...
(JNS) — U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, widely known for her antisemitic and anti-Israel views, recently visited the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her presence raised significant concerns in Jewish societies and the wider Jewish community as her previous so-called lectures have gathered dozens of radicalized youths who often wage a campus war on Jewish and Zionist students. Albanese is a proud supporter of antisemitic mobs who proudly deny Israel’s right to exist, as well as an outspoken “critic” of the world’s...
(JNS) — A report from the New England branch of the American Jewish Committee details efforts by the Massachusetts Teachers Association to slant classroom instruction against the Jewish state. The AJC says the report, released on Dec. 12, shows the teachers union “waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.” Examples of the MTA’s bias cited in the report include promoting “multiple one-sided anti-Israel resolutions,” including o...
(JTA) - A synagogue with more than 100 years of history in Pasadena, California, burned down overnight as fires swept across parts of Southern California. The fate of a Chabad center about 40 miles away near the coast was unclear as a major fire flared in the Pacific Palisades, one of three different blazes destroying structures and threatening lives in multiple pockets of the greater Los Angeles area. Additional Jewish institutions lay in evacuation zones, while others took preparations in...
(JTA) — Two blocks away: a school reduced to ruins. Across the street: rubble. Under the door: ashes. And yet at Kehillat Israel, things look much the same as they did at the beginning of the week, before the fires. That’s what the clergy found when they reentered their synagogue’s building on Thursday in the wake of the blaze that devastated Pacific Palisades. A reporter with NBC News who himself grew up at Kehillat Israel accompanied Rabbi Amy Bernstein, Rabbi Daniel Sher and Cantor Chayim Frenkel as they took stock of their synagogue’s remar...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 recipients on Saturday including George Soros and Hillary Clinton. The White House citation for the nation’s highest civilian honor noted Soros’s rise from surviving the Holocaust as a young Hungarian Jew to becoming one of the richest men in the world. “Soros escaped Nazi occupation to build a life of freedom for himself and countless others around the world,” the citation read. “Educated in England, he settled in America as he became an investor and philanthrop...
(JNS) — Absent the violence, controversy and false claims of election fraud of four years ago but amid tighter security, Congress certified the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 that made Donald Trump the 47th president of the United States. This time around, no one in Congress rose to object to the votes, no one claimed the election was stolen, no one filed lawsuits to throw out the ballots, no one planned rallies to demand that the results be overturned and no one claimed the vice president could unilaterally reject state-certified electoral v...
(JNS) — The State of Tennessee adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred in May 2022. On Jan. 2, Mark Pody, a Republican member of the state’s Senate, introduced a resolution that called for that definition of antisemitism to be used when the state makes legal determinations about bias. “We want to go forward to have a safe place for Jews in Tennessee,” Pody told JNS. “There have been things this year that have targeted the Jewish community that are not acceptable in Tennessee,” the non-Jewis...
(JTA) — Two Israelis were among those injured in Jan. 1’s truck ramming attack in New Orleans, which authorities are investigating as the work of a terror cell tied to the Islamic State. The attack, perpetrated in the first hours of the new year, killed 15 people at a crowded celebration in the city’s French Quarter, and wounded dozens. The attacker, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, was killed in a firefight with police. Jabbar, 42, had an ISIS flag in the car with him, and authorities are investigatin...
(JNS) — Some 5,000 people attended the annual Chabad lighting of the National Menorah on the Ellipse, south of the White House, on Wednesday night, the first night of Chanukah, according to organizers, who had to set up extra chairs for the overflow crowd. Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch, emceed the event, which he and his father, Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, have organized for decades. He told JNS that the turnout and energy at the event show that Jews ha...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s federal death sentence remains intact, after President Joe Biden commuted 37 of the 40 sentences of prisoners on federal death row. All of the three men still sentenced to death committed crimes that were motivated by hate or terrorism. Biden’s announcement early Monday morning is among a number of measures he is taking to protect his policies and vision ahead of Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Biden froze the use of the death penalty while in office and Trump has said he plans to...
(JNS) — The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has a 30-year history of ties to Hamas, has used open-meeting laws across the United States to influence city councils, school boards and other public forums. But when it comes to the ethnic-studies curriculum adopted in secret in Santa Ana, Calif., CAIR has made it clear that it is not interested in governmental transparency or community participation. CAIR and its affiliate organizations selectively champion free speech and transparency only when it serves their agenda. On Dec. 6, t...
(JNS) - Using his "one of a kind" personal menorah, which is made from "shrapnel of rockets that were shot down by the IDF and then smelted together by an Israeli artisan" reminds House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of the "true meaning of Chanukah." "In the face of darkness, light bursts forth. In the presence of fear, miracles emerge," Johnson said during the second annual Capitol Menorah Lighting Ceremony on Tuesday. "And in moments of despair, hope springs eternal." Johnson's menorah, which R...
By Menachem Wecker (JNS) — At a Chanukah celebration at the Israeli embassy in Washington on Wednesday night, getting choked up while talking about the plight of the hostages was a bipartisan experience. Both Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, paused to compose themselves as they addressed the audience. “For millions of Jewish men, women and children across the entire world, Chanukah is a sacred time. One where the...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — There are 34 Jews in the incoming Congress, with a 35th likely to join in April. Should that candidate, Florida State Sen. Randy Fine, win his special election in Florida, that would mean no change in numbers overall between the outgoing Congress and the incoming one: The House Jewish delegation will drop from 26 to 25, but the number of Jewish senators will increase from nine to a minyan. Dig a little deeper, though, and there are some changes — both in terms of new challenges and new opportunities for the Jewish class...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, is ready to relinquish his title as Senate majority leader, but the most senior Jewish elected official in U.S. history will get to remain the leader of what will be a minority caucus in the next Congress. Senate Democrats reelected Schumer as their leader on Tuesday, a validation after a tough election for the party, which lost control of the White House and the Senate and failed to regain the U.S. House of Representatives. Schumer was unopposed and the vote was unanimous. As of...
