Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1593 - 1617 of 1890
The United States Postal Service describes the stamp. The 2016 Hanukkah stamp features a holiday menorah in the window of a home. Artist William Low added visual interest to the scene by highlighting the contrast between the hot candles flames and the cool snow, the vertical candles and the horizontal window frame, and the dark menorah with brightly lit candles. Bhel Kessler was the art director." The 2016 Hanukkah stamp should be issued sometime in October....
JERUSALEM (JTA)-It might appear churlish to criticize the teaching of Islamic studies in America. After all, "Between Sharia and Democracy: Islamic Education in North America," a just-released study by Impact-SE, finds that the most widely used Islamic textbooks published in the United States are generally free of imagery and ideologies that generate prejudice or contempt for others. They aim to present Islam as harmonious with many aspects of Western society and, in the main, with UNESCO's...
Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), joined by Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens) and Sen. Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), called for the “immediate suspension” of Students for Justice in Palestine from City University of New York college campuses on Tuesday in light of several incidents that have left many Jews feeling fearful and intimidated by the actions of SJP across college campuses nationwide. In writing a letter to CUNY Chancellor James Milliken that garnered the support of 33 elected officials from both Republicans and Democrats, Ass...
(JTA)-When Jews visit the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, they can learn about the two most celebrated members of the tribe who have been inducted into the hallowed museum: Hank "The Hebrew Hammer" Greenberg and Sandy Koufax. Now they'll have the chance to find out about the dozens of other Jews who played in the major leagues or made contributions to the game. Thanks to the effort of a dedicated memorabilia collector, clearly taking Theodor Herzl's legendary words to hea...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-You get to listen to Jews yelling at you. You get to listen to mandarins tell you why they won't listen to Jews. You get to emcee a cappella competitions. Who wouldn't want to be White House Jewish liaison? Matt Nosanchuk lasted nearly three years in a post-officially titled associate director of public engagement-that may be the apotheosis of thanklessness. He stepped down last week. Notably, Nosanchuk wound it up with plenty of thanks from some of those who made clear their...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Hear out Donald Trump. Ignore Donald Trump. There were two distinct approaches to the Trump moment last week at AIPAC's annual conference here, and there were mutual warnings that one or the other side would get burned. The burn came fast, and it came to those who said listening to the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nod was the right thing to do. After days of repeated warnings to its activists not to disrupt Trump, and to treat speakers with respect, t...
During the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference, hundreds of protestors, including representatives of the Students for Justice for Palestine, gathered outside the Convention Center in D.C. and started chanting "Shut it down!" The group, which was organized by Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the ANSWER Coalition, marched from the White House to the Verizon Center where the conference was held. It was the largest pro-Palestine demonstration in the U.S....
In a much-anticipated speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Monday, March 21, Republican presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump said that dismantling the “disastrous” Iran nuclear deal would be his top priority as president. Trump also unveiled a three-pronged strategy for dealing with Iran, offering the type of detailed policy talk that many critics have accused him of leaving out of previous speeches. “We’ve rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion, and we’ve receive...
As Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican contender Donald Trump emerge as the clear front-runners for their respective parties’ nominations, Clinton on March 21 told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference that she is a “steady” alternative to Trump when it comes to Israel and the Middle East. “We need steady hands. Not a president who said he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday…Israel’s security is non-negotiable,” Clinton said, referring to Tr...
(JNS.org) Ohio Governor John Kasich, who labels himself as a moderate Republican presidential candidate with a “positive message,” held true to form at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. “I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land. I will not do it,” Kasich told the AIPAC crowd. “We need to work together with Congress on an agenda that serves the nation as a whole. We are Americans more than we are Republicans and Democrats,” he said, echoing AIPAC’s organizational calling card of bipartisanship...
(JNS.org) Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) said he “will not be neutral” on Israel as president, taking a swipe at GOP opponent Donald Trump’s past statements about being a neutral broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel,” said Cruz, who also mocked Trump’s use of the term “Palestine” in the preceding speech at the same AIPAC session. “Palestine” has not existed since 1948,...
(JTA)-Americans have heard a lot about Merrick Garland since President Barack Obama nominated him to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. But there's a lot we still don't know. What are his views on abortion? Will the Republican leadership give him a hearing in the Senate? What was his bar mitzvah Torah portion? Garland may have an extensive judicial record-he has more federal judicial experience (19 years) than any other Supreme Court nominee in history, according to the White House-but...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Has Donald Trump's time come, and will Jewish political conservatives embrace him? Trump, the real estate magnate and front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, rolled closer to victory on Tuesday with wins in at least three primary states. His strong showing, earning 161 delegates or more depending on the final tally in Missouri, brought his delegate tally to 621-halfway to the 1,237 he needs to secure the nomination. The question for Jewish political...
WASHINGTON—The Reform movement harshly criticized Donald Trump’s “hate speech,” but backed AIPAC’s invitation of the Republican frontrunner to speak at its annual conference. Reacting to Trump’s acceptance of the invitation on Friday, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis on Monday called his campaign bigoted. “His campaign has been replete with naked appeals to bigotry, especially against Hispanics and Muslims. Previous comments he has made—and not disavowed—have been offensive to women, people of color,...
(JTA)—Former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman will head a new center for the study of “anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. “Unfortunately, anti-Semitism has never gone away and other forms of hatred including prejudice, bigotry, and bullying continue to persist,” museum chairman Bruce Ratner said in a news release Monday. “We believe it remains essential to understand the genesis of these events, and I can think of no one better suited to take this on tha...
An overflowing, standing room only crowd at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida welcomed Central Florida’s own Mitchell Bloomer and Duke University’s Imam Abdullah Antepli as they co-presented the Feb. 25, forum titled, “Is History Repeating Itself: Jewish and Muslim Immigrant Experiences in America.” The forum treaded near the grounds of the controversial, even as one of the speakers noted, and a significant police security presence was on the premises for the evening. The contentious issue was brought about b...
By David Stanley FLINT, Mich. (JTA)—At 86, Jeanne Aaronson is blind and lives alone, but she has seen a lot over the years. She lived in Flint when it was a manufacturing powerhouse, a center of the automotive business and a symbol of American industrial might and ingenuity. She lived through the city’s decline in the 1970s and ’80s as the auto factories closed and the population decamped for better opportunities elsewhere. And more recently, she witnessed the beginning of its revival, with the opening of new businesses and a slew of brewp...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The controversy over whether laws protecting Israel from boycotts should include West Bank settlements found its way into a presidential signing statement this week, but President Barack Obama's decision to ignore a trade law's requirement to oppose boycotts of Israeli settlements likely won't settle the argument. The president said Wednesday he had signed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 and embraced its provisions protecting Israel from the Boycott,...
(Jewniverse via JTA)—Saul Alinsky was a true-blue political disruptor. Born in Chicago to Russian Jewish emigres in 1909, Alinsky was so fed up with social injustice, inequality and racism that he invented modern community organizing. Initially focusing on uniting lower-class black communities in Chicago, Alinsky’s tactics were beyond unusual. In the 1960s, Alinsky threatened the city of Rochester, New York, with a “fart-in,” in which black Americans would attend the Rochester Philharmonic and disrupt the music with music of their own (suppli...
WASHINGTON—A report released today by the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) details how anti-Israel campus groups in the United States made significant efforts to strengthen ties with allies on campus and in their communities during the fall 2015 semester. ICC observed a shift away from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions in favor of theatrics and disruptive tactics. Anti-Israel activists from Minnesota to Texas to Maryland employed disruptive tactics on campus this fall, staging dramatic protests at pro-Israel events and at camp...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-"When there was no Jewish justice on the Supreme Court," Antonin "Nino" Scalia told me, "I considered myself the Jewish justice." After Abe Fortas resigned in May 1969, there would be no Jewish justice on the court for nearly a quarter of a century, until President Bill Clinton named Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the court in 1993. Scalia had been on the Supreme Court since Ronald Reagan appointed him in 1986, so there were seven years during which Scalia saw himself as the court's...
(Jewniverse via JTA)—If you were a member of the European royalty or nobility in the early modern period, and you were strapped for cash, chances are you’d ask your Court Jew for a loan. The Court Jew—a position of strange esteem dating as far back as the 12th century and spanning nearly all of the Middle Ages—was a banker who reliably lent money to European higher-ups. Typically they were Jews of means who had made their money peddling, or organizing other peddlers, and as Jews were exempt from the Christian sin of usury. It was this exemption...
(JTA)-Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent came under fire from Jewish groups for a anti-Semitic Facebook post blaming prominent Jews for pushing gun control. The National Rifle Association is also under pressure to distance itself from Nugent, who is a longtime NRA board member. On Monday, Nugent shared a graphic featuring images of 12 Jews-including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer-branded with images of Israeli flags...
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged all members of the U.S. Senate to cosponsor S. 2474, a bill that would override a recently issued directive from the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection Bureau, instructing that Israeli-made products manufactured in Judea/Samaria must be labeled as being from the 'West Bank,' and not from 'Israel.' The January 23 directive, states that it is "not acceptable" to label goods coming from Israeli companies in...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Maybe now that Bernie Sanders has become the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary he'll start getting the Joe Lieberman treatment. Back in 2000, Al Gore's decision to tap Lieberman as his running mate set off what felt like a months-long national bar mitzvah bash. But the party-and all the speculation about a Shabbat-observant, kosher-keeping vice president-proved premature, thanks in part to confused elderly Jewish voters in Palm Beach County. And then...
