Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the right to abortion is no longer protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. But that seismic constitutional change has triggered a new legal debate: In the absence of federal constitutional protection, does state law provide Jews with a religious liberty right to abortion? Last week an Indiana state appellate court answered yes to the question — invoking variations on the word “Jew” more than 70 times in the process. As the first state appellate c...
LOS ANGELES (JTA) - Steven Spielberg warned that "the machinery of extremism is being used on college campuses" and lamented those killed in Israel and Gaza while being honored for his Holocaust remembrance work at the University of Southern California. The renowned Jewish filmmaker spoke at a ceremony Monday afternoon in which USC bestowed its prestigious University Medallion on the 56,000 Holocaust survivors who have provided testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation, which Spielberg founded...
(New York Jewish Week) – When event producer Erez Safar announced a Valentine’s Day comedy show to raise funds for survivors of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the flier included a date, time and photo of headliner Daniel Ryan Spaulding, the non-Jewish comic who has stood out since the attack for his pro-Israel activism. But fans hoping to attend the show wouldn’t be able to get there by looking at the poster. All it said was “Location upon RSVP.” Following a spike in antisemitic incidents in New York City and beyond following Oct. 7, Safar is...
By Luke Tress (New York Jewish Week) — On a cold night last week, Barbara Hoff, the owner of an antique store in the Catskills, heard from a friend in the local fire department that the Nevele Grand Hotel was burning. Hoff, who lives in the town of Cragsmoor on the Shawangunk Mountains, looked down into the valley below her home. She saw a smear of orange flames framed by the silhouettes of dark trees in the distance. Hoff, 70, remembers another era, decades ago, when the Nevele was a bustling summer retreat for a largely Jewish clientele. A...
(JTA) – A school district in suburban Virginia is drawing backlash for announcing that middle school students could opt out of a talk by a Holocaust survivor on Monday. Critics of the school connected the announcement with widespread reports of spiking antisemitism in K-12 schools following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. But the school and the local Jewish Community Relations Council denied those claims, later announcing that the opt-out was specifically intended to help Jewish students. Fairfax County Public Schools, in a populous a...
(JTA) – Authorities in Newton, Massachusetts, said they are investigating a string of seven recent instances of vandalism targeting homes with pro-Israel signs as individual hate crimes. In one incident this week, more than 100 posters displaying Israeli hostages who are being held in Gaza were destroyed, in what the Jewish homeowners said had been a site of communal memory since shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Most of the reported incidents in the heavily Jewish Boston suburb over the past month involve the defacement or removal...
(JNS) - Ahmad ("Sauce") Gardner, an American football cornerback for the New York Jets, has clarified that he didn't mean to suggest any antisemitic conspiracies in comments he made on a livestream broadcast with gamer Adin Ross, who is Jewish. On the Monday show, Ross had described purchasing a Tesla truck from another Jewish man, prompting Gardner to say, "I'm gonna be honest. Like, no funny weird s***. You all run the world." Gardner then said that Jews "got so much motion throughout the whol...
(JNS) — The pro-Israel writer who uses the pseudonym “Elder of Ziyon,” had the sense that Jewish community centers were downplaying Israel programming compared to what they had done in the past. So, he started looking at JCC websites at random to see if his impression was correct, the writer told JNS. “I saw lots of progressive-friendly events and very few Israel-centered events,” he said. “Then I decided to look at the mission statements.” “Most of them never had any mention of Israel, although the programming from 20 years ago was definit...
(JNS) — More than 450 Jewish executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing the speech film director Jonathan Glazer gave at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 10 when accepting his Oscar for Best International Feature Film, “The Zone of Interest.” “We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination,” the letter states, according to Variety....
(JNS) — Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday received an award from the Israel Heritage Foundation in appreciation of his efforts to forge normalization agreements between the Jewish state and four Arab nations under the guise of the Abraham Accords. The award, a menorah, was presented to the former president at Mar-a-Lago by IHF Executive Director Rabbi David Katz, Executive Vice President Joseph Frager, Executive President Stephen Soloway, Executive Chairman Sam Nahmias, Lewis Topper and Harley Lippman. “This menorah, which represents...
(JTA) – More than a third of Americans would be reluctant to vote for a pro-Israel politician. One fifth are uncomfortable buying products from Israel. More than 40 percent at least somewhat agreed that Israel intends to cause as much Palestinian suffering as possible. But nearly all U.S. adults believe Jews have the right to an independent country. Those are some of the results of a survey published Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, measuring antisemitism and anti-Israel views across the United States. The survey found that a...
(JTA) — A campaign to protest President Joe Biden’s support of Israel by voting “Uncommitted” in the Michigan Democratic presidential primary declared victory on Tuesday night, as returns showed the movement garnering more than 10 percent of the vote. Biden still won the primary overwhelmingly. But the Uncommitted movement, also called Listen to Michigan, had set a goal of drawing 10,000 votes — the margin by which Donald Trump won the state in the 2016 presidential election. By early Wednesday, with most votes counted, more than 100,000 p...
(FLAME via JNS) — If members of the Ku Klux Klan vote overwhelmingly Republican, should Republican politicians adopt policies that curry favor with white supremacists? Certainly not. It would not only be wrong, it would also offend the vast majority of American voters, who are not white supremacists. Similarly, if voters who support terrorists vote overwhelmingly Democrat, should Democrats craft policies to attract them? Definitely not. It would be immoral and unethical—and would alienate the overwhelming majority of Americans, who oppose ter...
(JTA) - Jewish billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein has reportedly agreed to purchase the MLB's Baltimore Orioles. Rubenstein, a Baltimore native who is best known as the co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, is leading a new ownership cohort that includes Jewish former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Orioles Hall of Fame player Cal Ripken Jr. Rubenstein's group will initially purchase a 40% stake in the franchise, taking over from the Angelos...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — In the wake of the global rise of antisemitism, a new campaign against Jew-hatred launched Tuesday with the participation of influential Jewish and non-Jewish celebrities, athletes and opinion makers. The project, named “New Year, New Voices,” which has already launched several videos on social media, includes model Cindy Crawford, actresses Connie Britton, Ginnifer Goodwin, Debra Messing, Jennifer Morrison, Jaimie Alexander, Rebecca Gayheart and Emmanuelle Chriqui, singers Lance Bass and Montana Tucker, actors David...
(JTA) — Two concerts by Matisyahu, the American Jewish singer famous for his peace anthem “One Day,” have been canceled after pro-Palestinian protesters targeted venues where he was set to perform. Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico, canceled one concert on Wednesday. The Rialto Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, canceled a second on Thursday, after first saying it would not do so. Both venues cited staffing shortages and safety concerns. Both had been targeted by protesters who said Matisyahu’s record of performing for Israeli soldiers and pro-Isr...
(JNS) — Death may be the ultimate fate of us all, but it comes in many forms. In Chicago in recent years, all too often it has come from a bullet amid gangland turf wars and skyrocketing violent crime. In southern Israel on Oct. 7, it came for 1,200 men, women and children on a single day after hours of raping, torture and bodily mutilation at the hands of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists; for the 240 captives dragged back to the Gaza Strip by the invaders, the horror has continued. Brandon Johnson, not even a year into his first term as mayor...
(JNS) - During a fundraising trip to New York City on Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden encountered protesters brandishing "Genocide Joe" placards who disrupted traffic and at one point stalled his motorcade. Biden attended a meeting of nearly 20 business leaders at the home of Larry Linden, who previously worked as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he warned that former President Donald Trump would "undo everything we've done" and "we can't let that happen." The president reportedly also...
(JNS) — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the so-called progressive “Squad” in Congress and originally from Mogadishu, is facing calls for her resignation after, critics say, she promised to do all she could to prevent a Somaliland deal with Ethiopia over access to the sea. “The language she employed was regrettably unbecoming of both the office she holds and the constituents she represents,” wrote Rhoda Elmi, deputy foreign affairs minister of Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 but which most countries...
With only three representatives voting against it, the Florida House of Representatives passed House Bill 187 that defines what antisemitic speech is, and now it moves on to the Senate. Sponsor of the bill, Rep. Mike Gottlieb (D-Plantation), told the Orlando Sentinel the goal is to curb hate speech toward Jews and Israel. The bill includes the definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016 into Florida educational statutes. “We live in a time where people think they can say things and that has no...
(JNS) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 422-2 on Wednesday to deny entry into the United States to non-U.S. citizen members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 6679, the “No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act,” which drew dissenting votes from Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), two leftist members of the so-called “squad.” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) voted “present.” “Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financ...
(JTA) — As reports of antisemitism have surged since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Jewish groups have sought to spotlight the issue through rallies, news coverage, billboards and social media campaigns. Next month, it will receive airtime during the year’s most-watched television broadcast: Super Bowl LVIII. On Wednesday, Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism announced that it purchased a 30-second spot due to air during the big game on Feb. 11. It appears to be the first time ever that a Super Bowl ad will focus on antis...
(JTA) - Ron DeSantis' decision to end his presidential campaign leaves Nikki Haley as the only serious Republican challenger to Donald Trump, potentially consolidating her support among Jewish voters and donors in the party who seek an alternative to the former president. Trump responded to DeSantis' exit by ramping up his attacks on Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations who has close ties to the pro-Israel establishment and has been a favorite among Jewish and pro-Israel donors who want to avoid a...
(JNS) - Speakers at a "March for Gaza" in Washington on Jan. 13 promised that Israel would cease to exist and, to the cheers of thousands of attendees, accused U.S. President Joe Biden of supporting genocide against Palestinians. Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine and the final speaker of the nearly four-hour event, promised that Palestine would be "victorious" and accused Biden of fueling Jew-hatred by supporting Israel. "We're not the antisemitics [sic]...
(JNS) — A hostile environment toward Jews and Israelis has been growing for years at American University, in Washington, D.C., “but has intensified following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israelis,” according to a 26-page complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Students “have been threatened, marginalized, shunned and made to feel unwelcome in their dormitories, classrooms and social spaces throughout the campus, which has become a hostile environment,” per the complaint, which The Louis D. Brandeis Ce...
