Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 912 - 936 of 1886
By Philissa Cramer (JTA)—New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio drew fierce criticism late Tuesday after he singled out “the Jewish community” in a trio of tweets announcing that he had instructed his police department to fine or even arrest social distancing violators. De Blasio was responding to a funeral that had drawn hundreds of Orthodox Jews to the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to mourn a rabbi who died of the coronavirus. Pictures of the funeral procession, first shared by Reuven Blau, a reporter for The CITY, showed streets dense...
(JNS)—Seven Jewish foundations joined together to launch the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund, which will provide more than $80 million in interest-free loans and grants as thousands of Jewish nonprofit organizations are experiencing unprecedented needs due to the coronavirus pandemic. The challenges have affected every sector of Jewish communal life, including organizational closures, staff layoffs, canceled programs, a pivot to online education, an anticipated increase in financial-aid needs, a decrease in fundraising and and o...
(JNS)—The American Jewish lobby group J Street last week endorsed former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for president—the first time in its history in which the organization has formally endorsed a candidate for the White House. “At a time when the threats to our core values both at home and abroad have never been more serious, all of us in the pro-Israel, pro-peace community know that the path to a better future begins with defeating Donald Trump at the polls,” said J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami in a statement on Friday. “To help achieve t...
(JTA)—The nominating committee of US Jewry’s foreign policy umbrella has tapped as its next chair the immediate past chairwoman of the lead Jewish immigration advocacy group—one that has clashed repeatedly with the Trump administration. Dianne Lob of HIAS is the pick of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group announced Friday. The chair is the lay leader of the Presidents Conference. HIAS and the Trump administration have clashed repeatedly over the administration’s restrictive immigra...
(JNS)—Jewish nonprofits have received at least $264 million in loans under the $2.1 trillion coronavirus relief package passed by Congress and enacted into law last month, according to the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). According to a JFNA survey, 579 got loans approved from the Small Business Administration. The average loan was between $5,000 and $4.9 million. The median loan was $256,000. There were 1,331 responses to the JFNA survey. The results come as the U.S. Senate passed another funding bill on Tuesday afternoon t...
(JNS)—Nearly two-thirds of American Jews believe that they are less safe today than a decade ago, according to a new survey by the Anti-Defamation League on Jewish encounters with anti-Semitism in the United States. The survey found that 54 percent of American Jews have either experienced or witnessed an incident they deem was motivated by anti-Semitism, while 63 percent of Jews say their communities are “less safe” than they were a decade ago. “Our tracking has shown that lethal and nonlethal anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in rece...
(JTA)-Sometime in March, the Chesed Shel Emes Jewish burial society in Brooklyn added a new responsibility to the sacred tasks its 700 volunteers had committed to uphold: paperwork. Bodies were piling up because of the coronavirus pandemic, and helping funeral homes with their clerical work had grown just as essential to ensuring respectful Jewish funeral rites as washing and guarding bodies before they were buried. Between Purim on March 10 and Passover, which ended last week, the burial...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)—In the weeks after it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic would spark a lasting economic crisis, the Jewish world’s leading funder group put together a memo with some back-of-the-envelope projections for how much Jewish nonprofits stood to lose. The tally: at least $650 million, according to the internal document from the Jewish Federations of North America, which was based on estimates from several American Jewish umbrella organizations, such as the Foundation for Jewish Camp and the JCC Association of North...
SHARON, Mass. (JTA)-When Neil Morris heard the news that his hometown schools were closing for at least two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, his first thought was about the kids who would lose access to their free or reduced lunches. Morris, the owner of A Perfect Taste, a kosher catering company, called his friend and fellow Sharon resident Avi Shemtov, a chef and owner of Simcha, a restaurant here where both grew up. Both are passionate about reducing food waste and curbing food...
(JTA)—On a typical day, the art center at Kohelet Yeshiva High School in suburban Philadelphia is filled with students working on a range of projects—from making ceramic bowls on the pottery wheels to creating wooden sculptures. They use the 3-D printer and laser cutter to build parts for the robotics team. But since the school went virtual more than two weeks ago, the 1,300-square-foot center has been used to make an entirely different project: face shields for medical professionals treating coronavirus patients. Since starting production las...
(JTA)—Forget about “The Chanukah Song.” Actor Adam Sandler’s latest earworm is a tribute to doctors and nurses and an exhortation for people to stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Sandler debuted “Quarantine Song” from his home during a guest appearance Thursday on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” Fallon was broadcasting from his home as well. Sandler pulled a hoodie over his baseball cap and put on sunglasses (so viewers would not see him reading the lyrics, he said) before he began strumming on his guitar. “Doctors and nurse...
(JNS)-The worldwide pandemic COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in its relentless sweep across the planet, not only in terms of health needs and care, but in economic terms as well. It has quashed the booming stock market and decimated unemployment lows, with such turmoil expected to continue for the next few weeks and maybe months. While the long-term impact of the coronavirus is yet to come, Jewish communal organizations are already hearing from small business, individuals and groups that have...
(JNS)-It wasn't so long ago when life was so over-the-top busy that you longed for some quiet unstructured time with your children. The coronavirus pandemic has granted that wish. And then some. With no end in sight of QT (Quality Time), many schools have come to a parent's rescue with online classes through a range of technologies many of us had never heard of two weeks ago. Ironically, those screens that were once the bane of a parent's existence-the computers, lap tops, cell phones and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—It’s the ninth question on the census, and for many Jewish respondents, it’s a surprising—and sometimes unwelcome—invitation to consider who exactly they are. For the first time, the U.S. Census question on race is asking white and African-American respondents to dig deeper and fill in more detailed origins. “Mark one or more boxes AND print origins,” the printed form says. For white, it adds, “Print, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.” The request for “origins” has existed for decades f...
By Philissa Cramer, Gabe Friedman, Ron Kampeas (JTA)—When Bernie Sanders announced on Wednesday that he was suspending his presidential campaign, he closed the door on the last sliver of possibility that America would elect its first Jewish president in 2020. That leaves Jewish White House history to be made. Here are 10 people who could be positioned to make it—one day. (Don’t read anything into the order—it’s alphabetical.) Mark Cuban Mark Cuban shares at least a few qualities with Donald Trump: He’s a wealthy businessman who has made a flas...
NEW YORK CITY—UJA-Federation of New York announced an additional $11 million in assistance to help those most affected by Covid-19 including single parents, low-income college students, and families struggling to provide dignified Jewish burials. In addition, a combination of loans and grants will be distributed to 22 regional Jewish Community Centers that provide human services and Jewish engagement opportunities to New Yorkers. “Ten days ago, we allocated over $23 million in our first wave of emergency funding for essential food programs and...
(JTA)—Among the mysteries of the coronavirus is that some patients suffer and ultimately die from the disease while others experience the symptoms as akin to a mild cold. Rabbi Daniel Nevins is in the latter category. The dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Nevins was laid up for a few days earlier this month with a fever and some aches, and then recovered. Nevins was tested for the coronavirus on March 12 and a week later got back a positive result. A week after that, he was tested again. Friday morning, he got t...
(JTA)—As the world shut down around it, the Brooklyn headquarters of the worldwide Chabad movement carried on as usual—until late Tuesday night, when its neighborhood’s rabbinic leadership ordered synagogues closed to combat the spread of the coronavirus. All week, men came and went from the massive building in the Crown Heights neighborhood, crowding in for prayer services and study sessions. After news broke that the headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway would close amid global efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there was a final...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The White House has come to an agreement with Democrats and Republicans on a $2 trillion stimulus package, the biggest in U.S. history, in response to the major economic downturn triggered by the coronavirus. Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act as an emergency relief package in response to the needs created by the coronavirus public health crisis and associated economic fallout. The emergency relief package provides tax rebates, expanded unemployment benefits, and numerous tax-relief provisions aimed at shoring up i...
(JNS)-A rabbi who survived World War II and the Holocaust and in January delivered the opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives died on Tuesday-14 days after his 91st birthday-after being hospitalized with COVID-19. Yeshiva World News first reported the death of Rabbi Avraham Hakohen "Romi" Cohn as a result of complications due to the coronavirus. Cohn was born in 1929 in Pressburg in what was then Czechoslovakia. In 1942, when the Nazis invaded, his parents managed to smuggle him ove...
(JNS)—Let’s talk business, shall we? Let’s talk about how businesses are operating in the age of corona. What is open: supermarkets, small grocers, hardware stores, office-supply stores, pet stores, pizza places, some restaurant takeout, gas stations, beer distributors. Beer distributors? My husband tells me that is an essential business; after all, it’s basically food and beverages. He’s not such a drinker, but recognizes that others are. Now, that distinction was not so apparent at first to the nice man named Izzy who runs the nearby la...
This story originally appeared on Alma. At Zoom University Hillel, there are no comfy places to study or free snacks. There's no director or rabbinic intern or student board. But there are memes, words of comfort and a sense of community as strong as any university's Hillel house. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced nearly every college to transition to online courses and, in most cases, move students out of their dorms and back to their homes. College students naturally have taken to Facebook...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Some 38,000 people work at Jewish community centers across North America, staffing preschools, camps, gyms, classes, activities for seniors and more. Because of the coronavirus crisis, a lot of them are going to lose their jobs. “The cuts are going to be painful and deep,” said Doron Krakow, CEO of the JCC Association of North America. “They are going to go into what I would call a hunker-down mode, which means that they’ll be subject to the kind of staff reductions that we are reading about affecting other industrie...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For the past three years, Esther Possick has avoided the hassle of hosting Passover at her Long Island home by traveling to kosher hotels in foreign locales. In 2017, she spent the holiday at a resort in Stresa, a resort town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy not far from the Swiss border. The following year she tried out Rimini, a coastal city on the Adriatic. Last year she opted for a program in Spain. This year, she was planning to spend the holiday at a seafront hotel in...
(JTA)-Larry Rothwachs, a rabbi in Teaneck, New Jersey, walked into the meeting Wednesday night between local Jewish leaders and health officials with one set of ideas about how his community should respond to the coronavirus. He walked out later that evening certain of another one: that drastically curtailing Jewish traditions and rules is essential to stem the spread of the deadly disease. "I don't think everybody was on the same page coming in. I was not on the page I am at right now,"...
