Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 305 - 329 of 1920
WASHINGTON (JTA) —A congressional committee approved an increase in funding for the office of Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s antisemitism monitor, from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved the bill, which pays for State Department and foreign operations, late Wednesday. It now goes to the full House and must be reconciled with parallel Senate legislation. Senators who focus on antisemitism hope to get similar language into the corresponding Senate bill. This week, a bip...
(JNS) — Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York hit Gal Luft, an Israeli professor who has been described as a key “missing” witness in the House Republicans’ investigation of Biden family corruption, with a litany of charges on Monday. Luft, 57, who was arrested in Cyprus on Feb. 17, 2023, and is on the lam after being released on bail to avoid extradition to the United States, is accused of helping recruit a former high-ranking U.S. government official “to publicly support certain policies” favoring China. While the official is...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a case that drew support from a broad array of Jewish groups, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers had to show a “substantial” burden to deny workers religious accommodation. In a decision released Thursday, the court sided with Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian mail carrier who asked not to work on Sundays, his Sabbath. Jewish groups that do not often line up on the same side of church-state issues before the court were of a single voice in this case. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion, sought to...
(JTA) – The Sackler family, the Jewish billionaires whose marketing of the painkiller drug OxyContin fueled the United States’ ongoing opioid epidemic, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims in exchange for spending up to $6 billion on addiction treatment and prevention programs. The decision to grant immunity by a federal appeals court panel Tuesday effectively ends the thousands of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers’ company, over opioid deaths. But it clears the way for the company to de...
(JNS) — The Southern Poverty Law Center is a Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit that according to its website was founded in 1971 “to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all.” Before reaching that first paragraph on the group’s site, however, comes the SPLC’s self-identification as “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.” SPLC is often quoted...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) - The gunman who committed the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history is guilty of all charges he faced, according to the verdict delivered by a federal jury on Friday morning. Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, was charged on 63 counts in total. Those include 22 capital charges - two for each of his victims: 11 charges of the federal crime of "obstruction of the free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death," and 11 ch...
(JNS) - First, she represented Iraq in the "Miss Universe" competition. Then she fled her country after posing for a selfie in 2017 with "Miss Israel." Now, Sarah Idan is running for California's 30th congressional district-the seat that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is vacating as he vies to replace the retiring Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. "I'm running because this is a critical time in U.S. history when our democracy is fundamentally at stake," the Baghdad native, 33, told JNS. "I've always...
(JNS) — Soon after the White House unveiled its 60-page, national strategy to counter antisemitism on May 25, the Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed “the Biden administration’s efforts to implement national strategies to confront various forms of bigotry, starting with the threat of antisemitism.” CAIR added that the strategy’s fact sheet noted “CAIR as one of the many contributing organizations.” “Some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas,” the Anti-Defamation...
(JNS) — Political heavyweights and prominent journalists discussed key issues affecting Israel and the Jewish people at the opening plenary of the American Jewish Committee’s second AJC Global Forum in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. Those issues included rising antisemitism, the Abraham Accords and Israeli-Diaspora relations. As many as 1,000 people from 60 nations were in attendance at the opening event, with a total of 1,500 expected throughout the four-day forum. Ted Deutch, in his inaugural AJC Global Forum address as CEO, celebrated the suc...
(JTA) – The financial future of American Jewish University is in flux again after a plan to raise a reported $65 million by selling its 22-acre campus in Los Angeles to a Swiss education company fell through. Nine months after the university announced a deal had been reached to sell the property, the prospective buyer, EF Education First, said it was pulling out and abandoning its plans to establish a language school for international students at the site because of the opposition of r...
(JNS) — Chris Christie, the former, two-term Republican governor of New Jersey who bid unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2016, announced on June 6 that he is running for president in 2024. (See “A Jewish guide to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign” article on page 9A.) Christie, 60, declared his candidacy in a town hall at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Joined by his wife, Mary Pat, four children and father, Christie spoke about the importance of choosing to go big rather than small and to unify the country. “We have cand...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Until the certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021, Mike Pence made sure to stay on the same page as Donald Trump - except, sometimes, when it came to the Jews. Both men delighted the pro-Israel establishment - Trump by fulfilling a long wish list of Israel's right-wing government, Pence by proving himself as a stalwart Christian Zionist through years in elected office. But just weeks after Trump assumed office, the difference in how each man approached Jewish...
(New York Jewish Week) — The New York Police Department has reported 100 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city since the start of the year, a decrease of some 20 percent when compared to the same period last year. Anti-Jewish incidents have comprised nearly 45 percent of the 223 total hate crimes the NYPD has reported this year. Jews are targeted for hate crimes more than any other group in the city and have been the victims of a plurality of hate crimes each month. These incidents include assaults, vandalism such as swastikas being drawn in f...
(JNS) — After a week of testimony from survivors in the Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting trial, a city police officer offered his perspective on the Shabbat-morning attack in October 2018 that left 11 Jewish worshippers dead. Officer Michael Saldutte testified that he drove faster than 100 miles per hour to reach the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood after he learned about the attack. Upon arrival, Saldutte said he smelled gunpowder and saw bodies in pools of blood, the officer testified. The judge ove...
(JTA) - As he has launched his long-shot campaign for the Republican nomination, Chris Christie has taken aim squarely at the man he once enthusiastically endorsed: Donald Trump. But alongside portraying the former president as a danger to democracy, Christie has singled out another person for criticism who is not running for president, and who may not even work on a campaign: Jared Kushner, Trump's Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser. The Christie-Kushner feud goes back two decades, dating bac...
PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) - When Judy Clarke delivered her opening statement to the jury that will determine the fate of the man charged with committing the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue building, she did not deny that her client was responsible. In fact, she sympathized with the victims and their families. Clarke, 71, began her address by acknowledging the horror of Oct. 27, 2018, and its aftermath. "The tragedy that brings us together today," she said in a...
This is an ongoing article. Heritage will print articles as JTA reports them. Day 1: 911 dispatcher and rabbi take the stand PITTSBURGH (JTA) — When Shannon Basa-Sabol was asked to recount the events of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in court on Tuesday, what stood out was her memory of the death of Bernice Simon. Basa-Sabol, a 911 dispatcher, took the stand for close to an hour, describing the ins and outs of her job. But when the crowded courtroom heard a recording of Simon’s 911 call from the Tree of Life Congregation, Basa-Sabol pau...
(JNS) - New York City Mayor Eric Adams made the controversy surrounding a law student's antisemitic remarks in a May 12 CUNY commencement speech his first order of business in his remarks at Gracie Mansion on May 31. Addressing a Jewish American Heritage Month event at the official mayoral residence, he railed against City University of New York Law School graduate Fatima Mohammed. The student's commencement remarks, which heavily criticized the New York Police Department where Adams once...
(JTA) - Tom Nides, the gregarious U.S. ambassador to Israel, is resigning this summer, at a time of unresolved tensions in the U.S.-Israel relationship he strove to uphold. An administration official confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Nides would be gone by this summer. The report first appeared in Axios on Tuesday morning. Axios quoted Secretary of State Antony Blinken as saying that Nides wanted to spend more time with his family. "Tom has worked with characteristic energy and...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — After being thwarted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Rashida Tlaib succeeded in spotlighting Palestinian perspectives on Israel’s founding in an event on Capitol Hill — with help from one of Congress’ most powerful Jewish members, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The Palestinian-American Democrat from Detroit also introduced a congressional resolution calling on the suspension of some aid to Israel. Tlaib’s event on Wednesday, called “Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People,” featured the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that Palestinians u...
(New York Jewish Week) — New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who spread a series of falsehoods about being Jewish and other parts of his life story, was arrested Wednesday on federal criminal charges on Long Island. The indictment said that Santos — who has also gone by other names, including the last name Devolder — used donations to a fraudulent political fund for personal expenses, such as buying designer clothes and paying off his credit cards. He was also accused of lying about his finances on congressional disclosure forms and receivi...
(JNS) - Both houses of Congress reintroduced legislation this week to honor the late Roddie Edmonds, who put his life in danger to save Jews during World War II and the Holocaust, and is one of five Americans Yad Vashem names as "Righteous Among the Nations." Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) put the bill up again in the House after an unsuccessful bid last session. This time is different, he told JNS. "I've been here a little longer. I've got a little more seniority, and I know a few more people,"...
(JNS) - After a Jewish high school athlete petitioned the Maryland cross-country championship director to reschedule the race slated for Shabbat, April 8, the state moved the competition to Sunday, April 9. Oliver Ferber, a student at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., was the subject of an April 7 feature penned by Sam Borden, a senior writer at ESPN. "I could either race at states, which would fall during Shabbat, and violate all of my religious beliefs, or I could observe...
(JNS) - Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been answering 20 minutes of questions from JNS in his office in the Cannon House Office Building when he unveils a silver Star of David necklace that he says he wears daily. "I want everyone to know, and I'm not afraid that I'm Jewish," he told JNS. Miller, 34, and Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) are the only two Jewish Republicans in Congress. In his first term, Miller made headlines for introducing legislation that stripped Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of her...
(JNS) — Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) announced an exploratory committee to run for U.S. president in 2024, the senator announced on April 12. Scott, 57, made the announcement in a video recorded on Fort Sumter in Charleston, where 162 years ago, the first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861. “Today, our country is once again being tested. Once again, our divisions run deep, and the threat to our future is real,” said Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate. “Joe Biden and the radical left have chosen a culture of grievan...
