Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1601 - 1625 of 1886
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...
MANCHESTER, N.H. (JTA)-Michael Harris probably isn't your typical New Hampshire Republican. A 71-year-old from Hollis and president of his synagogue in nearby Nashua, Harris isn't sure who he would support if the general election came down to the two iconoclasts on either side, Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. While the brash real estate mogul running as a Republican and the independent lawmaker from Vermont seeking the Democratic nomination might seem like polar opposites, there are a...
The Indiana House of Representatives passed new legislation that targets businesses or other entities engaging in the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, marking the latest victory in the fight against BDS on the U.S. state level. House Bill 1378, which was introduced by Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma and passed unanimously by the legislature on Jan. 25, requires “the public retirement system to divest from businesses that engage in action or inaction to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel.” The bill’s next...
(JTA)—The Iowa caucuses are over—and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran insurgent anti-establishment campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., made a strong showing for third place, well ahead of the other “establishment” candidates. On the Democratic side, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., effective...
On Jan. 27, 2016, International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, and the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a unique ceremony honoring Righteous Among the Nations was held at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama, introduced by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who is dedicated to recording and preserving the testimonies of those who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust and those who risked their lives to save them, spoke at the...
Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org-Jonathan Pollard, who was released in November after serving 30 years in a U.S. prison for spying on America for Israel, canceled a speech he was scheduled to give at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations for fear of being sent back to prison. Pollard, whose plan to speak was reported by the Forward last week, canceled after his lawyers warned him that if his comments were leaked or taken out of context, he faced the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Members of the Obama administration’s national security team will travel to Israel next week to advance talks on a new U.S. defense assistance package to the country. “A U.S. delegation will be traveling to Jerusalem next week for the next round of talks,” a senior administration official said Wednesday in an e-mail to JTA, confirming a report that first appeared in Haaretz. Israel and the United States are negotiating a memorandum of understanding that would extend for another 10 years the current aid package, due to expire...
On Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015, the United States Congress presented the Monuments men and women, of all 14 nations, with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States. George Washington received the first medal. (A partial list of recipients is provided below.) Normally only two Congressional Gold Medals are awarded each year, due in part to the rigorous review and approval process that requires two-thirds consent of both houses of Congress. Nine years of...
StandWithUs (SWU) is placing a billboard on University Boulevard east of Forsyth Road beginning the week of Jan. 25, 2016 for four weeks. The billboard reminds commuters of the benefits of the US-Israel relationship which "creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in America." The SWU billboard counters an anti-Israel one on University Boulevard between Forsyth and Semoran boulevards initiated and paid for by StopTheBlankCheck.org and IfAmericansKnew.org. It asks, "$10 Million a Day to Israel? Our...
On Dec. 21, 2015, Florida became the fifth state in the nation to introduce a landmark resolution to confront the anti-Semitic BDS movement. Building on the nationwide momentum created by Tennessee, legislators in Florida have decided to confront this growing threat as well in 2016. Numerous efforts have increased to boycott Israeli political leaders and businesses. Also, the number of anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish and pro-Israel students on university campuses continues to grow nationwide and in Florida specifically. Parents, students...
WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week)-Alarmed by what they called "Orwellian efforts" to link Israel with a multitude of free-speech issues now roiling American college campuses, a group of influential academics has launched an initiative to combat anti-Semitism and facilitate constructive dialogue about Israel. Led by Mark Yudof, president emeritus of the University of California system, and Kenneth Waltzer, former director of Jewish studies at Michigan State University, the Academic Engagement...
NEW YORK-Repair the World, the only organization devoted exclusively to engaging young Jewish adults as volunteers, has launched a special national campaign, Act for Racial Justice on MLK Weekend. Combining two pillars of Repair's engagement strategy, Act for Racial Justice offers the opportunity to host a Turn The Tables Shabbat Dinner on Jan. 15th (turn-the-tables.org)-resources will help facilitate substantive questions and dialogue-followed by numerous volunteer opportunities throughout the...
(JTA)-Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is the largest single funder of JNS, a U.S.-based Jewish news service that is the sole distributor of content from his right-wing newspaper Israel Hayom. The Adelson Family Foundation has committed at least $1.2 million to JNS, the daily Forward reported Tuesday, citing publicly available tax documents. The first grant of $300,000, given in 2013, made up 65 percent of JNS revenue that year. Adelson's foundation gave another $450,000 in 2014, and...
