Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) - Julie Platt is a one-time banker who has become a leader in promoting Jewish education and helping to rescue Jewish camping from the ravages of the pandemic. Now, she's about to make history as the second woman to chair one of the largest Jewish fundraising powerhouses in the United States, the Jewish Federations of North America. She's also musical star Ben Platt's mom. The JFNA on Tuesday said that Platt would assume the leadership of the umbrella body for Jewish federations...
ANN ARBOR, Michigan (JTA) – In the latest twist in the long-running legal saga over a small group of protesters who have gathered weekly outside a Michigan synagogue for the past 18 years, a judge has ruled that Jewish worshippers who lost a lawsuit against the protesters must pay them more than $150,000 in legal fees. U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ruled on Jan. 25 that the two plaintiffs - including one who is a Holocaust survivor - and their lead attorney who had sued the group o...
(JTA) –When Rabbi Larry Sernovitz was asked to deliver the morning devotion to the Georgia state legislature, he came armed with an ancient alarm: A shofar, the ram’s horn blown in synagogues during the high holy days. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Sernovitz made history Tuesday when he blew a shofar in the legislature, a first for the state legislature — and, according to Howard Mortman, an author who has tracked rabbinical benedictions in legislatures, probably the first in any U.S. legislature. Sernovitz, the rabbi of Kol E...
(JNS) — In a video conversation with Jewish leaders and community members last week, White House liaison to the Jewish community Chanan Weissman spoke about the tense moments and actions he took last month when an armed assailant held four congregants hostage, including the rabbi, at Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, leading to a nearly 11-hour standoff with authorities. The moderator of the Feb. 7 event, Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, asked Weissman what i...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after the Jewish Federations of North America removed hot button items such as addressing gun violence and defending LGBTQ rights from their annual priorities list, the umbrella group added them back into a subsequent and more detailed policy document. The JFNA’s Working Public Policy Agenda, released late Friday, includes more than a hundred words on gun violence prevention. It encourages Congress to double funding for research into the causes of gun violence and calls for increased funding for the enf...
(JNS) — When Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid took office in June, his first call to an American organization was not to one of the legacy Jewish groups or umbrella organizations of American Jewry. It was to Democratic Majority for Israel. DFMI is an advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies in the Democratic Party and pro-Israel Democratic candidates. During that call, Lapid emphasized reinvigorating Israel’s ties with the Democratic Party. Of course, it’s no coincidence that DMFI...
(JNS) — The Biden administration’s nominee Deborah Lipstadt to lead the U.S. State Department’s office that monitors and combats antisemitism appeared in the Senate on Tuesday for her confirmation. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lipstadt made the case that antisemitism is on the rise. “Increasingly, Jews have been singled out for slander, violence and terrorism,” she said. “Today’s rise in antisemitism is staggering.” Her confirmation has been delayed for several months reportedly over concerns raised by Republicans of...
(JTA) — A Jewish woman in Chattanooga, Tennessee, says her child was taught “how to torture a Jew” in a public school Bible class. The woman, Juniper Russo, wrote about the incident in a Facebook post that is no longer public. In it, she alleged that the teacher engaged in “blatant Christian proselytizing” in a Bible history class that was meant to be “non-sectarian.” Hamilton County Schools, the Chattanooga public school district, is investigating the incident. Michael Dzik, president of the Jewish Federation of Chattanooga, told the Jewi...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — New York City saw nearly three times as many antisemitic hate crimes in January 2022 compared to the same period a year ago, prompting concern from local lawmakers. City Council member Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, hosted a virtual “Antisemitism Town Hall” Wednesday night that featured remarks by Sen. Charles Schumer and fellow Council member Eric Dinowitz. The event, co-hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, drew some 200 attendees and brought together politicians and representatives from...
U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) paid $170,000 to a political consultant who has repeatedly called Israel an apartheid state, Fox News reported on Tuesday. According to Fox, since March 2020, Tlaib’s re-election campaign has paid $147,000 to Unbought Power LLC, a political and advocacy consulting firm based in Orlando, Fla. and headed by Rasha Mubarak. Mubarak’s website describes her as a “Palestinian Muslim American community activist.” A separate $23,000 was paid to Unbought Power by Tlaib’s PAC, Rooted in Community Leadershi...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Five Orthodox Jewish New Yorkers have joined a suit challenging the city’s vaccine requirements for indoor spaces. Two of the plaintiffs are rabbis at yeshivas. The suit, filed Feb. 7 in New York, challenges the “Key to NYC” program and a recent Covid vaccination mandate for religious and private school employees. The mandate was opposed by many haredi Orthodox yeshivas and groups representing them, including Agudath Israel of America. Three of the Jewish plaintiffs are parents suing on behalf of a total o...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — A federal investigation has been launched into complaints by Jewish students at Brooklyn College that they have been subjected to “severe and persistent harassment” in the Mental Health Counseling master’s program. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights last week informed the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which prepared the complaint, that it had opened the probe. The complaint alleges that Jewish students in the MHC program have been “bullied and harassed in class discu...
(JTA) — Some members of Congress are openly hostile to Israel. But it was Rep. Andy Levin, a Detroit-area Michigan Democrat and a scion of a storied Jewish political family, whom a former AIPAC president identified in an email earlier this month as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” David Victor, a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made the comment in an email Jan. 19 to pro-Israel donors in the Detroit area, where he is from. Victor, who led AIPAC in the late 2000s...
(JTA) — ABC has suspended Whoopi Goldberg from her role as a co-host of a morning TV talk show for two weeks amid criticism of Goldberg’s characterization of the Holocaust. Goldberg will take two weeks off from the show, ABC News President Kim Godwin announced in a statement Tuesday evening, hours after a leading Jewish organization that had been among Goldberg’s critics said it had welcomed her apology for saying the Holocaust “isn’t about race.” “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful c...
(JTA) - Activists on the Jewish left celebrated over the weekend as Emma Saltzberg, a Jewish activist who helped co-found the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow, extended a "Jeopardy!" winning streak that has some comparing her to the game show's most successful contestants. Saltzberg took the lead for three episodes in a row and earned a total of $54,199 in prize money. Saltzberg, a consultant who lives in Brooklyn, is a senior fellow at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, according...
(JTA) — The first thing to know about the Yeshiva Har Torah Twitter account is that, contrary to the account’s bio, the head of school does know about the account. And he has given it his blessing. “I don’t think the school is attracting kids because of its Twitter account,” said Rabbi Gary Menchel, head of the Modern Orthodox day school in eastern Queens, New York. “But I think, ultimately, anything we can do to broaden that experience, and engage people in the yeshiva experience is a positive thing.” And engage people have. While the sch...
Esteemed Shillman Journalism fellow Daniel Greenfield from Frontpage Maga-zine revealed that the ADL hired an activist named Tema Smith to serve as its director of Jewish outreach. Smith’s hire is newsworthy because Smith has a long record of anti-Israel, pro-terror and anti-Jewish postings on social media. In other words, she has a long record of antisemitic activism, which Greenfield documented. Consider a few examples of Smith’s publishing history: • During the Hamas war against Israel in 2014, Smith posted and endorsed an article that...
(JTA) – In early December, Judaism’s Conservative movement sent a disquieting message to dozens of synagogues looking for a new rabbi: Many of you won’t make a hire this year. At least 80 Conservative synagogues anticipated rabbi vacancies —approximately one of every seven affiliated with the movement, the email said. At most, 50 to 60 rabbis would be looking for new jobs. “We are not presenting this information to alarm, but rather to help you prepare for and navigate the challenges of this search season,” said the email, which was signed by t...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Chuck Schumer, the most senior Jewish elected official in U.S. history, recited the Shema prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. The New York Democrat added a reading from Leviticus that emphasized unity, echoing the message President Joe Biden emphasized in his remarks at the same event. Biden in his remarks referred to the recent synagogue hostage crisis in Texas as an example of courage in the face of divisiveness. Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, appeared with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., t...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Stephen Breyer, the oldest justice on the Supreme Court and one of its minority of three liberal justices, is set to retire, multiple reports said Wednesday. The move would leave Elena Kagan as the only Jewish justice left on the court. Breyer, 83, has come under pressure to retire ever since President Joe Biden assumed office a year ago. Liberals and Democrats do not want to deny Biden the chance to replace a liberal justice with another liberal. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,...
(JNS) — Jewish groups in California took out a full-page ad in a local newspaper on Wednesday to voice their displeasure and concern with a school-board decision to engage an ethnic-studies curriculum for high school and middle-school students that they say will lead to hostility towards Israel and Jewish students. Appearing in the Castro Valley Forum, the ad reads, in part: “The Castro Valley Unified School District claims it is committed to ensuring the inclusion and belonging of all students and families with its tagline ‘All Means All....
(JNS) — The multinational firm Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Tuesday that in the wake of severe losses, it will fire 1,500 workers around the world and split off its ice-cream division from its food division. The move follows Ben & Jerry’s decision to break its contract with its Israeli licensee, who refused to stop selling the company’s ice-cream in Judea and Samaria. The U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Colorado and Arizona have decided to remove investments from their pension funds in Unileve...
(JTA) — Whoopi Goldberg apologized for upsetting people by starting a debate on Monday over whether the Holocaust was “about race,” writing that she is “sorry for the hurt I have caused.” But in an appearance that aired that same night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” she elaborated on some of her views on the Holocaust. On “The View,” a show that Goldberg co-hosts, she said “the Holocaust isn’t about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.” As she explained in an apology that she tweeted that evening, and on Colbert’s sho...
(JTA) - A Tennessee school board voted unanimously to remove "Maus," Art Spiegelman's graphic memoir about his father's Holocaust experience, from its curriculum after board members raised objections about curse words, nude drawings and "not wise or healthy" content within it. Spiegelman, who won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for the book, told CNBC that the decision was "Orwellian" and said he doubted that the McMinn County school board's decision to stop teaching his book had only to do with his choic...
(JTA) - The New York City rabbi who spoke twice to the man who held Jews hostage in their Texas synagogue last week detailed the experience in a sermon Friday night. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue also outlined her anxiety as an American Jew and exhorted her congregants to heed a prayer that the Reform movement has made part of its liturgy on Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day mourning the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem and other traumatic events in Jewish history: "Blessed...
