Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1229 - 1253 of 1886
(JTA)—Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced at a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony that she is descended from Sephardic Jews who fled to Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition. Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat, broke the news to a crowd gathered Sunday night at the Jackson Heights Jewish Center in Queens. It was a party organized by the group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. “One of the things that we discovered about ourselves is that a very, very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sep...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-The largest baking company in the United States will be removing kosher certification from nearly all of its bread and rolls. Bimbo Bakeries USA confirmed to JTA that it will be removing the certification. The company produces brands including Arnold, Sara Lee, Stroehmann, Freihofer's and others. Two of its major brands, Entenmann's and Thomas, will remain certified kosher. So, kosher eaters, your crumb doughnuts and English muffins are still safe. A couple of rye...
(JTA)—A Toledo, Ohio-area man was arrested for planning an attack on a local synagogue. Damon Joseph, of Holland, Ohio, was charged in federal court in Toledo on Monday with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He told an undercover FBI agent that he was inspired by the shooting attack on a synagogue building in Pittsburgh that left 11 worshippers dead. “I admire what the guy did with the shooting actually,” Joseph said of the Pittsburgh shooting to an undercover agent, according to the Department of Justice. “I can see myself...
When Michaela Weinstein first encountered racist and anti-Semitic slurs at her California high school, she felt sick to her stomach. Students at Albany High School, in the San Francisco Bay Area, were drawing swastikas on schoolbooks and posting photos on Instagram comparing black women to gorillas. Even two years later, anti-Semitism has remained a problem at the school: This fall, the outside walls of Weinstein's school gym were spray-painted with hate-filled graffiti. "There were different...
(JNS)-Angie Craig, 46, is a health-care executive who unseated incumbent Republican Rep. Jason Lewis on Nov. 6 and became the first LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Minnesota. JNS talked with Craig by phone. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Q: What is your overall stance on the U.S.-Israel relationship? A: I think with support we'll be an active part of promoting a strong, safe and secure Israel, and be supportive of strengthening the relationship our country shares....
(JNS)-U.S. President Donald Trump nominated State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert on Friday as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, replacing Nikki Haley, who is stepping down at the end of the year. Bloomberg News first reported this development on Thursday night. Nauert, a former Fox News personality, was considered the frontrunner after former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell withdrew from consideration. Also touted were U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey...
(JNS)—Ohio State University’s student government overwhelmingly rejected a resolution on Wednesday night, calling on the school to separate itself from firms that do business with Israel. The BDS measure, defeated in a vote of 30-7 with three abstentions, called for OSU to “divest from, and boycott G4S, Caterpillar Inc., Sabra Dipping Company and Hewlett-Packard, all of which benefit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” in addition to severing academic ties with the Jewish state. The Undergraduate Student Government’s president and vice...
(JNS)-Donna Shalala, 77, is no stranger to politics or the relationship between the United States and Israel. She served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, where she traveled to Israel and helped researchers there obtain grants from the National Institutes of Health, in addition to assisting with other initiatives inside the Jewish state. She then went into the private sector: serving as University of Miami president for 14 years and president of the Clinton...
(JNS)—Donna Shalala, 77, is no stranger to politics or the relationship between the United States and Israel. She served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, where she traveled to Israel and helped researchers there obtain grants from the National Institutes of Health, in addition to assisting with other initiatives inside the Jewish state. She then went into the private sector: serving as University of Miami president for 14 years and president of the Clinton Foundation for two years. Shalala, endorsed by t...
(JTA)—More than 2,000 handmade Stars of David were hung throughout Pittsburgh. The stars, created by more than 1,000 volunteers from around the world, were hung on Saturday by 40 volunteers. Each star—some crocheted, some made with leather—had a heart in the center. The stars were the brainchild of Hinda Mandell and Ellen Dominus Broude, who created the Facebook page Jewish Hearts from Pittsburgh in response to the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue building in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood that left 11 worshippers dead. The page calle...
(JTA)—A 181-year-old rule banning Congress members from wearing hats of any kind could be overturned in order to accommodate a newly elected Muslim lawmaker who wears a headscarf called a hijab. Some Jewish groups are supporting her efforts, which would enable Jewish lawmakers to wear a kippah. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who won election this month, is a co-author of the proposal. She became one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to the House of Representatives. Rashida Tlaib, who was elected to serve in Congress from the D...
The world was taken by surprised with the announcement that Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., will be resigning at the end of the year. The pro-Israel diplomat, dubbed “Hurricane Haley” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for her strong defense of the Jewish state, viewed standing up to the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias and defending moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem among her main achievements in her diplomatic posting. The outspoken pro-Israel diplomat will be sorely missed. Here is a selection of some her most memorable quote...
(JTA)—Women’s March co-founder Teresa Shook called on its current organizers to step down Monday, saying they “allowed anti-Semitism.” In a Facebook post, Shook said Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez “have steered the Movement away from its true course.” “In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs,” Shook wrote. Th...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS)—Voices filled with emotion, Chabad rabbis from across California made clear their determination to help people in need while dealing with the ongoing devastation that uncontrollable blazes have wrought on their hometowns. “Paradise is a part of our community,” said Rabbi Mendy Zwiebel of the town in Northern California where more than 30 people have been killed as the Camp Fire decimated all of structures in its path. “We had people over for Shabbat who lost everything. This wasn’t expected. On Thursday morning,...
(JNS)—The U.S. Department of State announced on Tuesday rewards of up to $5 million each for information or identification leading to the capture of the following terrorist figures: Hamas leader Saleh al-Aruri, and Hezbollah leaders Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb and Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i. Aruri is a deputy of Hamas’s political bureau and a founder of the group’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. He is currently living “freely in Lebanon, where he reportedly is working with Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutiona...
(JTA)-The death toll and damage continue to rise in California in the wildfires ravaging the state. More than 6,400 homes have been damaged and at least 31 people have been killed, according to CNN. Like other Californians, Jewish residents are evacuating their homes and dealing with the devastating fallout of the fires. Synagogues, camps and a day school have all sustained damage. Here are two remarkable stories of people coming together as a result of the fires, including a rabbi who ran into...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-The Woolsey Fire, which began late last week and engulfed a massive swath of Southern California, has killed at least two people, burned nearly 100,000 acres and ravaged hundreds of structures-including several touchstones of Jewish life in this city. Three historic Jewish sleep-away camps and a Jewish retreat center, all nestled in the Malibu hills, were consumed. A Jewish community day school lost three of its buildings, and several synagogues have smoke damage. Many...
The Zionist Organization of America has condemned the anti-Israel record of newly elected Member of Congress Ihlan Omar and is seeking to alert the public to her record of hostile, anti-Israel extremism. Omar, a Muslim refugee from Somalia, was elected in the 2018 midterm elections to replace Rep. Keith Ellison (D–MI) in the state’s 5th Congressional District, a solidly Democratic seat. The ZOA has also called upon the Democratic Party and the media to criticize her anti-Israel extremism, something which reportage on her campaign and vic...
(JNS)-Actors Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing are being applauded for speaking out against anti-Semitism associated with the Women's March movement, with the former announcing that she will not speak at next year's march and the latter backing the decision. The Zioness Movement, which attended the Women's March in 2017, said it "applauds Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing for calling out the leaders of the Women's March for their hateful rhetoric and their continued association with bigots and...
(JNS)—In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, 69 organizations asked for assurances that taxpayer dollars will not be used toward supporting the BDS movement. The letter was prompted by two pro-BDS events recently hosted by academic departments at the University of Michigan and New York University that are part of the Department of Education-designated Middle East Studies National Resource Centers. The event sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at Michigan was held 48 hours after a gunman shot a...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-After a mass shooting in a heavily Jewish area shocked the nation, Rabbi Yakov Saacks felt like his Long Island congregation was at risk. So the rabbi installed 17 cameras on the synagogue's exterior that can zoom in to read numbers on license plates, as well as indoor cameras at each entrance. He began covering the windows with Kevlar, at around $800 each, making them shatterproof in case vandals hit them with rocks. And he hired armed security guards to protect the...
(Los Angeles, CA)—StandWithUs has launched a wide-scale campaign to hold National Students for Justice in Palestine accountable for spreading anti-Semitism, supporting violence, and violating free speech. The campaign features a petition to the U.S. Department of Education and higher education governing bodies in Canada, letter from StandWithUs and Alums for Campus Fairness to every university with a registered SJP affiliate, social media content educating the public about SJP’s extremism, op-eds, and more. “We are putting all relevant gover...
(JTA)—More than 75 percent of Jews voted for Democrats on an Election Day that was also good to Jewish congressional candidates. A poll conducted by GBA Strategies, a Democrat-aligned pollster, and commissioned by the liberal Israel lobby J Street, found that 76 percent of Jewish voters voted for Democrats, while 19 percent voted for Republicans. A CNN exit poll found that the Jewish split was 79 percent to 17 percent. According to The New York Times, 51 percent of American voters overall cast ballots for House Democrats, versus 47 percent for...
(JTA)—Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held Nov. 6, with Jewish Congress members poised to take key leadership roles. Republicans looked to increase their majority in the Senate. Five Jewish Democrats are set to chair key House committees, including three representatives from New York: Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee; Eliot Engel, Foreign Affairs; and Nita Lowey, Appropriations Adam Schiff of California will head the Intelligence Committee and John Yarmuth of Kentucky (brother of O...
(JNS)—In the wake of the synagogue shooting last week in Pittsburgh, activists from several mainline Protestant churches came under fire for promoting a culture of anti-Semitism in their churches, especially the United Methodist Church. The worst offenders are usually activists affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and the United Church of Christ (UCC). But this year, the activists and officials from the United Methodist Church took on a leading role by hosting the controversial “Christ at the Checkpoint Conference” in Oklah...
