Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1827 - 1851 of 1920
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Vice President Joe Biden said the White House will work with the Jewish community to help Holocaust survivors living in poverty. Speaking at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Centennial on Tuesday, Biden said the White House will appoint a special envoy at the Department of Health and Human Services to act as a liaison for survivors and the nonprofit community organizations that serve them. A partnership with the AmeriCorps VISTA program to increase the number of volunteers helping Holocaust survivors will be...
SAN DIEGO (JTA)-What do you get when you bring together 5,000 of the Reform movement's faithful for a conference in sunny San Diego in mid-December? Four days of singing, learning, schmoozing and worrying at a gathering that seemed equal parts pep rally and intervention session. For pep, there were the spirited prayer services, the morning-till-night stream of musical performances and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, or URJ, who compared the challenges facing...
NEW YORK (JTA)-With an estimated Jewish population of 275 undergraduates, the Quaker-founded Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia is home to one of the smaller Hillel chapters in the country. But that hasn't stopped student activists at the small suburban school from picking a fight of potentially epic proportions with the umbrella group Hillel International. On Dec. 8, the Swarthmore Hillel student board announced that it had voted unanimously to defy Hillel International's guidelines for...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Hillel International warned its Swarthmore College chapter that it cannot use the Hillel name if it flouts the international Jewish campus group’s Israel guidelines. Hillel delivered the warning in a sharply worded letter following the Swarthmore chapter student board’s decision to repudiate Hillel guidelines prohibiting partnerships with groups deemed hostile toward Israel. In his letter, Hillel’s president and CEO, Eric Fingerhut, warned Swarthmore Hillel’s student communications coordinator, Joshua Wolfsun, that the chapter’s...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For the first 3 1/2 weeks of the summer, one group of 5-year-olds at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, N.Y., was "very quiet" as the children went about the typical camp activities, according to Amy Skopp Cooper, the camp's director. But in the fourth week, the talking started-in Israeli-accented Hebrew. By the end of the summer, evaluations revealed that most of the 20 children-all of whom had started out as Hebrew novices-"had gone up multiple levels" in their Hebrew proficiency, Cooper...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On a bright autumn morning, Hebrew songs and phrases fill the sun-drenched, freshly painted blue and white classrooms of New York's Harlem Hebrew Language Academy Charter School. A group of kindergartners, representing such an even mix of black and white children that they resemble a 1980s Benetton ad, clasp each other by the waist and dance in a "rakevet," or train, stopping every few moments to add a new child who, as the teachers explain in Hebrew, is sitting nicely on his or...
NEW YORK (JTA)-At the federation movement's General Assembly in Jerusalem in early November, the chairman of the network did something unusual for Jewish power gatherings: He devoted the bulk of his speech to nursery school. Calling Jewish preschool the "seedbed of our community," the chairman of Jewish Federations of North America, Michael Siegal, pledged to raise $1 billion over the next decade for a Jewish revitalization plan with tuition-free Jewish preschool as its centerpiece. By offering...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Chava, a student at a Chabad seminary, has lived in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for six years, but it's only in the past few days that she started carrying pepper spray in her handbag. Her younger brother gave her the deterrent after news hit of a string of recent attacks against Orthodox Jews, seven of them in Crown Heights. The assaults, believed to be part of a national wave of so-called "knockout game" attacks in which black teens punch random white strangers for...
(JNS.org) Last Thursday, Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard entered his 29th year in American prison. Pollard, now 59, was arrested in Washington on Nov. 21, 1985. He was later convicted of spying for Israel, and is the only person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. "It's an embarrassment for America, it's a lack of justice, it's an embarrassment for the world," Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president emeritus of the National Council of Young Israel,...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—American Jews and American Muslims called on Congress in a joint statement to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a meaningful path to citizenship. In joining together as unlikely allies, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) renewed their united push to refocus Congress’ attention on the nation’s most pressing domestic policy crisis. The following is a joint statement from Alan van Capelle, CEO of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and Haris Tarin, direc...
The United States Postal Service recently introduced a new Chanukah stamp. The 2013 Chanukah stamp features a photograph of a beautiful forged-iron menorah created by Vermont blacksmith Steven Bronstein, who uses the ancient techniques of blacksmithing to create modern designs. Bronstein's blend of the primitive charm of ironwork with a contemporary design appealed to art director Ethel Kessler. "There is a rich tradition of crafts in Judaic art and that tradition goes back many generations,"...
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...
