Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 589 - 613 of 1886
PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) - Tahara, the act of washing and purifying the deceased, is paramount to Jewish burial. So when the pandemic descended on the United States in March 2020, members of a Pittsburgh-based Jewish burial society devoted to the practice made a difficult decision. Given fears of COVID-19 transmission, members of the New Community Chevra Kadisha stopped traveling to funeral homes and performing the sacred act of tahara in person. Instead of physically...
(JTA) — When Rivka Taub Rivera decided to apply for a religious exemption to New York City’s vaccine mandate for teachers, she didn’t turn to the rabbis of Borough Park, the Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn where she lives. Instead, she asked Michoel Green, a Chabad rabbi who has openly opposed vaccination, to submit the required letter from a clergy member. Based in Massachusetts, Green was disaffiliated by a Chabad organization because of his anti-vaccination social media posts and has become a folk hero for some Orthodox Jews who oppos...
(JNS) Basketball player Deni Avdija was the talk of the town in Israeli and Jewish circles last season. The 19-year-old Israeli was drafted No. 9 in the first round of the NBA draft by the Washington Wizards and was off to a fairly impressive start until he fractured his right ankle on April 21 during a game against the Golden State Warriors. Avdija, now 20, has been recovering and rehabilitating, and is cleared to return for his second year in the NBA. He will play on the same Wizards team,...
(JNS) - A state-of-the-art security command center was unveiled this week by the Secure Community Network to ensure that the Jewish community is prepared in the event of any violence or threats. Dubbed the National Jewish Security Operations Command Center, JSOCC, was built with funding by private donors and gives the SCN - the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations - a high-tech, centralized location where...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Vice President Kamala Harris "strongly disagrees" with a university student who told her that Israel was carrying out "ethnic genocide," her office said, pushing back against claims that she encouraged the student's view. "Throughout her career, the vice president has been unwavering in her commitment to Israel and to Israel's security," Harris's spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, said Friday in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "While visiting George Mason University...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A GOP flier distributed to homes in the Virginia suburbs of Washington depicts the Jewish Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates at a table stacked high with gold coins, a pairing of images of Jewish candidates with money that has proliferated in political attack ads in recent years. “Dan Helmer has raised Virginia’s cost of living to new heights,” the mailer said. It was distributed this week by Helmer’s Republican challenger, Howard Pyon. Helmer, the incumbent in the House of Delegate’s 40th District, which cover...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, said she changed her vote from “no” to “present” on a bill for special funding for Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome defense system because of the “panic and horror” that seized the moment. Ocasio-Cortez could be seen weeping on the floor of Congress Thursday after casting her vote. She was one of 11 representatives, including the other members of “the Squad” of progressives, who did not vote to support the $1 billion in Iron Dome funding; 420 representative...
(JTA) — In a contentious meeting last week, the Seattle City Council narrowly voted down legislation that would have prohibited the city’s police department from conducting training with Israeli forces. The bill, which was defeated by a vote of 5-4 at the council’s meeting on Sept. 20, was conceived following the May conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Its lead sponsor was a socialist council member, Kshama Sawant, who also led a protest in June seeking to block an Israeli cargo ship from docking at Seattle’s port. The defeat of the bil...
(JNS) — Several Jewish groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of a case that could determine whether public funding could be given to parochial schools for secular education. In Carson V. Makin, parents of parochial-school students argued that the Maine Department of Education discriminated against their children by denying them tuition assistance available to nonsectarian schools. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Maine Department of Education. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the s...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved an extra $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, following a pushback effort from Israel-critical progressives that had limited reach. The vote Thursday was 420-9, with two voting present. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be approved. Israel asked the Biden administration for $1 billion to replenish the batteries depleted during its conflict with Hamas in May. The Biden administration agreed, and the Democratic lea...
(JTA) — Los Angeles’ main teachers union voted Thursday to indefinitely postpone a motion in favor of boycotting Israel. For months, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which has approximately 30,000 members, has been debating a motion to support BDS, or the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. The motion was first raised in the wake of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in May. It has since been adopted by several local chapters of the union. The resolution calls for the union to “endorse the international campa...
(JTA) — A survey of members of AEPi and AEPhi, the most prominent national Jewish fraternity and sorority, found that large numbers of respondents have experienced antisemitism on campus. The survey also found that about half of respondents have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity on campus or in virtual campus settings. A slim majority said they “are somewhat or very reluctant to share their views on Israel,” according to the survey. The survey was commissioned by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal organ...
(JTA) — The man who opened fire on a synagogue in Poway, California in 2019, killing one and injuring three, has pleaded guilty to a 113-count federal hate crime indictment. The guilty plea comes with a recommended sentence of life in prison plus 30 years. The charges the shooter faced, which also relate to his arson of a mosque a month earlier, carried a maximum sentence of the death penalty. “The defendant entered a synagogue with the intent to kill all those inside because of his hatred for Jewish people, and days earlier used fire in an...
(JTA) — The sponsor of a bill that would have made Burlington, Vermont, the first city in America to divest from Israel is withdrawing his legislation, citing concerns that it would promote antisemitism. Councilmember Ali Dieng, who sponsored the resolution, said Monday afternoon that he would withdraw it at the council meeting scheduled for the same evening, and refer the resolution for reconsideration at the council’s racial equity committee. The city’s Jewish mayor also publicly expressed concerns about the resolution. Dieng told the Jewis...
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — The California Legislature last week passed a bill requiring ethnic studies for all California public school students, as Jewish lawmakers and activists continued to disagree on the merits of a model curriculum. The bill mandating ethnic studies would make the state the first in the nation to require such curricula, which examines race and ethnicity with a focus on people of color. The liberal California Legislative Jewish Caucus had criticized the original model of a proposed curriculum, in...
(JNS) — Try painting a swastika on the wall of a synagogue, and you’ll be arrested and charged with vandalism and probably serve jail time for a hate crime. But a federal appellate court has just gone out of its way to grant constitutional protection to signs bellowing “Resist Jewish Power” and “Jewish Power Corrupts” at Jews attending synagogue services every Sabbath morning for the past 18 years in Ann Arbor, Mich. The judges didn’t bother to explain why menacing Jewish Americans coming together to worship is less intimidating than cross-bu...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A congressional letter backed by Muslim and Jewish groups is urging the federal government to make kosher and halal meat available to observant Jews and Muslims through an emergency food program. Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., initiated the letter sent Wednesday to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Forty-eight Democrats have signed the letter, which was obtained exclusively by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “As the United States continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as many as 29 million Americans continue to face foo...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last month that beginning Sept. 13, restaurants would have to ask customers for proof that they received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in order for them to dine indoors or else be fined. As the deadline approached, some kosher restaurants in New York City were still debating the consequences of complying — or not. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Miriam Lebovitz, the manager of Milk N Honey in Borough Park, Brooklyn, said last week. “I think it’s go...
Meet Greet & Eat...Dillard's Altamonte Springs is partnering with the Jewish Pavilion (a non-profit that enhances the lives of our elders) by offering a networking breakfast on Thursday, Oct. 14 beginning at 8:15- 11:15 a.m. This is a private event (the store will be closed to the public). Please bring your friends and colleagues to this amazing day of food, fun and lots of sales. This event will be similar to the Summer Soiree held in July where 200 people enjoyed delicious foods and...
(JTA) — Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom easily survived a recall election last Tuesday, putting to end the possibility that a right-wing Republican could take over as the state’s top executive. But one effect of the bruising political fight appears likely to endure: scrutiny over whether America’s first Jewish woman senator is still fit to serve. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s name was not on the ballot, but in some ways the election was about who should replace her. Feinstein is 88 and, according to some reports, increasingly infirm. Her curr...
(JTA) - At least 150 child sex abuse lawsuits were filed against Jewish institutions in New York over the past two years under a special law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations barring old claims, according to an analysis of the New York court system by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. This look-back window for reviving allegations was created by the Child Victims Act of 2019 and it led to a dramatic wave of lawsuits that peaked just ahead of the Aug. 14 deadline. Survivors took...
(TC Jewfolk via JTA) — A suburban Minneapolis synagogue closed in the early hours of last Friday morning after receiving what its managing director deemed “a specific threat of violence” — about one day after 32 headstones were knocked down at a nearby Jewish cemetery. Although local officials do not believe at this time that the two incidents are linked, their timing and close proximity has prompted worry among Jews in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area during the High Holidays. “People are certainly asking about the situation and talking a...
(JTA) — The sponsor of a bill that would have made Burlington, Vermont, the first city in America to divest from Israel is withdrawing his legislation, citing concerns that it would promote antisemitism. Councilmember Ali Dieng, who sponsored the resolution, said Monday afternoon that he would withdraw it at the council meeting scheduled for the same evening, and refer the resolution for reconsideration at the council’s racial equity committee. The city’s Jewish mayor also publicly expressed concerns about the resolution. Dieng told the Jewis...
(JNS) As Americans gathered this year to remember the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, they did so amid a landscape that is increasingly divided domestically, where hate crimes are at a record high, the Taliban has become the official government of Afghanistan, and experts say that homegrown terror threats continue to be a major security concern. "The issues facing the United States and how we have dealt with them have changed dramatically over the last 20 years," according to Michae...
(JTA) - Rabbi Raziel Cohen doesn't want you to have to draw a gun in synagogue. But if you must, he doesn't want you to waste precious time unbuttoning your kapota, a type of jacket worn by men in the Chabad Hasidic community on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. So Cohen, a firearms instructor who goes by the moniker "The Tactical Rabbi," worked with Shaul Snovsky, who sells kapotas in South Florida, to create the Tactical Kapota. The jacket, which looks like any other kapota, closes with snaps...
