Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 238 - 262 of 1886
(JNS) — Vivek Ramaswamy may not be heading to the White House, but his candidacy did serve a useful purpose in the week leading up to the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle. Ramaswamy’s comments about foreign policy drew fire from his opponents while also giving him some attention in a race where all of the focus is on the man who isn’t deigning to show up at the debate: former President Donald Trump. Ramaswamy drew the scorn of the mainstream media by saying that he would seek to divide Russia from China. His realp...
(JNS) — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker drew criticism from Jewish groups recently when he vetoed a bill that would have required the state’s public schools and hospitals to offer upon request kosher, halal and other religion-based dietary options. State and federal prisons are required, per the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, to offer such dietary accommodations to inmates. But no such federal law applies to state schools and hospitals. The bill, IL HB3643, which the billionaire Jewish democrat vetoed on Aug. 11, was...
(JNS) — As of Aug. 17, the Jewish Federations of North America has allocated $249,000 that it raised from 120 Jewish communities nationwide as part of its emergency Hawaii Wildfire Fund. The funds will go to Maui Kosher Farm, Jewish Congregation of Maui, Maui Jewish Ohana, Chabad of Maui and Jewish Community Services of Hawaii, JFNA stated in a release. “The devastation in Maui is immeasurable, but we continue to be inspired by our partners on the ground that have responded with so much care, compassion and professionalism to the needs of the...
(JTA) – At least two synagogues in California evacuated during Shabbat services over the weekend as online trolls targeted Jewish congregations for the fourth straight week with fake bomb and other security threats. At least 26 congregations in 12 states have received the threats, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which is raising alarm about the barrage. The organization believes the instigators are selecting their targets based on the availability of livestreamed services and other events, motivated by their desire to watch the c...
(JTA) - Jewish groups in the United States and in Hawaii are launching relief efforts following the devastation caused by wildfires that have killed more than 50 people so far. The wildfires have all but destroyed the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, which Hawaii's Jewish governor, Josh Green, toured on Thursday with Brian Schatz, the state's Jewish senator. "What we saw today was likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history," Green said in a statement. The fires have had...
(JNS) — Sarah Miller’s biggest takeaway from her first day at the Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., was that there are stronger forces that unite rather than divide. “We have more in common than we have apart,” Miller, a junior studying web design, education and French at Butler University in Indianapolis, told JNS. She cited three speakers who shared “their belief in the power of building connections.” “They proved that not only on the international level but also on the personal level, the way to solve conflic...
(JTA) — Federal agents arrested a West Virginia man on Thursday for allegedly threatening jurors and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, which culminated last week in a death sentence. The man who was arrested, Hardy Lloyd, 45, is “a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district of West Virginia. The statement said Lloyd “made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses dur...
(JTA) — For its latest effort to combat antisemitism on college campuses, the Anti-Defamation League is turning to a particular brand of college student: frat boys. The Jewish civil rights group is partnering with Alpha Epsilon Pi, the historically Jewish fraternity, on an initiative to engage members of AEPi’s 150 local chapters starting this fall, the two groups announced Monday. They revealed the new initiative — which will include the creation of something called the Antisemitism Response Center — during AEPi’s international conventio...
(JNS) - A state senator in Michigan has apologized to her Arab and Muslim constituents for a recent visit to Israel with her fellow lawmakers. Sylvia Santana, whose district includes part of Detroit. as well as Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, with a high concentration of Arab Muslims, posted the apology on social media. "I recognize my presence on this trip has sparked anger and disappointment by many in the Arab/Muslim community," she wrote. "For this, I truly apologize, seek your forgiveness...
(JNS) - Reports have circulated that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) spoke at an art exhibit in Detroit held from May 26 to June 17, though the featured works didn't represent any classic school or style. Instead, a black-and-white drawing showed a teenage girl with a half-smile and the eliminationist protest chant "From the river to the sea" on top with "Palestine will be free" at the bottom. A photo showed a young woman in a black hijab holding a glue gun like a weapon as she stood in front of a...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS) — When Ido Sarfati moved to the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui a decade ago, he thought he had the perfect place to build a business. And he did; it grew to include seven retail shops that sold skincare products and other offerings to tourists. Last week, all of his stores burned to the ground in the historic wildfiresthat have claimed the lives of at least 93 people and destroyed more than 2,700 structures valued at more than $5 billion. But Sarfati’s greatest feeling is not of loss, he tells Cha...
(JNS) - A Pittsburgh jury agreed unanimously last Wednesday that Robert Bowers, 50, should be put to death for killing 11 Jewish worshippers at Tree of Life*Or L'Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. The judge will formally sentence the convicted killer on Aug. 3. "As we collectively process the jury's decision today, what should always be top of mind is the memory of the 11 people murdered in a synagogue while at prayer by a cold-blooded hater of Jews," said the American Jewish...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) - The overriding feeling in this city now that the gunman convicted of murdering 11 Jews here in 2018 has been sentenced to death is gratitude. Not for the penalty itself, which was the preference of some but not all of the victims' families and which some local Jews openly opposed, and not even for the end of a trial whose long delay protracted communal trauma. Instead, the gratitude is for people - those who made the trial happen, those who supported the victims' family member...
(JTA) – A school district in South Carolina will return Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about antisemitism, to shelves nearly a year after it was removed following a parental complaint. The decision made Wednesday by a review committee for the Beaufort County School District concludes another episode in which a Jewish book has gotten caught up in a national book-ban push by conservative parents. The district pulled “The Fixer” and other books from school libraries last fall, citing safety concerns for school empl...
(JNS) — A Jewish day school in Memphis, Tenn., went into lockdown for about 45 minutes on Monday afternoon after a man fired several shots nearby. No injuries were reported at the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South. “We have recently learned that the shooter at the Margolin Hebrew Academy was himself Jewish and a former student at the school,” stated Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). “I am pleased the academy had effective security and that the police acted quickly to protect students.” Earlier in the day, the congressm...
(JTA) — The German football team Borussia Dortmund joined students at the San Diego Jewish Academy on Friday to participate in a project to commemorate children who were killed in the Holocaust. The club, which plays in the Bundesliga, Germany’s top tier of professional soccer, is in the United States for a series of exhibition matches against other teams from the United States and England. According to a press release from the World Jewish Congress, Dortmund had been training at the San Diego Jewish Academy over the past week. On Friday, the...
(JTA) - New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft participated in a panel conversation on fighting antisemitism and racism during the annual NAACP convention in Boston. Titled "Hate Has No Home: Racism, Anti-Semitism and Building Bridges to Fight All Hate," the conversation was moderated by Fox Sports host Joy Taylor and featured NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Kraft and the rapper and activist Meek Mill. Mill and Kraft have been friends since Kraft...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For months earlier this year, mainstream American Jewish groups waffled on how much to weigh in on Israel’s internal political debates, something many had studiously avoided in the past. But that felt like a distant memory on Monday after Israel’s parliament approved a law that its authors and critics — including many of those American Jewish groups — alike said would reshape the country. Reactions poured in immediately, many of them deeply critical of what Israel’s right-wing government had just done in signing off on a la...
(JNS) — A Pittsburgh jury agreed unanimously on Wednesday that Robert Bow-ers, 50, should be put to death for killing 11 Jewish worshippers at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. The judge will formally sentence the convicted killer on Aug. 3. “As we collectively process the jury’s decision today, what should always be top of mind is the memory of the 11 people murdered in a synagogue while at prayer by a cold-blooded hater of Jews,” said the American Jewish Committee. “Ultimately, what is of most significanc...
(JNS) — Dov Hikind, a former New York state representative, announced last week that he is leaving the Democratic Party. In an interview with JNS, Hikind said the decision to become a Republican was a long time coming. “Over the recent years, and with some of the stuff that has happened even more recently, I’ve become very disillusioned with the Democratic Party that exists right now,” he told JNS. Members of the Democratic Party, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan O...
(JTA) — Speaking at an event geared toward Jewish voters on Tuesday night, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said, “The charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me.” Kennedy, the anti-vaccine theorist and Democratic presidential candidate, was responding to mounting backlash against his claim that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to avoid Jews and Chinese people. That remark, made without evidence at a campaign event earlier this month on the Upper East Side, led to criticism from a range of figures including Jewish leaders and Democrats in Congress. He...
(JNS) - If elected in 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur vying for the Republican presidential nomination, would combat antisemitism as part of a broad campaign against what he believes is a far-left ideology dividing the country into victim groups. "Antisemitism is a symptom of something that is broken in our society," Ramaswamy told JNS. He added that Jew-hatred points to a "void in our heart as a nation." "Whenever a society is broken, you have people who try to find someone to blame....
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — “If I have chance, will continue war,” appeared in a scrawl on a notepad, projected onto large TV screens in the courtroom. The image showed a note taken by a psychiatrist in early June as he assessed Robert Bowers, the man who murdered 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. The psychiatrist, George Corvin, was working for the gunman’s lawyers, in an attempt to demonstrate that the gunman is mentally ill and so should not receive the death penalty. His testimony is part of the final phase of the trial, in which t...
(JNS) — More than 1,200 people gathered on July 17 in Arlington, Va., for the annual Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. It was the event’s 18th—or chai—iteration, gathering some of the more than 10 million members of the nation’s largest, pro-Israel organization. Throughout the day, political, scholarly, advocacy and religious speakers addressed various topics, many centered on the themes of courage and fighting antisemitism. “God’s love for the Jewish people will be here forever,” Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of CUF...
(JNS) - In a statement, U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to add 10 people to four executive organizations, some centered on culture and others on international issues. Biden has named Susie Gelman as a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Gelman brings extensive experience on the subject, as she has led and contributed to numerous Jewish and Zionist organizations. From 2016 to 2023, Gelman served as board chair of the Israel Policy Forum. She...
