Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The late Dianne Feinstein is often described as a fierce supporter of Israel throughout her more than 30 years serving as a California senator. The Democrat was proud of her “strong Jewish heritage” and did all she could “to stop the United States from selling weapons to Israel’s enemies,” Raleigh Resnick, rabbi and director of Chabad of Tri-Valley in Pleasanton, Calif., told JNS. (Feinstein attended Chanukah menorah-lightings that Chabad led in San Francisco’s Union Square.) “On the world stage, she presented herself as a proud Jew...
(JTA) - The United States Postal Service has released a new series of Forever stamps honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Jewish Supreme Court justice and liberal icon who died in 2020. The stamp, which became available for purchase on Monday, shows Ginsburg wearing her black judge's robe and signature white collar. It was announced last year as part of the postal service's 2023 lineup of new stamps, reflecting a jump on the service's standard timeline for honoring deceased people. The...
(JNS) — In the first Republican candidate debate on Aug. 24, Israel became the center of a heated exchange between two of those vying for the presidency in 2024. The Jewish state did not come up at all during the two-hour second debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif., a month later, on Sept. 27. Instead, the seven candidates focused largely on domestic issues, including urban crime, illegal drugs, immigration and the Southern border. Throughout the e...
(JNS) — Dalia al-Aqidi secured 4.7 percent of the vote in the 2020 Minnesota Republican primary in an unsuccessful bid to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). The Iraqi-born media adviser announced on Monday that she is again running for the Republican nomination in the state’s 5th Congressional District. “Many people assume that because Ilhan and I are both female, Muslim refugees, we must think alike,” al-Aqidi, who immigrated to the United States in 1993, told JNS. “We couldn’t be further apa...
(JNS) - Sen. Robert "Bob" Menendez (D-N.J.), a longtime supporter of Israel and critic of the Iran nuclear deal, is facing widespread calls for his resignation following charges from the U.S. attorney's office that he accepted bribes. The Democrat "allegedly agreed to use his official position to benefit" three New Jersey businessmen "and the government of Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes to Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, which included gold bars, cash...
(New York Jewish Week) — When a small group of people convened next to an inconspicuous plaque steps from the entrance to the Staten Island Ferry’s Whitehall Terminal, they weren’t there to catch a boat leaving the island. Instead, they had come to the southern tip of Manhattan to celebrate a ship that had arrived on its shores centuries before. The gathering was the 369th anniversary of an event most New Yorkers don’t know about, let alone celebrate: the arrival of the first Jewish community to the United States in 1654. That lack of awarene...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration is aiming to counter antisemitic discrimination in federally-funded transit systems, housing, food programs and other areas — one of the most major actions the White House has taken since it unveiled a far-reaching strategy to combat antisemitism in May. On Thursday, the administration announced that it is instructing eight cabinet departments to extend civil rights protections to victims of antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry. The decision marks a broad expansion of the 1964 Civil Rig...
(JNS) — U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing criticism following his testimony for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 20 titled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice” during which he was visibly emotional on several occasions. The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), sought in the hearing to examine how the U.S. Justice Department “has become politicized and weaponized under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland.” Garland noted his Jewish ancestry in his opening statement. “My family fled religi...
When actor and director David Schwimmer stood up last November to talk about his experience with hate and the importance of building alliances to combat racism and antisemitism, the “Friends” star emphasized the importance of speaking up. “One of the biggest problems is silence. As I’ve said, silence is complicity, and so I try to urge people to speak out,” Schwimmer said at the annual ADL summit on antisemitism and hate, called Never Is Now. “I think it’s my responsibility. I don’t do enou...
(JTA) — A middle school teacher in a district outside Houston, Texas, has been fired reportedly for reading a sexual passage from Anne Frank’s diary out loud to eighth-grade students, the district told local news. The passage came from a 2018 graphic version of the diary by the world-famous Jewish Holocaust victim that restored some portions of the initial book that had been cut from the most well-known editions. “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has also been at the center of several other recent book-related controver...
(JNS) — Nearly every notable U.S. State Department official is on pilgrimage to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual general debate. Barbara Leaf, the Biden administration’s top diplomat for the Middle East, and Dan Shapiro, senior adviser for regional integration and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, have been spotted in the Big Apple, as has Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-American U.S. energy envoy, who brokered an Israeli-Lebanese maritime border agreement. Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy for monit...
(J. Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Two months after proclaiming that July would henceforth be known locally as “American Christian Heritage Month,” the board of supervisors in El Dorado County, California has reversed course. The county’s elected governing body unanimously rescinded the proclamation Tuesday following backlash from local Jews, the American Civil Liberties Union and others who said it inappropriately advanced the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. “I commend the board for reflecting on and revis...
(JNS) — Two congressmen put forward a bipartisan bill proposing a new annual holiday on Sept. 11. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) have introduced the Patriot Day Act. “By formally recognizing 9/11 as Patriot Day, we will make sure that we always honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day—and never give up our fight against terror,” Gottheimer said. “I am proud to lead bipartisan legislation to recognize those who lost their lives on that day. We must never forget those who made the ultimate...
(JNS) — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is defending the co-chair of his campaign in New Hampshire, who posted that “Israel is an apartheid state.” “This is such a dumb game the media and shallow career politicians play,” Ramaswamy, a technology entrepreneur, wrote. “Guess what? I have volunteers on my campaign whom I don’t agree with on everything. Bruce Fenton is right on fed policy, bitcoin, individual liberty and dismantling the administrative state. Turns out he’s dead wrong on calling Israel an ‘apartheid stat...
(JTA) — Several Jewish groups are suing a large school district in Orange County over an ethnic studies curriculum they allege is antisemitic and was approved covertly in violation of California law requiring public participation in decision making. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the American Jewish Committee and Potomac Law Group, with support from StandWithUs, seeks to bar the Santa Ana Unified School District from implementing the recently approved c...
(JTA) – At least two more synagogues in the United States evacuated their congregants over the weekend following bomb threats, the latest in a series of such calls that have put dozens of congregations on high alert heading into the High Holidays. One of the synagogues was threatened during the pre-Rosh Hashanah Selichot services on Saturday night, in a sign that the perpetrators of the wave of attacks are paying careful attention to when synagogues are holding events before calling in their threats. Since mid-July, at least 49 synagogues in 1...
(JTA) – Nearly one in three current Jewish college students has witnessed or experienced some form of antisemitism on campus, according to a new survey. The survey was released by Jewish on Campus, a student-founded antisemitism watchdog group. It was conducted by the polling firm Ipsos and surveyed more than 1,000 college students nationwide who identify as Jewish, as well as approximately 2,000 who reflect the general population of students and are largely not Jewish. The survey was conducted between March and May and has a credibility i...
(New York Jewish Week) — A kosher ice cream chain in Brooklyn is voluntarily recalling all of its ice cream and pareve frozen desserts after it was linked to a recent listeria outbreak from another kosher ice cream manufacturer. The recall was announced by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday and lists more than 90 frozen treats sold by the Ice Cream House, a chain of kosher dairy eateries in Brooklyn that was recently featured in an episode of the Netflix reality show “Jewish Matchmaking.” The chain has salads, sandwiches and pizza...
(JNS) - About 80 minutes into the two-hour Fox News Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, the State of Israel came up. Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, was going after entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who had an early target on his back after denouncing several of the other seven candidates on the stage. (Former President Donald Trump did not participate.) Several candidates cited Ramaswamy's lack of political...
(JNS) - Her iconic white lace collar translated in carved stone, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now memorialized in the New York State Capitol in Albany, N.Y. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted photos on Monday of the relief sculpture portrait created by artist Meredith Bergman, which now emanates from a wall near the capitol's Great Western staircase. It was the first time in 125 years, she wrote, that a new portrait carving was added to the historic capitol building. "Thr...
(JTA) — A Jewish couple has grounds to sue the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded adoption and foster care agency denied them services because they are Jewish, a Tennessee appeals court ruled Thursday. The decision is the latest development in a long-running battle that began in 2021, when Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram turned to the Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greenville, Tennessee for foster parent training. The couple hoped to foster, and later adopt, a child. According to a lawsuit the couple...
(JNS) — Trisol Medical Ltd., an Israeli medical device company, has successfully implanted its Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve in two patients in the United States. The procedure involved the replacement of the tricuspid valve through a minimally invasive approach, avoiding the need for cardiopulmonary bypass. Both patients were suffering from symptomatic tricuspid regurgitation, a disorder in which the heart’s tricuspid valve does not close tightly enough, causing blood to flow backward into the right upper heart chamber every time the rig...
(JTA) — Six decades ago, shortly before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Rabbi Joachim Prinz called for racial equality in an address that began with the words, “I speak to you as an American Jew.” Last Saturday, about a dozen Jews were in the lineup of more than 100 speakers who returned to the memorial’s marble steps for what was billed as a continuation of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on its 60th anniversary. Alongside the anniversary march, whic...
(JTA) - Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate, the candidate with the least political experience is making some of the biggest headlines - in part due to his views on Israel. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur who has never held elected office, is seeing growing support for his long-shot candidacy. A recent poll placed him neck-and-neck in second place with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the crowded GOP field, and the RealClearPolitics polling average places him in...
(JTA) – Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement that it would consider a major case on Second Amendment rights, Jewish groups are joining an effort led by a Jewish organization for survivors of domestic abuse to back gun-rights restrictions for people convicted of domestic violence. Jewish Women International is leading an amicus brief that also includes the organizations representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, along with several interfaith organizations, in the case United States v. Rahimi. The case, which the court anno...
