Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1838 - 1862 of 1920
The Jewish community is rightly concerned with a campus environment that is too often hostile to Israel. Public demonstrations, inflammatory language and personal attacks by anti-Israel organizations seek to exploit the spirit of open debate and public action central to American academic life. Rather than reflexively respond to the animosity of others, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—America’s pro-Israel lobby—and Hillel—the center of Jewish life on over 550 campuses worldwide—are working together to strategic...
When recent rabbinical school graduate Rabbi Benjamin Frankel began a part-time clerical position in 1923 working with students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), little could he have imagined that within less than a century, the small Jewish student program would balloon into a national and international organization with a presence at 550 colleges and universities. Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is celebrating its 90th anniversary in November, the organiza...
The weekend of Oct. 24-27 I was granted a wonderful opportunity to attend the Chabad on Campus Shabbaton in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I haven't had an experience like this since I was a part of B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO) in Nashville, Tenn. I lived in Nashville for six years but prior to that I was in Orlando. I attended preschool at the JCC and Hebrew school at Congregation Ohev Shalom. Since high school I haven't felt that strong connection to Judaism while in college. Luckily,...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) applauded the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) for its approval of the Older Americans Act (OAA), which includes the Holocaust survivor legislation. Services under the OAA help enable Holocaust survivors and other older adults to age in place in their homes and communities. “With each passing day it becomes even more urgent to do all we can for the survivors of the Holocaust,” said Michael Siegal, chairman of the JFNA Board of Trustees. “The guidanc...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Bernard Madoff. An unscrupulous contractor. Art that disappeared or was destroyed by fire—it’s not clear which. Bad, bad bookkeepers. And did we mention Bernard Madoff? These were among the causes of “material diversion” of assets—tax-speak for lost funds or property totaling $250,000 or 5 percent—reported by Jewish organizations on their tax returns. Since 2008, the IRS has asked nonprofit organizations to indicate on their tax returns whether they have become aware of such losses in the past year. According to an investigat...
(JNS.org) A new advertising campaign in Boston-area newspapers calls out officials in the public school system of Newton, Mass., over the alleged presence of anti-Israel materials in those schools. The Boston-based nonprofit Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) took out the ads in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Newton Tab, Boston Metro, and Jewish Advocate. The ads cover research by concerned parents and students that has revealed the presence of anti-Israel texts in Newton schools...
(JTA)- Marla Topp of Temple Judea Mizpah in Skokie, Ill., doesn't need survey data to tell her that Reform Judaism is in decline and Orthodox Judaism is growing. She has to look no further than her own synagogue. A couple of months ago, the temple began renting out unused classroom space to an Orthodox school that had outgrown its building. Now its classrooms serve as a satellite location for the Arie Crown Hebrew Day School's early childhood program. The Orthodox preschool isn't the temple's...
BOSTON (JPR)—The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described an anti-Israel billboard campaign appearing throughout the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) System as, “intentionally designed to mislead the public.” The billboards show a series of four maps and falsely claim that Israel has systematically confiscated land from the Palestinians. The ads, which began appearing last week, are sponsored by Henry Clifford, who co-chairs the virulently anti-Israel group Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine. “These billboards are intenti...
(JTA)-When Craig Breslow entered the playoff game against the Detroit Tigers, FOX broadcaster Tim McCarver hailed the Boston Red Sox reliever-a Yale University graduate with a double major in molecular biophysics and biochemistry-as the smartest player in Major League Baseball. But with Breslow's stellar performance this postseason, Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington is looking like the genius for acquiring the lefty in a trade last year. In Boston's first two playoff series this season,...
NEW YORK—The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued a list of the Top 10 most influential and active anti-Israel groups in the United States. Each of the selected groups, according to ADL’s research, is “fixated with delegitimizing Israel” and has demonstrated the ability to reach new segments of the American public with a hostile and misleading narrative about Israel. “The Top 10 anti-Israel groups are the most significant players in the domestic anti-Israel movement today,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “The groups are fi...
NEW YORK (JTA)-When his cousin died unexpectedly a few years ago, Hal Miller-Jacobs was recruited to oversee the funeral arrangements and wound up helping with the tahara-the traditional preparation of the body for burial. For the first time in his life, the 76-year-old computer professional joined with other volunteers in carefully washing, cleaning and dressing the body in a simple white shroud. "It was probably the most moving Jewish experience I ever had in my life," Miller-Jacobs said. But...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Janet Yellen is soft-spoken, tough, methodological, flexible—and Jewish. President Obama’s announcement last week that he had tapped Yellen, 67, to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve made news in part because she would be the first woman in the top spot. That very little was made of her Jewishness likely derives mostly from the fact that she would be not the first or second but at least the fifth Jewish chair of the U.S. central bank and the third in a row...
NEW YORK (JTA)—It’s being billed as the “Conversation of the Century.” When the main synagogue organization of Conservative Jewry gathers this weekend in Baltimore to celebrate its centennial, there will be a lot to talk about. The number of synagogues affiliated with the group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is in decline. The proportion of American Jews who identify as Conservative has shrunk to 18 percent, according to the recent Pew Research Center study of U.S. Jewry,...
NEW YORK (JTA)—What would happen if some of the biggest players in American Jewish life sat down and debated the implications of the new Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. Jewry? After last week’s landmark study, I talked to nine Jewish philanthropists and organizational leaders about the lessons Pew holds for them and how they spend and invest their hundreds of millions of dollars per year dedicated to American Jewish life. (The result was this story: Engagement trends are negative, but Jewish funders see validation in Pew study.) I thoug...
NEW YORK—The Jewish Council for Public Affairs released a new study, “Reluctant or Repressed? Aversion to Expressing Views on Israel Among American Rabbis.” The report, written by Steven M. Cohen, research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Rabbi Jason Gitlin, project manager of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s ReFrame initiative, is the first large-scale survey of American rabbis’ connection to Israel and their challenges in expressing their views. “American rabbis have a great deal...
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you’re pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building, what do you do when a survey comes along showing that the number of U.S. Jews engaging with Jewish life and religion is plummeting? That’s the question facing major funders of American Jewish life following the release of the Pew Research Center’s survey on U.S. Jews. The study—the first comprehensive portrait of American Jewry in more than a decade—showed that nearly one-third of American Je...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The first lawmaker to speak at a closed-door Capitol Hill confab convened by the Republican Jewish Coalition’s women’s affiliate was, naturally enough, a woman. So was the second. Against the background of the current federal budget battle, that’s about all that united Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Ayotte has been a leading Republican voice calling on her GOP colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to stand down in their battle over President Obama’s signature health care law—a fig...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Meals on Wheels may disappear, Iran sanctions are at risk and yoga is filling in the gaps. This is what the federal government shutdown looks like in Jewish Washington. While national Jewish organizations are sorting through the essential services that the impasse may cut, regional Jewish service providers in the Washington area are dealing with the tens of thousands of furloughed workers in their midst. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, Md., is adding exercise and yoga classes for furloughed g...
In a story of “what goes around, comes around” in the pro-Israel world, Jacob Baime will seek to empower Jewish students through a group that empowered him. Baime credits a $2,500 grant from the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC)—enabling him to charter a bus of fellow Brandeis University students to Washington, DC, to lobby some 25 members of Congress from 12 states—with helping to launch his pro-Israel career. After working in multiple capacities for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the 28-year-old Baime was recentl...
NEW YORK (JTA)—There are a lot more Jews in America than you may have thought—an estimated 6.8 million, according to a new study. But a growing proportion of them are unlikely to raise their children Jewish or connect with Jewish institutions. The proportion of Jews who say they have no religion and are Jewish only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture is growing rapidly, and two-thirds of them are not raising their children Jewish at all. Overall, the intermarriage rate is at 58 per...
DENVER (IJN)—Before the start of Yom Kippur, a flood of historic proportions swallowed Boulder, Colo., and surrounding areas, displacing families, damaging synagogues and threatening services on the holiest day of the Jewish year—until determination came to the rescue. Orthodox Boulder Aish Kodesh hit the Internet first, sending a mass email to 500 residents announcing that heavy rains and flooding had destroyed the tent it had prepared for the holiday. The email offered alternative loc...
New York, NY— Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) 49th Assembly and centennial celebration will take place Dec. 11-15, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. It will be the first time since its biennial conference began in 1913, registration will be open to any individual who wants to learn, celebrate, and worship with the Reform Jewish community. The main WRJ Centennial celebration will be Saturday night when WRJ receives the URJ Eisendrath Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Reform Movement, a...
NEW YORK (Forward)—Does Jewish culture need a central address in order to thrive? Not according to the people who work there. The Foundation for Jewish Culture, a New York-based organization that has given more than $50 million to Jewish scholars and artists since 1960, will cease its operations in the coming year. According to the FJC’s president and CEO, Elise Bernhardt, the organization will wind down its activities in 2014, work with attorneys to distribute its assets and seek new homes for its programs. “Our operating model isn’t really...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Nine months ago, Natalia Demidova crouched on the second floor of her Staten Island home and watched her neighbor’s SUV race a 10-foot wave down the street. The wave crashed through Demidova’s quiet residential block in the South Beach neighborhood and flooded her home with more than two feet of water. Demidova is among the many residents of South Beach still struggling to restore the life she had before Hurricane Sandy hit the northeastern United States last October. For most...
With the start of a new school year, there’s reason to be concerned: Anti-Semitism is a serious problem on some college campuses, causing Jewish students to feel threatened and even fear for their safety. Yet the U.S. government is not enforcing the law to protect them. Legal protection exists, at least in theory. After a six-year battle by ZOA and others, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a 2010 policy that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act would be enforced to protect Jewish students and students of oth...
