Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1668 - 1692 of 1886
(JTA)—Political columnist Matt Bai recently got an old-fashioned Jewish guilt trip for skipping synagogue, and not from his rabbi or his Jewish mother, but from an evangelical Christian politician angling for the White House. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who this week officially joined the jam-packed race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is an ardent Protestant. But when he sat down with Bai in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday, he went with a JDate-style icebreaker: “Do you go to synagogue?” Bai, who spent years covering politics for the N...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—While the majority of the 151 Jewish federations in North America are withholding judgment on the nuclear deal with Iran, at least eight have come out against it. Rather than taking firm positions, federations are counseling their communities to use Congress’ 60-day review period to learn about the international agreement and share their opinions with elected officials. “There is a plethora of diverse opinions,” said Gregg Roman, community relations council director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “For Fe...
While the ink dries on the newly signed nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, America's largest pro-Israel organization is seeking to help defeat the agreement in Congress through the work of its nascent office in Washington, DC. San Antonio-based Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which during 10 years of existence has grown to 2.2 million members, is beginning to hire staff for a new entity dubbed the "CUFI Action Fund." Headed by Gary Bauer-the U.S. under secretary of education in...
In a press release dated July 8, the Rabbinical Council of America stated that Reform Jews are Jews. Rabbi Leonard Matanky, president of the RCA, said, “The RCA, representing traditional standards of religious practice and definition of Jewishness, has well-known objections to some of the fundamental tenets of Reform Judaism. There is no question, however, that we certainly embrace all members of the Jewish community. This is clearly the undisputed position of Jewish law. In addition, our late teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik spoke of a c...
Hillel International launched “Hillel College Guide: The Official Hillel Guide to Jewish Life on Campus” this summer, providing unique insights for students and parents on organized Jewish life, Israel programming, the availability of kosher food and the relative size of the Jewish community on campuses across North America. The magazine also includes rankings of what schools Jewish students are choosing. Topping this year’s lists are Rutgers University on the list of public schools and New York University on the list of private schools. Secon...
In the middle of a phone interview with JNS.org on June 26, billionaire real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves his desk to scan the wall of his office for awards he has received from the Jewish community. Trump reads the text of some relevant plaques before returning to his desk. But before this reporter can move on to the next question, Trump eagerly points out that he was the grand marshal of New York City's annual Salute to Israel Parade (now the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The name that keeps coming up when Orthodox Jewish groups consider the consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court decision extending same-sex marriage rights to all states has little to do with Jews or gays. Bob Jones University, the private Protestant college in South Carolina, lost its tax-exempt status in 1983 when the Supreme Court ruled that its policies banning interracial dating on campus were “wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption.” Orthodox Jewish organizations, several of which publicly disse...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-How often do you get the opportunity to pack "109 years," #LoveWins and the rainbow colors into 140 characters? That's how the American Jewish Committee celebrated the Supreme Court ruling Friday extending marriage rights to gays throughout the United States. "For 109 years AJC has stood for liberty and human rights," its tweet said. "Today is a happy day for that proud tradition #LoveWins." It was punctuated with a heart emoticon splashed orange, yellow, green blue and p...
By Ron Kampeas NEW YORK (JTA)-At Abe Foxman's farewell, there were the hugs, there were the recollections of the hugs, and there was the sheer diversity of the huggers. Abe likes to hug, and he hugged everyone who came out to the June 17 gala marking his retirement from the Anti-Defamation League after 50 years, the past 28 leading the civil rights agency. So plenty of people got an Abe embrace: About 1,200 were in attendance, necessitating the use of the balconies in the vaulted Waldorf Astoria ballroom. Onstage there were tributes from Jews,...
A University of Missouri (MU) fall 2015 honors tutorial that pro-Israel students felt would promote bigotry and misinformation on their college campus has been cancelled. “Perspectives on Zionism,” which was scheduled to be taught by self-proclaimed “post-Zionist” and “Nakba Jew-in-law” George Smith, was nixed due to no enrollment, according to a June 10 announcement. Yet the catalyst behind the cancelled course—Smith, a tenured biology professor who pushed for a curriculum that the instructor himself said would have included works by anti...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Three leading Jewish organizations—BBYO, Hillel International and Moishe House—are teaming up in a rare and pioneering global initiative to recruit, train and retain top professionals throughout their organizations. Called the Talent Alliance, the novel collaboration links 780 Jewish communal professionals in 37 countries in a global ecosystem designed to promote rising stars in these Jewish non-profits. The initiative is among the first of its kind in both the Jewish and nonprofit sectors. The pilot year of the Talent Allia...
NEW YORK (JTA)-If there's one thing that can be said of longtime Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman, who is stepping down this month after nearly 30 years at the helm, it's that he never holds back from speaking his mind. In an age of canned, anodyne statements from public figures reticent to say what they really think, Foxman offers an authentic, unabashed voice free of artifice, hesitation or restraint. Foxman also has something else when he speaks: listeners. Though the ADL doesn't...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in the Supreme Court decision that will keep "Israel" off the passports of Jerusalem-born Americans, begins by calling Jerusalem a "delicate subject." Competing claims to the Holy City were not the only timeworn and sensitive issue the justices contended with in their 6-3 decision on Monday, which upheld the State Department's policy of not allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to list "Israel" as their birthplace. The Supreme...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It's early days for the White House's latest charm offensive among American Jews, but a new poll suggests that the wooing effort is having little effect. The poll, published Wednesday by J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that generally backs President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, shows Obama stuck at the same mid-50s approval ratings he was registering in April, when U.S.-Israel tensions were prominently in the news. Jim Gerstein, whose GBA Strategies conducted the po...
(JTA)-A day after a radio host falsely said that Sen. Bernie Sanders has Israeli citizenship, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination spoke publicly about how his Jewish identity has influenced him. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor Thursday, Sanders (I-Vt.) said that he was "not particularly religious" but that as a child being Jewish taught him "in a very deep way what politics is about." "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932," he told the Monitor....
NEW YORK (JTA)-Rochelle Shoretz was fond of saying, "There are no problems, only solutions." Her approach to life was not to dwell on bad news, but to channel the energy that friends described as boundless into somehow making things better. It's what drove her to establish the national cancer organization Sharsheret after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer at age 28. On Sunday, Shoretz died of complications from the disease at her home in Teaneck, New Jersey. She was 42. At the time of...
(JTA)-Two synagogues and the homes of countless Jewish residents were damaged in the floods that swept through Houston on Monday and into Tuesday, inundating homes and businesses, sweeping away cars and leaving at least five people dead. Houston, America's fourth-largest city and home to more than 40,000 Jews, was paralyzed when many of the canals that run through the city (known locally as bayous) crested after torrential rains soaked the city. Some 8-12 inches of water fell in a matter of...
Illinois became the third state in a month to pass legislation formally opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. But going further than non-binding anti-BDS measures in Tennessee and Indiana, the Illinois bill took concrete action against those who boycott the Jewish state. The legislation-which unanimously passed both the Illinois House (102-0) and Senate (49-0), and will be signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner-prohibits state pension funds from...
NEW YORK (JTA)-A 39-year-old executive with an education startup and a 20-year-old naval academy student were among the seven people confirmed dead from an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. Rachel Jacobs, the executive, who also is the daughter of former Michigan State Senator Gilda Jacobs, and Justin Zemser, a second-year student at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, were both Jewish. The accident, on a northbound train Tuesday night, injured more than 200 people, and...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Pew Research Center’s newly released 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study offers a trove of data on American Jews based on interviews with 35,071 American adults, 847 of whom identified their faith as Jewish. Here are some of the more interesting findings about the Jews. We’re highly educated: There are more American Jews with two or more university degrees than those who have just one—31 percent have a graduate degree and 29 percent have just a bachelor’s degree. With a college graduation rate of about 59 percent (more tha...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-From roundtable discussions to protests and prayers to candid talk with law enforcement officials, American Jewish communities are joining in the debate about community policing in the wake of several high-profile deaths of unarmed black men while in police custody. Officials were short on specifics, but several told JTA that protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray on April 19 have sparked a determination to confront the tensions between police and minority...
For just more than a month now, the Virginia State Bar (VSB)-which, it should be noted, is a state body working with the legal profession in Virginia-has been embroiled in a nasty political row over its apparent boycott of Israel. I say "apparent" because this hasn't been the kind of run-of-the-mill boycott row one encounters on college campuses. Leading officials of the VSB are insisting that they are not boycotting Israel and that, moreover, they were not even aware of the Boycott, Divestment...
The University of Florida chapter of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was closed last Tuesday, April 28, after a misconduct investigation by the university was started in light of reports that ZBT members attending a spring formal yelled at, spat on, and hurled beer bottles at a group of military veterans who were also staying at the same Panama City Beach resort. The veterans were attending the Warrior Beach Retreat at the Laketown Wharf to relax and heal. After receiving the information of the fraternity members’ behavior, the university charged t...
(JTA)— On Rosh Hashanah, according to the liturgy, our fate is written in the Book of Life. But Jewish football fans may be spending the holiday thinking about something else: the NFL opening games they are missing. The 2015 NFL schedule was released on Tuesday, and the season kickoff is on Sept. 13, which is the first night of Rosh Hashanah. The first game of the season, as it has been in recent years, is on a Thursday (Sept. 10). But the following Sunday (Erev Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 13) kicks off the season for most of the league’s tea...
(JTA)- Critics love to nitpick Hillary Clinton's personal and policy choices, as they have during the recent email scandal and the Benghazi scandal. This time, however, the critics may have a substantial case against her. As soon as Clinton's campaign was launched, her campaign logo was lampooned from all sides. Some called it too simple, others thought it looked too corporate. Some were just confused that it features a red arrow pointing to the right – a feature that seems to contrast the blue...
