Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 733 - 757 of 1920
(JTA) — In Tucker Carlson’s response to accusations that he endorsed one white supremacist talking point, the Fox News anchor appeared to echo another — this time about Israel. Last week, the popular right-wing talk show host said there was a coordinated Democratic plan to “replace” the existing population of the United States with immigrants from the “Third World.” White supremacists refer to the idea as a “Great Replacement” orchestrated by Jews, and that claim has fueled attacks like the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. After the segment,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations are by their nature calls for accountability for atrocities past and present. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, used the occasion to take his own department to task for its neglect of Jews during the Nazi era, and to call for action on behalf of the persecuted today. Blinken, delivering the keynote address Thursday at the event organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, savaged the World War II-era assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, for blocking the entry...
(JTA) - New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens has taken on a side gig as the editor of a new limited-run journal of essays about Jewish issues. The journal, titled Sapir, is an initiative of the Maimonides Fund, an increasingly influential force in Jewish philanthropy that supports Jewish identity-building through media, education and Israel engagement. Over the past year, the fund has also become known for its leadership on COVID relief efforts. The first of four print issues...
The Center for Israel Education and the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel will be presenting their 20th annual Enrichment Workshop on Modern Israel from June 13 to 17. Topics to be covered across 23 hours of presentations, panel discussions and breakout sessions include Jewish connection to the land of Israel, origins and development of Zionism, formation of Israel identity and politics, Israeli music and culture, Hebrew language and literature, the U.S.-Israeli relationship,...
(JTA) — The Biden administration removed sanctions that President Donald Trump had imposed on International Criminal Court officials while continuing to decry the ICC’s work targeting U.S. and Israeli personnel. “These decisions reflect our assessment that the measures adopted were inappropriate and ineffective,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday in a statement. “We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations,” Blinken said, referring to separate investigation...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nancy Kaufman, the former CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, said this week that she had been in touch with the Biden administration about becoming this country’s newly empowered anti-Semitism monitor. Kaufman revealed her contact in the Forward in a story about how progressive Jewish groups appear to be coalescing around her candidacy. She confirmed it on Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying that a number of people outside the administration urged her to apply for the job, so she made her int...
(JTA) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat down for a public interview with a top New York City Jewish group, ending what some had considered a snub of Jewish leadership since the progressive New York Democrat’s election in 2019. In her April 1 talk with Michael Miller, head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that she hadn’t engaged with national and citywide Jewish groups, saying “I was really focused on our backyard.” But she did say she worked on projects with local Jewish groups, including...
(JNS) - Hillel at the University of Rhode Island has created its annual "Field of Flags" memorial in honor of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins on Wednesday night. The exhibit is set up on the Hammershlag Mall, a walkway between the Multicultural Student Services Center and the Carothers Library, on the university's Kingston Campus. The flags were planted on Monday and will remain in place until April 12. The university's Hillel has planted the "Field of Flags" in memory of...
(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) - Calling California Gov. Gavin Newsom a "friend and ally" to the Jewish community, members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus spoke out in a unified show of support for the governor on Tuesday as he faced an increasingly likely recall vote. With just under 1.5 million valid signatures needed to trigger a recall vote, the petition against Newsom had nearly 1.2 million authorized signatures as of March 19, according to the secretary of...
(JTA) — After years of contention and revisions, California’s State Board of Education approved a curriculum meant to guide the state’s schools in teaching ethnic studies, an effort that sparked waves of criticism from Jewish groups. The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum aims to teach students about the histories, experiences, contributions and struggles of minority groups in the state. Jewish activists had vehemently criticized the first draft of the curriculum, which schools are not required to use, for both excluding and discriminating again...
(JTA) — There was virtual wine spilled and nostalgia for gefilte fish, as well as a serious message to consider the role of women in the bible. Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’s Jewish husband, hosted the White House’s first-ever online Passover seder on Thursday, two nights before the holiday formally begins. “We are gathered today for the first Passover celebration of the Biden Harris administration, and I’m excited to join you as the first-ever second gentleman, married to the first woman to serve as Vice President of the Unite...
(JTA) — Every Sunday growing up in northwest London, Simon Joseph would arrive home after playing football (American soccer) with friends and feast on toasted bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon. It was a beloved ritual, one of the only times during the week that the whole family gathered around the table to eat. The salmon — thinly sliced, mild in flavor and buttery on the tongue — was a delicacy he sorely missed when he moved to New York a little over a decade ago. The local lox, even with the best bagel and schmear, was too salty...
Stars of the binge-worthy Israeli Netflix hit series Fauda will be joining Jewish National Fund-USA, the Orlando community and thousands of supporters across the country for the organization's annual Breakfast for Israel on April 18 at 10:30 a.m. While participants may have to BTOB (bring their own bagel) to this year's virtual "breakfast," JNF-USA promises to deliver the same high-quality, star-studded complimentary event that community members have become accustomed to since the first annual...
(JTA) - Jewish groups are rallying in support of Asian Americans following a string of murders Tuesday at massage parlors in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six Asians. Police in Georgia say the 21-year-old suspect may have been motivated by hatred of women and not anti-Asian bigotry. But in the wake of reports of rising levels of anti-Asian harassment and violence amid the coronavirus pandemic, the attack is likely to exacerbate the community's fear regardless of the alleged...
StandWithUs is disappointed that California’s K-12 Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum was approved without the reasonable changes called for by so many people across the state. The State Board of Education voted for the final version unanimously, despite massive numbers of comments asking for edits before and during the March, 18th meeting. As local school districts consider the ESMC and other ethnic studies curricula, StandWithUs will fight relentlessly to ensure these courses humanize and do not harm the Jewish community. “Despite many imp...
(JTA) — One year after COVID-19 first walloped Jewish communities in the United States, a scientific study has confirmed something that many in the communities have long believed: gatherings during the week of Purim served as super-spreader events. A paper published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, a peer-review journal that is open to the public, concludes that the coronavirus was spreading widely in Orthodox communities across the country last spring around that Jewish holiday — before public hea...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Some five years after being snubbed for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Merrick Garland is the new U.S. attorney general. In a 70-30 vote Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Garland as the country's top law enforcer. He becomes the fifth Jewish member of President Joe Biden's Cabinet. Twenty Republicans joined the Democrats in backing Garland, reflecting consensus support for the federal judge. In 2016, when former President Barack Obama tapped Garland for the Supreme...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — With collaboration continuing to play a critical role in delivering impact across synergistic organizations, BBYO and Moishe House are partnering to learn from and leverage their similar operating models to better reach and inspire young Jews. The critical decades of a young person’s life following the bar/bat mitzvah age are defined by many transitions, explorations, and relationships. Research has shown that one of the defining threads throughout these years are meaningful connections between peers and mentors as they sha...
(JTA) — Purim is perhaps the happiest Jewish holiday of the year. It can also be distressing, as adults and young people use the spirit of relative abandon to indulge in binge drinking and other irresponsible behaviors. Make no mistake: Substance use and binge drinking are of great concern to yeshiva high school administrators. We have acknowledged that substance use exists in our community and must be addressed. But without solid data, we’ve been left to guess about our students’ behavior and the challenges they face. Some of that data is no...
(JTA) — Jewish groups are criticizing NBC for airing an offensive portrayal of an Orthodox Jew on one of its medical dramas. The objectionable storyline occurred on an episode of “Nurses,” a Canadian hour-long drama following a group of nurses in a Toronto hospital. In the episode, a young Hasidic patient is told he will need a bone graft to heal his broken leg, leading his devout father to recoil at the possibility of a “dead goyim leg from anyone. An Arab, a woman.” The incident occurs in the series’ eighth episode, “Achilles Heel,” which...
(JTA) - When Ed Stafman was designing the signs he hoped his supporters would plant on their lawns, he debated between two: "Elect Rabbi Ed" or "Elect Ed Stafman." He settled on the version with his last name. After all, he said, "Everyone knows me as Rabbi Ed." Until the election in November, "everyone" meant the people in and around Bozeman, Montana, the thriving college town where Stafman led Congregation Beth Shalom for a decade and remains active in interfaith and social justice...
(JNS) — A Jewish student at Tufts University who claims that he has been the subject months-long campaign of anti-Semitic intimidation, harassment and discrimination is calling on the university to intervene. Max Price, a junior who is a member of the Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ), which is tasked with fact-checking and removing bias student government legislation, has been outspoken against an SJP proposal to include its “Deadly Exchange Campaign” referendum in the student election ballot. “Mr. Price has been subjected to anti-Se...
(JTA) — A school board member in Lowell, Massachusetts, called a former school district leader a “kike” on live television, spurring calls for his resignation. Bob Hoey should step down from the Lowell School Committee, the mayor of the Boston suburb said. “We lost the kike, oh, I mean, the Jewish guy,” Hoey said Wednesday morning on “City Life,” a news opinion show, according to video posted by the local Jewish Journal. “I hate to say it, but that’s what people used to say behind his back.” Hoey, an elected official in the city of 111,000, wa...
(JNS) - On any given day, people coming into the Kosher Palate in Dallas do so know they are going to be spending money on groceries or prepared foods. This past week, however, hundreds of people were treated to free hot meals made by the staff of the supermarket/catering company amid a week of brutally cold winter weather. "My husband being the kind of guy he is, he likes to feed people, and he said there are people who are at home and no way to get hot food, so we have to feed them," said...
(JTA) — President Joe Biden, saying domestic terrorism was the “greatest threat” in America and white supremacists are the “most dangerous people,” pledged to focus his Justice Department on the rise of white supremacy. Biden, in Milwaukee on Tuesday at his first town hall as president, fielded a question from Joel Berkowitz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about what Berkowitz termed the “ongoing threat” from white supremacists in the wake of the Jan. 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol. A number of far-right groups and figures w...
