Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1270 - 1294 of 1920
(JNS)—Ohio State University’s student government overwhelmingly rejected a resolution on Wednesday night, calling on the school to separate itself from firms that do business with Israel. The BDS measure, defeated in a vote of 30-7 with three abstentions, called for OSU to “divest from, and boycott G4S, Caterpillar Inc., Sabra Dipping Company and Hewlett-Packard, all of which benefit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” in addition to severing academic ties with the Jewish state. The Undergraduate Student Government’s president and vice...
(JNS)-Donna Shalala, 77, is no stranger to politics or the relationship between the United States and Israel. She served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, where she traveled to Israel and helped researchers there obtain grants from the National Institutes of Health, in addition to assisting with other initiatives inside the Jewish state. She then went into the private sector: serving as University of Miami president for 14 years and president of the Clinton...
(JNS)—Donna Shalala, 77, is no stranger to politics or the relationship between the United States and Israel. She served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, where she traveled to Israel and helped researchers there obtain grants from the National Institutes of Health, in addition to assisting with other initiatives inside the Jewish state. She then went into the private sector: serving as University of Miami president for 14 years and president of the Clinton Foundation for two years. Shalala, endorsed by t...
(JTA)—More than 2,000 handmade Stars of David were hung throughout Pittsburgh. The stars, created by more than 1,000 volunteers from around the world, were hung on Saturday by 40 volunteers. Each star—some crocheted, some made with leather—had a heart in the center. The stars were the brainchild of Hinda Mandell and Ellen Dominus Broude, who created the Facebook page Jewish Hearts from Pittsburgh in response to the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue building in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood that left 11 worshippers dead. The page calle...
(JTA)—A 181-year-old rule banning Congress members from wearing hats of any kind could be overturned in order to accommodate a newly elected Muslim lawmaker who wears a headscarf called a hijab. Some Jewish groups are supporting her efforts, which would enable Jewish lawmakers to wear a kippah. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who won election this month, is a co-author of the proposal. She became one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to the House of Representatives. Rashida Tlaib, who was elected to serve in Congress from the D...
The world was taken by surprised with the announcement that Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., will be resigning at the end of the year. The pro-Israel diplomat, dubbed “Hurricane Haley” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for her strong defense of the Jewish state, viewed standing up to the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias and defending moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem among her main achievements in her diplomatic posting. The outspoken pro-Israel diplomat will be sorely missed. Here is a selection of some her most memorable quote...
(JTA)—Women’s March co-founder Teresa Shook called on its current organizers to step down Monday, saying they “allowed anti-Semitism.” In a Facebook post, Shook said Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez “have steered the Movement away from its true course.” “In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs,” Shook wrote. Th...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS)—Voices filled with emotion, Chabad rabbis from across California made clear their determination to help people in need while dealing with the ongoing devastation that uncontrollable blazes have wrought on their hometowns. “Paradise is a part of our community,” said Rabbi Mendy Zwiebel of the town in Northern California where more than 30 people have been killed as the Camp Fire decimated all of structures in its path. “We had people over for Shabbat who lost everything. This wasn’t expected. On Thursday morning,...
(JNS)—The U.S. Department of State announced on Tuesday rewards of up to $5 million each for information or identification leading to the capture of the following terrorist figures: Hamas leader Saleh al-Aruri, and Hezbollah leaders Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb and Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i. Aruri is a deputy of Hamas’s political bureau and a founder of the group’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. He is currently living “freely in Lebanon, where he reportedly is working with Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutiona...
(JTA)-The death toll and damage continue to rise in California in the wildfires ravaging the state. More than 6,400 homes have been damaged and at least 31 people have been killed, according to CNN. Like other Californians, Jewish residents are evacuating their homes and dealing with the devastating fallout of the fires. Synagogues, camps and a day school have all sustained damage. Here are two remarkable stories of people coming together as a result of the fires, including a rabbi who ran into...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-The Woolsey Fire, which began late last week and engulfed a massive swath of Southern California, has killed at least two people, burned nearly 100,000 acres and ravaged hundreds of structures-including several touchstones of Jewish life in this city. Three historic Jewish sleep-away camps and a Jewish retreat center, all nestled in the Malibu hills, were consumed. A Jewish community day school lost three of its buildings, and several synagogues have smoke damage. Many...
The Zionist Organization of America has condemned the anti-Israel record of newly elected Member of Congress Ihlan Omar and is seeking to alert the public to her record of hostile, anti-Israel extremism. Omar, a Muslim refugee from Somalia, was elected in the 2018 midterm elections to replace Rep. Keith Ellison (D–MI) in the state’s 5th Congressional District, a solidly Democratic seat. The ZOA has also called upon the Democratic Party and the media to criticize her anti-Israel extremism, something which reportage on her campaign and vic...
(JNS)-Actors Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing are being applauded for speaking out against anti-Semitism associated with the Women's March movement, with the former announcing that she will not speak at next year's march and the latter backing the decision. The Zioness Movement, which attended the Women's March in 2017, said it "applauds Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing for calling out the leaders of the Women's March for their hateful rhetoric and their continued association with bigots and...
(JNS)—In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, 69 organizations asked for assurances that taxpayer dollars will not be used toward supporting the BDS movement. The letter was prompted by two pro-BDS events recently hosted by academic departments at the University of Michigan and New York University that are part of the Department of Education-designated Middle East Studies National Resource Centers. The event sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at Michigan was held 48 hours after a gunman shot a...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-After a mass shooting in a heavily Jewish area shocked the nation, Rabbi Yakov Saacks felt like his Long Island congregation was at risk. So the rabbi installed 17 cameras on the synagogue's exterior that can zoom in to read numbers on license plates, as well as indoor cameras at each entrance. He began covering the windows with Kevlar, at around $800 each, making them shatterproof in case vandals hit them with rocks. And he hired armed security guards to protect the...
(Los Angeles, CA)—StandWithUs has launched a wide-scale campaign to hold National Students for Justice in Palestine accountable for spreading anti-Semitism, supporting violence, and violating free speech. The campaign features a petition to the U.S. Department of Education and higher education governing bodies in Canada, letter from StandWithUs and Alums for Campus Fairness to every university with a registered SJP affiliate, social media content educating the public about SJP’s extremism, op-eds, and more. “We are putting all relevant gover...
(JTA)—More than 75 percent of Jews voted for Democrats on an Election Day that was also good to Jewish congressional candidates. A poll conducted by GBA Strategies, a Democrat-aligned pollster, and commissioned by the liberal Israel lobby J Street, found that 76 percent of Jewish voters voted for Democrats, while 19 percent voted for Republicans. A CNN exit poll found that the Jewish split was 79 percent to 17 percent. According to The New York Times, 51 percent of American voters overall cast ballots for House Democrats, versus 47 percent for...
(JTA)—Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held Nov. 6, with Jewish Congress members poised to take key leadership roles. Republicans looked to increase their majority in the Senate. Five Jewish Democrats are set to chair key House committees, including three representatives from New York: Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee; Eliot Engel, Foreign Affairs; and Nita Lowey, Appropriations Adam Schiff of California will head the Intelligence Committee and John Yarmuth of Kentucky (brother of O...
(JNS)—In the wake of the synagogue shooting last week in Pittsburgh, activists from several mainline Protestant churches came under fire for promoting a culture of anti-Semitism in their churches, especially the United Methodist Church. The worst offenders are usually activists affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and the United Church of Christ (UCC). But this year, the activists and officials from the United Methodist Church took on a leading role by hosting the controversial “Christ at the Checkpoint Conference” in Oklah...
(JNS)-The controversial Canary Mission-an anonymous campus watchdog group that exposes organizations, academics and activists that demonize Israel on college campuses-recently came under fire when the San Francisco Jewish Federation indicated that it would no longer facilitate private-donor funding of the group. Articles in The Forward blasted the organization as "shadowy" for refusing to identify its leadership and sources of funding. Yet for pro-Israel student activists who are actively...
PITTSBURGH (JTA)-In the middle of the day on Tuesday, above a growing pile of wilting flower bouquets and sympathy cards, five wooden, five-pointed stars hung on a signpost in front of Tree of Life Congregation, where 11 Jews were gunned down three days before. Similar stars hang around the world at sites of other mass shootings known now by the shorthand of the cities where they took place: San Bernardino. Orlando. Newtown. Parkland. Now they hang here, brightly colored and carrying messages...
(JNS)-Despite mixed reactions, U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon in the aftermath of a gunman killing 11 people and injuring six others at the Tree of Life*Or L'Simcha Synagogue. The visit comes as the community buried the first of the victims on Tuesday. The president was accompanied by his wife, Melania; chief of staff John Kelly; press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and White House deputy chief of staff for communications Bi...
(JTA)-The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the largest newspaper serving the Pennsylvania city's metropolitan area, printed a part of the Jewish mourner's prayer in Hebrew as its front-page headline. The first four words of the Mourner's Kaddish were printed on Friday's front page as a tribute to the 11 people killed last weekend in a shooting attack at the city's Tree of Life synagogue, allegedly by a far-right extremist. The words mean "may His great name be exalted and sanctified." The same prayer,...
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (JTA)—On Saturday, the front line in the struggle to save and perpetuate Judaism ran through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I know a little something about that front line. Born in Pittsburgh, raised in her suburbs, an adult living on the North Side and East End of the city, I am—with apologies to my new hometown in this city—a Pittsburgher until I die. As the editor of The Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh for 13 years, ground zero for my coverage was Squirrel Hill, the Pittsburgh neighborhood where Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagog...
On Wednesday, the National Council of Young Israel addressed criticism of President Donald Trump following a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that represents the worst attack on Jews in the U.S. in the nation's history. NCYI counts 25,000 families among its members at 135 branch synagogues across the globe, in the United States, Israel, and Canada. "We were horrified to hear the news about the anti-Semitic murderous rampage against Jews praying at Congregation Etz Chaim in Pittsburgh," said NCYI...
