Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 251 - 275 of 1886
(JTA) – A school district in South Carolina will return Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about antisemitism, to shelves nearly a year after it was removed following a parental complaint. The decision made Wednesday by a review committee for the Beaufort County School District concludes another episode in which a Jewish book has gotten caught up in a national book-ban push by conservative parents. The district pulled “The Fixer” and other books from school libraries last fall, citing safety concerns for school empl...
(JNS) — A Jewish day school in Memphis, Tenn., went into lockdown for about 45 minutes on Monday afternoon after a man fired several shots nearby. No injuries were reported at the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South. “We have recently learned that the shooter at the Margolin Hebrew Academy was himself Jewish and a former student at the school,” stated Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). “I am pleased the academy had effective security and that the police acted quickly to protect students.” Earlier in the day, the congressm...
(JTA) — The German football team Borussia Dortmund joined students at the San Diego Jewish Academy on Friday to participate in a project to commemorate children who were killed in the Holocaust. The club, which plays in the Bundesliga, Germany’s top tier of professional soccer, is in the United States for a series of exhibition matches against other teams from the United States and England. According to a press release from the World Jewish Congress, Dortmund had been training at the San Diego Jewish Academy over the past week. On Friday, the...
(JTA) - New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft participated in a panel conversation on fighting antisemitism and racism during the annual NAACP convention in Boston. Titled "Hate Has No Home: Racism, Anti-Semitism and Building Bridges to Fight All Hate," the conversation was moderated by Fox Sports host Joy Taylor and featured NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Kraft and the rapper and activist Meek Mill. Mill and Kraft have been friends since Kraft...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For months earlier this year, mainstream American Jewish groups waffled on how much to weigh in on Israel’s internal political debates, something many had studiously avoided in the past. But that felt like a distant memory on Monday after Israel’s parliament approved a law that its authors and critics — including many of those American Jewish groups — alike said would reshape the country. Reactions poured in immediately, many of them deeply critical of what Israel’s right-wing government had just done in signing off on a la...
(JNS) — A Pittsburgh jury agreed unanimously on Wednesday that Robert Bow-ers, 50, should be put to death for killing 11 Jewish worshippers at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. The judge will formally sentence the convicted killer on Aug. 3. “As we collectively process the jury’s decision today, what should always be top of mind is the memory of the 11 people murdered in a synagogue while at prayer by a cold-blooded hater of Jews,” said the American Jewish Committee. “Ultimately, what is of most significanc...
(JNS) — Dov Hikind, a former New York state representative, announced last week that he is leaving the Democratic Party. In an interview with JNS, Hikind said the decision to become a Republican was a long time coming. “Over the recent years, and with some of the stuff that has happened even more recently, I’ve become very disillusioned with the Democratic Party that exists right now,” he told JNS. Members of the Democratic Party, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan O...
(JTA) — Speaking at an event geared toward Jewish voters on Tuesday night, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said, “The charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me.” Kennedy, the anti-vaccine theorist and Democratic presidential candidate, was responding to mounting backlash against his claim that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to avoid Jews and Chinese people. That remark, made without evidence at a campaign event earlier this month on the Upper East Side, led to criticism from a range of figures including Jewish leaders and Democrats in Congress. He...
(JNS) - If elected in 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur vying for the Republican presidential nomination, would combat antisemitism as part of a broad campaign against what he believes is a far-left ideology dividing the country into victim groups. "Antisemitism is a symptom of something that is broken in our society," Ramaswamy told JNS. He added that Jew-hatred points to a "void in our heart as a nation." "Whenever a society is broken, you have people who try to find someone to blame....
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — “If I have chance, will continue war,” appeared in a scrawl on a notepad, projected onto large TV screens in the courtroom. The image showed a note taken by a psychiatrist in early June as he assessed Robert Bowers, the man who murdered 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. The psychiatrist, George Corvin, was working for the gunman’s lawyers, in an attempt to demonstrate that the gunman is mentally ill and so should not receive the death penalty. His testimony is part of the final phase of the trial, in which t...
(JNS) — More than 1,200 people gathered on July 17 in Arlington, Va., for the annual Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. It was the event’s 18th—or chai—iteration, gathering some of the more than 10 million members of the nation’s largest, pro-Israel organization. Throughout the day, political, scholarly, advocacy and religious speakers addressed various topics, many centered on the themes of courage and fighting antisemitism. “God’s love for the Jewish people will be here forever,” Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of CUF...
(JNS) - In a statement, U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to add 10 people to four executive organizations, some centered on culture and others on international issues. Biden has named Susie Gelman as a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Gelman brings extensive experience on the subject, as she has led and contributed to numerous Jewish and Zionist organizations. From 2016 to 2023, Gelman served as board chair of the Israel Policy Forum. She...
(JNS) — The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution affirming that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state,” in a rebuke to remarks Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) made last weekend. The resolution introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) was approved by a vote of 412-9, with 195 Democrats joining all Republicans in voting yes. It also states that Congress rejects antisemitism and that the United States “will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.” Israel is our strongest partner in the Mi...
(JNS) — Seven Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent, opted not to attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress on July 19. The House members were Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.) and Raul Grijalva (Ariz.). “Boycotting Herzog, a former Labor Party standard-bearer who represents the State of Israel—not a political party, faction or policy...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Jurors in the trial of the gunman who killed 11 Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue took less than two hours to find him eligible for the death penalty, setting up a final phase of the historic proceedings in which the gunman may be sentenced to death. On Thursday morning, the seven women and five men on the jury unanimously found that Robert Bowers, who attacked the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018, met all four thresholds of intent necessary for capital punishment. The jurors also agreed with the g...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Harvard’s 20th-century antisemitic Jewish quotas were a key part of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action on Thursday, as the winning litigant and two conservative justices cited them in the landmark case. The 6-3 decision Thursday, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, bars universities from using race as an explicit factor in considering admissions, but allows race to be cited by applicants in essays describing their life experiences. Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative advocacy group that...
(JNS) — A group of U.S. Republican senators sent a letter on Tuesday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on the Biden administration to rescind its “discriminatory” guidance halting bilateral scientific and technological cooperation with Israeli entities operating in Judea and Samaria. The administration late last month issued the directive applying to areas Israel captured in its defensive 1967 Six-Day War. “The guidance does something America has never done before: unilaterally impose territorial restrictions on U.S. scienti...
(JNS) — Florida Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on Tuesday denounced U.S. President Joe Biden over his failure to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. “Biden meets with dictators of countries such as Venezuela but snubs the democratically elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not how you should treat an ally,” the presidential hopeful noted on Twitter. Biden has been widely criticized for neglecting to invite Netanyahu to Washington. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israe...
(JTA) – Jeff Nitz, a social worker and lay leader at his church, sees himself as a trained listener. But beginning in 2020, his congregation — Mosaic Church in the evangelical Christian hub of Lynchburg, Virginia — started becoming riven by fierce COVID-era fights over masking, distancing and vaccinations. Used to bridging divides among his fellow parishioners, Nitz was at a loss. “I’m used to doing active listening, but there were times where it felt like I would much rather just avoid this person than having the deeper conversat...
WASHINGTON (JTA) —A congressional committee approved an increase in funding for the office of Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s antisemitism monitor, from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved the bill, which pays for State Department and foreign operations, late Wednesday. It now goes to the full House and must be reconciled with parallel Senate legislation. Senators who focus on antisemitism hope to get similar language into the corresponding Senate bill. This week, a bip...
(JNS) — Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York hit Gal Luft, an Israeli professor who has been described as a key “missing” witness in the House Republicans’ investigation of Biden family corruption, with a litany of charges on Monday. Luft, 57, who was arrested in Cyprus on Feb. 17, 2023, and is on the lam after being released on bail to avoid extradition to the United States, is accused of helping recruit a former high-ranking U.S. government official “to publicly support certain policies” favoring China. While the official is...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a case that drew support from a broad array of Jewish groups, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers had to show a “substantial” burden to deny workers religious accommodation. In a decision released Thursday, the court sided with Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian mail carrier who asked not to work on Sundays, his Sabbath. Jewish groups that do not often line up on the same side of church-state issues before the court were of a single voice in this case. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion, sought to...
(JTA) – The Sackler family, the Jewish billionaires whose marketing of the painkiller drug OxyContin fueled the United States’ ongoing opioid epidemic, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims in exchange for spending up to $6 billion on addiction treatment and prevention programs. The decision to grant immunity by a federal appeals court panel Tuesday effectively ends the thousands of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers’ company, over opioid deaths. But it clears the way for the company to de...
(JNS) — The Southern Poverty Law Center is a Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit that according to its website was founded in 1971 “to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all.” Before reaching that first paragraph on the group’s site, however, comes the SPLC’s self-identification as “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.” SPLC is often quoted...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) - The gunman who committed the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history is guilty of all charges he faced, according to the verdict delivered by a federal jury on Friday morning. Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, was charged on 63 counts in total. Those include 22 capital charges - two for each of his victims: 11 charges of the federal crime of "obstruction of the free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death," and 11 ch...
