Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1044 - 1068 of 1886
(JTA)-People across the United States and around the world will join together virtually on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue building in suburban Pittsburgh. The virtual commemoration, called "Pause with Pittsburgh," is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Oct. 27. The moment of solidarity and remembrance for the 11 people who were killed during the attack will include, for those in North America, a text including a video with the mourning prayer and a link to Pittsburgh's...
(JNS)—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) say they plan on endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. The three freshmen congresswomen are scheduled to officially make the endorsement at a rally for Sanders on Saturday in New York. “Bernie is leading a working-class movement to defeat Donald Trump that transcends generation, ethnicity, and geography,” said Omar in a statement to NPR. “That is why he is fighting to cancel all stu...
(JNS)-A recent presentation during a mandatory meeting for the residential living team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that was replete with anti-Semitic references has come under fire from the pro-Israel community, with the school's chancellor denouncing the incident. Titled "Palestine & Great Return March: Palestinian Resistance to 70 Years of Israeli Terror," the slideshow presentation included libelous statements with one of the slides headlined "Brief History of the...
WESTERVILLE, Ohio (JTA)-The fourth Democratic presidential debate revealed fissures among the candidates on whether to keep U.S. troops in the Middle East. The 12 hopefuls on the stage Tuesday night at Otterbein University in this Columbus suburb were unanimous in describing President Donald Trump's pullout of American troops from Syria as catastrophic for the Kurds, U.S. allies in the war against the Islamic State who are now at the mercy of Turkish forces who invaded northern Syria following...
SARASOTA, Florida (JTA)-Most American Jewish day schools go all in on Chanukah, in part to remind their students that Jews have a winter holiday of their own. But when December rolls around at the Hershorin Schiff Community Day School in southwestern Florida, you're almost as likely to see kids drawing Christmas trees as menorahs or dreidels. That's because the school asks its students to design their own holiday plates-and almost half the students at this Jewish day school are not Jewish....
NEW YORK (JTA)—In the past seven years, the American Jewish population has grown 10 percent. It remains a population that is mostly liberal, college educated and overwhelmingly white. And it’s not getting any younger. This is all according to a new American Jewish population estimate of the 48 contiguous U.S. states put out by Brandeis University’s Steinhardt Social Research Institute. The center published similar studies in 2012 and 2015. “The cynicism about American Judaism, and this belief that we are a shrinking population, we are a vanis...
B’nai B’rith International President Charles O. Kaufman has issued the following statement: The heavenly gates are closed; the book of life is inscribed. Another judgment day has passed. And Jonathan Pollard, a convict who spent 30 years in prison for spying on behalf of Israel, remains prohibited from returning to his adopted country—the Jewish state. Sure, he’s been released from prison since 2015. His parole requires him to stay in his New York home from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., to submit any computer he uses for inspection, and to wear a GPS dev...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Here's the sad paradox of the shooting nearly one year ago at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue: The killing of 11 worshippers, the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history, hit a community that was one of the best prepared to handle such an assault. In the year or so prior to the attack, Jewish community security officials had run dozens of training sessions that reached as many as 5,000 Pittsburgh Jewish residents. Many of the Tree of Life congregants knew not to stay in place...
(JNS)—Members of Congress spoke on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives last week to recount their experiences of an “untold story of hope and opportunity” they encountered in Israel in August as part of a congressional tour sponsored by the U.S.-Israel Education Association. “We saw firsthand Israelis and Palestinians working together to promote peace and harmony... Many of the Palestinians were making between three and four times what they would otherwise earn if they did not have this opportunity to have this integrated busines...
(JNS)—U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic members of Congress and elected officials plan to address the annual J Street National Conference later this month, also featuring speakers from anti-Israel organizations including IfNotNow, the New Israel Fund, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) national and central councils. Schumer and Pelosi are frequent speakers at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, o...
By Ellie Rudee (JNS)—“Direct pressure” by donors is the most likely way to induce the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to change, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay told JNS as the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly came to a close last week in New York. Speaking from Geneva, Lindsay—the only former senior UNRWA official ever to have written a thorough critique of the agency, which is tasked with serving 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan—told JNS that whil...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The number of hate crimes against Jews in New York City has risen significantly over the first nine months of this year, part of a citywide rise in such offenses. The New York Police Department has reported 311 total hate crimes through September, as opposed to 250 reported through the same period in 2018, according to Deputy Inspector Mark Molinari, who heads the department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. Molinari said 52 percent of the reported hate crimes, or 163, have targeted Jews. Over the same period last year, the NYPD rep...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A week ago, impeachment was not the flavor of the season. The interest in Robert Mueller’s special counsel report into Russian election interference had waned, and the testimony by Mueller before Congress in July failed to advance the narrative much. President Donald Trump seemed to have come through the controversy politically unscathed. Then came reports over the past week about the president involving a phone call, an intelligence community whistleblower and an allegation that Trump extorted a U.S. ally for political gai...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump, speaking to nearly a thousand Jewish leaders to wish them a Happy New Year on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, said he would be tough with Iran but did not want military conflict. “Our country is reminded of the infinite ways Jewish families uplift our nation,” Trump said in the 13-minute call early Friday afternoon. “You embody the American dream.” Trump introduced Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitor, who gave a brief accounting of his work combating anti-Semitism on the far left, the f...
PITTSBURGH (JTA)-An art installation consisting of works submitted by children from around the world was unveiled at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. "#Hearts Together: The Art of Rebuilding" features 101 works of art printed on canvas that are wrapped around the synagogue building in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Among those who submitted the art were children from Columbine, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut; and Parkland, Florida-all sites of mass shootings. The works were selected...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Sitting at the front of a large room lined floor to ceiling with Jewish holy books, Rabbi Joseph Beyda’s voice broke as he processed, seemingly in real time, the idea that a trusted teacher had preyed on his students. “I think the overarching feeling of the administrators and the faculty and the board of the school is, we know you trust us, we take that trust very deeply, we dedicate our lives to it, we failed on this,” said Beyda, the principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush’s Joel Braverman High School. “You could say it’s not our...
(JTA)—The New York Police Department said it will increase its presence in Jewish neighborhoods before and during the High Holidays. Increased foot patrols and specialized units such as counterterrorism teams will be deployed throughout the communities, Commissioner James O’Neill announced Wednesday. He said not all of them would be identifiable. The NYPD has reported a 63 percent rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes throughout the city this year. Brooklyn’s heavily Jewish neighborhoods have seen a slew of attacks on visibly Jewish people over...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump's top Middle East peace negotiator, is leaving the White House. Although the "ultimate" deal he helped craft has yet to be fully announced, the Trump administration suggested in the announcement that Greenblatt was leaving now that it had been written. A senior White House official said the plan is done. "The vision is now complete and will be released when appropriate," the official said in an email. Greenblatt said in a statement: "It...
(JTA)-Like other local officials, Deborah Lauter can't say exactly what's causing the recent spike in hate crimes against Jews in New York City. It could be, in her words, "the rhetoric that's coming out of various elected officials." It could be animus among the city's diverse communities. It could be that the attacks are getting more press and therefore inspiring copycats. It could just be a hot summer when people need to blow off steam. "It's difficult to make generalizations," Lauter said....
WASHINGTON (JTA)-A decade after the Bernie Madoff debacle-one so serious that Hadassah officials refuse to even utter the Ponzi schemer's name-the women's Zionist organization is back. The finances are robust-2017 tax returns show $108 million in assets-and a staff of about 200 works at its New York headquarters and eight regional offices. To build membership, Hadassah is targeting younger women, recognizing that the stay-at-home mothers who made "Hadassah lady" a cliche in the postwar years...
(JNS)-During the upcoming American Political Science Association's annual conference in Washington, D.C., a group of political theorists is expected to discuss a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. While the "Academic Boycott Resolution" will only be discussed and not voted on during the Aug. 31 meeting, the Academic Engagement Network nonetheless expressed alarm towards the APSA, which was founded in 1903 and is "the leading professional organization for the study of political...
(JNS)—The California Democratic Party’s executive board passed three pro-Israel resolutions on Aug. 25, condemning hatred towards Jews and the State of Israel. One resolution, which Progressive Zionists of California (PZC) co-founder Susan George said “sailed through,” expresses “how anti-Semitic hate speech harms Jews and other Zionists in the California Democratic Party.” It states that Zionism is “the human right to self-determination of the Jewish people in their homeland of Israel,” and mentions that anti-Semitic rhetoric has been “regular...
(JNS)-The decision by Israel to bar Reps. Rashid Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) due to their support for the anti-Israel BDS movement has generated international headlines while at the same time sparking further partisan divide and debate. The controversy over the congresswomen, however, comes shortly after a visit to Israel by 72 fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives that seemed to highlight rare public goodwill between Democrats and Republicans, as well as the broad...
(JNS)-Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Saturday called for boycotting Bill Maher's HBO show after the liberal comedian denounced the anti-Israel BDS movement as "a bulls**t purity test." "Maybe folks should boycott his show," tweeted Tlaib, who compared boycotts of Israel to that of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. "I am tired of folks discrediting a form of speech that is centered on equality and freedom," the congresswoman continued. "This is exactly how they tried to discredit &...
(JTA)—Students at a Southern California high school made a Nazi salute and sang a Nazi marching song at the start of an awards ceremony. The school district will not say publicly if or how it disciplined the students. The incident, which took place last year, involved 10 members of the boys water polo team at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, California, the Daily Beast reported. The video was posted to Instagram by one of the athletes, according to the Daily Beast, and widely circulated among students at the high school. A spokesperson f...
