Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) – The Anti-Defamation League says it will “launch a thorough review” of its educational content to address materials “misaligned with” the organization’s values after Fox News published a story accusing the anti-hate group of including “concepts from critical race theory” and “far-left ideas.” The ADL’s statement, released in response to a Fox News story published Wednesday afternoon, did not specify which of its freely available education materials were cause for review; nor did an additional ADL statement provided to the Jewish Telegra...
(JTA) — The 103rd season of the National Football League kicks off on Thursday, and there are a number of Jewish players to keep an eye on this year. These are all of the Jewish players on NFL rosters entering Week 1 (listed in alphabetical order) and a few free agents who hope to return to the action soon. Did we miss anyone? Give us a shout at sports@jta.org. • Jake Curhan, Seattle Seahawks offensive tackle This Jewish summer camp alum and self-described “Bear Jew” — possibly a reference to “Inglorious Basterds,” or his 6-foot-6 and...
(New York Jewish Week) — NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a press conference on Monday evening that the police will increase patrols near synagogues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, due to an increase in antisemitic attacks happening throughout the neighborhood. “In the wake of these senseless attacks, we deployed round-the-clock house of worship cars to routinely visit synagogues,” Sewell said at the press conference on Lynch Street in Brooklyn — the same location where a suspect allegedly slapped a 27-year-old man dressed in traditional Or...
(JNS) — The question of whether America’s oldest Jewish university must recognize an LGBTQ club is now heading to the Supreme Court. New York City-based Yeshiva University filed an emergency request on Monday to stay a lower court ruling that it must immediately endorse the YU Pride Alliance student club. In June, the New York County Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students, stating that Yeshiva University does not qualify as a “religious institution.” The court pointed to organizational documents in which the university states that it...
(JTA) - "Whoever needs, come and eat." That's the quote from the Talmud - the book of Jewish law - that welcomes customers to Goldie's Bagels in Columbia, Missouri, telling them that people who cannot afford to pay can get a coffee and a bagel, with cream cheese, free of charge. The promise is core to the shop's mission: Launched as a popup in 2020, Goldie's aims to imbue Jewish values into its daily operations. "My whole thing in opening Goldie's is we're going to be so outwardly proud to be...
(JTA) — A Jewish Google employee who led activism against a major contract with Israel’s government resigned, citing what she said was retaliation. “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Aug. 30 to Medium. “Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away...
(JTA) — Pro-Israel PACs reported millions of dollars in donations in August, including from billionaire donors with long track records of giving to Israel-related causes. Kraft Group LLC, the company owned by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, gave $1 million to the United Democracy Project, the new super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, the powerhouse Israel lobby. George Soros’ Democracy PAC donated the same amount to the J Street Action Fund, the PAC affiliated with the liberal pro-Israel lobby. Kraft, a prolific donor to Jewish causes who...
(JTA) — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s student newspaper pulled a column that criticizes students who travel to Israel after its author says he and his mother have received threats in response to the article. The column, titled “When studying abroad becomes a political statement,” was published on Wednesday and pulled on Sunday. “To disagree with the outcome of an individual’s work is one thing,” wrote Guillermo Molero, editor-in-chief of the Daily Tar Heel, in a statement explaining the retraction. “But to harass people p...
(JTA) – CNN's Dana Bash has what she calls "a very, very Jewish response" to the question of why she's hosting a special for her network on antisemitism in America. "The bad news is there is antisemitism in America," Bash told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "The good news is I work in a place that wants to shine a spotlight on it, and allow for an investigation into what is happening, why it's happening and what are the solutions." Bash, a member of Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., is the g...
(New York, N.Y., JNS Wire) - In an effort to expose and combat antisemitism in higher education across the United States, watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org will release a report in September on the rise of Jew-hatred at colleges and universities across the United States - grading 25 different schools on their commitment and efforts to preventing and responding to antisemitic incidents and behaviors on their respective campuses. "StopAntisemitism is authoring this report in response to the rise...
(JNS) - Internationally acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie, who had a fatwa (religious edict) placed on him by Iran since the late 1980s, was stabbed on Friday as he took the stage during a speaking engagement in western New York, less than an hour from Lake Erie. During a press conference later in the afternoon, New York State Police identified the attacker as 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of Fairview, N.J., who it said stabbed Rushdie in the neck and at least twice in the abdomen. The police said...
(JTA) — The passage of a milestone climate bill in Congress on Friday means major progress on a policy issue that American Jews rank above all others in recent surveys of voter priorities. While climate change is not often pegged as a Jewish issue, a set of poll results suggest concern about it is nearly a consensus in the community. Already eight years ago, a survey from the nonpartisan group Public Religion Research Institute found that a far larger percentage of American Jews believed that climate change was a concern than Americans as a w...
(New York Jewish Week) — Polio has been detected in New York City wastewater, three weeks after a Jewish man in Rockland County was diagnosed with the first polio case in the U.S. in 10 years. The announcement suggests that the potentially deadly virus is circulating in the city, officials say. New York City and State health officials made the joint announcement on Friday. Traces of polio had previously been found in wastewater samples from Rockland and Orange Counties, north of the city. “The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so...
(JTA) – A school district in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove an illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year. The book purge at the Keller Independent School District in Keller, Texas, was requested Tuesday by a district executive in an email, a copy of which was obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A copy of the email also circulated on social media. “By the end of...
(JTA) — The superintendent of the Texas school district that this week ordered the removal of “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from its school’s shelves said Thursday that he expected the book, along with the Bible and other books that were removed following parental challenges, “will be on shelves very soon.” In a statement, Westfall also said that more than 50 copies of the original version of the diary remain in circulation in the Keller Independent School District outside Fort Worth. “Keller ISD is not banning the Bible or th...
(JNS) — The pro-Israel nonprofit StandWithUs kickstarted its second national letter campaign last week, writing to roughly 3,000 universities across the United States about major issues Jewish students face on campus. “If your administration and [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] offices prioritize social-justice issues, then combating anti-Semitism on campus should be a major focus,” said the Aug. 4 letter signed by StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs Legal Department director Yael Lerman and Center for Combating Antisemitism direc...
(New York Jewish Week) — Leaders of mostly left-wing Jewish groups and progressive New York Jewish politicians demanded an apology from the head of the Anti-Defamation League, saying he had maligned the progressive group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. In a letter circulated by JFREJ, the signatories condemned “smear campaigns that seemed designed to isolate and divide progressive Jews from the rest of the Jewish community.” The letter is signed by City Comptroller Brad Lander, City Council member Lincoln Restler, former Manhattan Borou...
(JTA) — A state senator who says the story of her grandfather’s murder during the Holocaust galvanizes her will be the Democratic candidate for Vermont’s single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Becca Balint, who has been a state senator since 2015, won Vermont’s Democratic primary on Tuesday, easily fending off her main competitor, Molly Gray, the state’s lieutenant governor. With Vermont a reliably blue state, Balint is all but certain to become the state’s first woman representative in Congress. Balint was endorsed by Vermont’s prog...
(JTA) — One of Israel’s strongest critics in Congress narrowly survived a tough Democratic primary, as Rep. Ilhan Omar eked out a victory Tuesday in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Omar, a two-term member of Congress who supports the movement to boycott Israel and once grouped Israel and the United States with Hamas and the Taliban in a statement about human rights abuses, faced a challenge from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman who courted pro-Israel and suburban support. He drew 48.2 percent of the vote in the distr...
(JTA) - A century ago, German philosopher Franz Rosenzweig spearheaded the revival of intellectual Jewish life in the city of Frankfurt am Main with the "Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus" - the Jewish House of Free Study. As many as 1,100 adult students would attend lectures tailored to secular Jews and aimed at democratizing the kind of Jewish learning that was typically restricted to the beit midrash, or formal house of Jewish study. Now, a Lehrhaus in the spirit of 1920s Frankfurt is coming to the...
(JTA) — The chair of a county Democratic Party in Michigan apologized after the group made a social media post reading “Zionists have no place in office,” apparently meant to support a member of Congress, Rep. Andy Levin, who identifies as a Zionist. Washtenaw County Democratic Party chair Chris Savage issued an apology Saturday for the TikTok post, which was sent Friday by the @WashtenawDems account and referenced the millions of dollars’ worth of pro-Israel money that has flowed into Michigan’s 11th District primary. The race, a redistric...
(JTA) – AIPAC marked its second major defeat of the Democratic primary cycle this week, as one of the two Democratic House candidates in the Detroit area that it backed failed to win his Tuesday primary. Michigan state Sen. Adam Hollier had more than $4 million spent on his behalf by AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, before narrowly losing his primary battle for Michigan’s 13th district to state Rep. Shri Thanedar. With about 68 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, Thanedar was leading Hollier by five percentage point...
PONTIAC, Michigan (JTA) — A Jewish political dynasty’s four-decade run in Congress has come to an end after Rep. Andy Levin conceded to Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s 11th congressional district Tuesday. Stevens’ decisive win concluded a bank-busting primary that attracted more than $4 million in pro-Israel outside spending to a face-off between two incumbents in the Detroit suburbs. “She ran a strong campaign,” Levin told his supporters. “My hat’s off to her.” He pledged to support Stevens in the general election. In his concession speech...
(JNS) — The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community Chanan Weissman announced on Wednesday that he was stepping down from the role. In a news release from the White House, Weissman wrote that he was transitioning to a new role in the U.S. State Department and said farewell as point person for the last year. “I am honored beyond words to have served in this capacity on behalf of an administration I so deeply admire and as a link to a community with whom I so deeply identify,” he wrote. “As I wrap up my time, I’m excited to hand over the ba...
(JTA) — The Democratic primary next week in Michigan’s 11th District could end a four-decade Jewish political dynasty — and spending by the country’s biggest pro-Israel lobby is playing a significant role. Because of redistricting, the race pits two incumbent Democrats against each other: Rep. Andy Levin, a Jewish Democrat who favors conditioning aid to Israel and counts some of Congress’s most outspoken Israel critics as his friends, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a non-Jewish centrist whose Israel commitments lie mainly in assuring its military...
