Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 659 - 683 of 1920
NEW YORK — Avi and Becky Katz, long-time Jewish communal leaders, have established a multi-year, multi-million national initiative with NCSY,the flagship youth movement of the Orthodox Union, to support Jewish identity programs for public school teenagers. Their $3 million dollar gift will focus on the OU’s national Jewish Student Union program and will be called the Katz Family Initiative Driving Impact in JSU. JSU is NCSY’s network of extracurricular Jewish “clubs” that take place in public high schools across the USA and Canada. Through i...
(New York Jewish Week/JTA) - Kathy Hochul, who is set to succeed Andrew Cuomo as governor of New York, is no stranger to the New York Jewish community. Cuomo resigned Tuesday, a week after a state investigation concluded that he sexually harassed 11 women. He had faced intense pressure to step aside, including from President Joe Biden, or face impeachment. Cuomo enjoyed a warm working relationship with Jews across the denominational spectrum. As Cuomo's surrogate, Hochul has made it a point to...
(TCJewfolk via JTA) — A Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin sent its campers and staff home three days early following a COVID outbreak affecting nine cabins. Herzl Camp in Webster primarily serves Jews from the Twin Cities area and, as of 2019, had about 500 campers ranging from third to 11th grade. Its summer began in mid-June and was due to end on Aug. 4, but camp administrators made the decision to close early on Saturday night. “Out of an abundance of caution and with the health of your children our number one priority, our Medical Com...
(JNS) - A group of Senate Republicans led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill on Thursday that would prevent the Biden administration's State Department or U.S. Customs and Border Protection from rescinding late 2020 federal guidelines that allow goods produced in Judea and Samaria to be labeled "Made in Israel." If passed, the bill titled the Anti-BDS Labeling Act, would require that current laws regarding the marking of products with "Made in Israel" codified by executive order on...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden is set to nominate Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University Holocaust historian, to be the State Department's antisemitism envoy. The White House alerted top Biden supporters of the pick, which has been expected for weeks, on Thursday night, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned. Lipstadt is perhaps best known for defeating Holocaust denier David Irving after he sued her in a British court for defamation for calling him a Holocaust denier. Her 2005 book,...
(JTA) — Over the last year, Jewish college students took it upon themselves to combat antisemitism at their schools. Now, two major Jewish organizations are working together to play a stronger role in fighting antisemitism on campus. Some of the student activists documented incidences of antisemitism at colleges nationwide, often submitted anonymously, while others have taken a confrontational tone on social media. With some portraying themselves as the ideological successors to early Zionist activists, the students often argue that a...
(JNS) - Dozens of college students from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and elsewhere gathered online for the annual CAMERA on Campus conference aimed at empowering young adults to be advocates for Israel in an increasingly hostile environment. As speaker, professor and author Gil Troy told the students, "When you stand up on campus and increasingly in the public square these days, and when you stand up with CAMERA, it takes a huge amount of courage ... All of you have tremendous...
(JNS) — A substantial number of professors from the City University of New York have resigned from their faculty union after it passed an anti-Israel resolution and said it would consider supporting the BDS movement. The Professional Staff Congress, the union that approved the resolution, told the New York Post that at least 50 educators have resigned or sent notice that they intend to do so. “With the PSC-CUNY resolution, you have chosen to support a terrorist organization, Hamas, whose goal (‘From the River to the Sea’) is to destroy the Sta...
(JTA) - Public school unions in the U.S. are increasingly becoming a hotbed of Israel discourse, with the largest teachers' union becoming the latest organized body to deliberate measures that censure Israel and support the Palestinian cause. Members of the National Education Association at the group's annual meeting held over the weekend (with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, a longtime educator, in attendance) planned to debate two items on Israel and the Palestinians among the...
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (JTA) - Rob Nipe and Nora Rubel hadn't anticipated selling out of pastrami on their opening day. But when you have a vegan butcher shop certified kosher and open up just a few blocks from an Orthodox synagogue, perhaps selling out of pastrami is par for the course. Butcher, of course, is a bit of a misnomer: Everything in Grass Fed - from the sliced "bacon" to the "butter chicken" to the "corned beef" - is made with plant-based ingredients and therefore fairly easy to certify as...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s decision this week to pull out of an agreement that allowed its Israeli franchisee to sell its product in what the company terms “Occupied Palestinian Territory” has angered some Jewish-owned businesses. But the move also could have legal repercussions in the United States. As a result of a campaign since the mid-2010s led by center-right and Christian pro-Israel groups, 33 states have passed laws or issued executive orders targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, accordi...
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio told a news briefing Tuesday that he would stop eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream after the company announced that it was stopping its sales in Judea and Samaria as soon as the Israeli franchise’s license runs out in December 2022. “I can say I will not be eating any more Cherry Garcia for awhile,” de Blasio said in allusion to his favorite flavor, in a video shared on social media. He added that it was “sad to me” that the “good people” who founded the company, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, were making the...
In light of Ben & Jerry’s recent announcement to stop selling their ice cream in Judea and Samaria because of pro-Palestinian pressure, Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, spoke with Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (NY- District 11) who encouraged her constituents to boycott the ice cream maker. Congresswoman Malliotakis stated, “It’s a shame that they’ve decided to target the Jewish people like this. And I think it’s really important that Americans here send a message to Ben and Jerry’s by not buying their ice cream, quite...
(JNS) - More than 3,000 people from across the country gathered near the U.S. Capitol on Sunday to stand in solidarity against the rising tide of antisemitism across the United States. "No Fear: A Rally in Solidarity With the Jewish People" was organized by more than 100 Jewish and interfaith organizations from across the political and religious spectrum, under the leadership of business executive Elisha Wiesel, son of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. "Looking out at all of...
(JNS) — The antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative is urging the California Senate Education Committee to vote against a bill that allows high school districts to adopt an antisemitic draft of an ethnic-studies curriculum. “Especially now, as violence in the Middle East is spilling over into vicious attacks on Jews all over the world, including in California, we believe AB 101 directly threatens the safety and well-being of Jewish students in our state, and we urge you to vote ‘no’ on this bill,” said AMCHA Initiative director Tammi Rossman-B...
(JTA) — The suspect in the stabbing of a Boston Chabad rabbi has been charged with committing a hate crime and civil rights offense. Khaled Awad, 24, was arrested Thursday after allegedly stabbing Rabbi Shlomo Noginski outside of his school and synagogue in the Brighton neighborhood. Noginski survived the stabbing and has been released from the hospital, which he called a “miracle.” Awad was charged initially with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a police officer. Prosecutors now have added the h...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Andrew Saul, the Social Security Administration Commissioner who President Joe Biden fired last week, claimed the move was illegal and vowed to stay in the post. Saul, a businessman who has donated heavily to Jewish causes, gave the comment to The Washington Post on Friday. Biden said the Trump-appointed official was thwarting changes that Biden wanted at the agency. The government is able to cut off access to computer networks, so it’s not clear what options Saul has. Democrats, government unions, and advocates for the dis...
(JTA) — The suspect in the stabbing of a Boston Chabad rabbi has been charged with committing a hate crime and civil rights offense. Khaled Awad, 24, was arrested Thursday after allegedly stabbing Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky outside of his school and synagogue in the Brighton neighborhood. Noginsky survived the stabbing and has been released from the hospital, which he called a “miracle.” Awad was charged initially with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a police officer. Prosecutors now have added the h...
(JTA) - Rabbi Anna Levin Rosen has counseled Jewish students at the University of Chicago through crises before. But she says the last two weeks have been "devastating." First, Ilan Naibryf, 21, disappeared in last month's Surfside, Florida, building collapse. He had been visiting with his girlfriend, Deborah Berezdivin, whose family owned two units in the building; neither of them has been found yet. Then, last week, Max Lewis, 20, was struck by a stray bullet while riding the train back from...
BOSTON (JTA) - Days after a series of violent acts stunned Greater Boston and threatened its Jewish community, residents are jolted but resolute, vowing to continue taking pride in their Jewish identity. The latest incident occurred on Thursday, when Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed eight times outside of Shaloh House, a Jewish school and synagogue in Brighton, where he teaches. Less than a week prior, on June 26, in Winthrop, a seaside town just north of Boston, a white supremacist who...
(JTA) - At first, Danny Mintz was excited to learn that lawmakers in his state, Louisiana, were considering mandating Holocaust education in public schools. A director at a good-government group called the Louisiana Budget Project, Mintz knew that the local Jewish federation was encouraging his synagogue's board to back the bill. In a state where a notorious Holocaust denier, David Duke, had been the Republican candidate for governor in 1991, clearly there was a need for more Holocaust...
(JTA) - As he ends his tenure as the director of the largest Hillel in the country after 20 years in the post, Andrew Getraer says Jews at Rutgers University face a reality out of Dickens: the best of times and the worst of times. Jewish life at the school, New Jersey's flagship university, is thriving. There are 6,000 Jews on campus, and it's known as a destination for students seeking a vibrant Jewish community with a range of services, religious communities and clubs. But it's also been a...
(Jewish News of Greater Phoenix via JTA) - When Michael Beller set out three years ago to get a law passed in Arizona requiring Holocaust education in public schools, the response he got was clear. "People told me this would never happen. They were like, 'Not now, not ever. It will never happen in Arizona.' And that was inside the Jewish community and out," he said. But on Wednesday, it happened. After a rollercoaster ride in the State Legislature - including a debate over a controversial defini...
From June 29th to July 3rd, America’s largest labor union, the National Education Association will vote on two motions attacking Israel: New Business Item 29 and New Business Item 51. NBIs 29 and 51 are part of a larger pattern. In recent weeks, teacher’s union leaders in San Francisco and Seattle passed resolutions endorsing the destructive Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. BDS systematically promotes national origin discrimination against Israelis, as well as antisemitism more broadly. The purpose of the mov...
(JNS) - Deborah S. Isaac was elected president of the American Zionist Movement (AZM), the United States federation of 39 Zionist organizations, at the AZM Biennial National Assembly held virtually on Tuesday with more than 400 participants from 30 states. She becomes the first woman to serve as president of AZM, succeeding Richard D. Heideman of Washington, D.C. Six new organizational members were introduced at the assembly: A Wider Bridge; Coordinating Council for the Jewish Homeland; Dorshei...
