Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1090 - 1114 of 1886
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives this week approved a nonbinding resolution that condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. Much was made of the 398-17 vote, one that earns the hoary journalist adjective “overwhelming.” Democrats and Republicans at long last could bond on an issue, rejecting attempts to boycott Israel. “It’s that bipartisan support for Israel that means the world understands that the United States is strongly in support of Israel,” Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill, the resolution...
(JTA)—Jewish leaders in Baltimore have come to the defense of Rep. Elijah Cummings, the African-American Democrat who has come under withering attack from President Donald Trump. Trump used Twitter over the weekend to attack Cummings, whose 7th District includes over half of the city of Baltimore. On Saturday, the president called Cummings “a brutal bully” for criticizing conditions at border detention camps for migrants. “Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” the president wrote on Twitter, following a “Fox &...
(JNS)—A non-kosher Israeli burger franchise has indefinitely delayed its opening in Dearborn, Mich., after taking heat from the Arab-American community, one of the largest in the United States. The opening of Burgerim (the Hebrew plural for “burgers”) has apparently “stirred up controversy for months, striking at the heart of the charged debate over Israeli-Palestinian relations. The announced restaurant opening has elicited back-and-forth comments on Facebook posts from those spreading the message to boycott and others just hoping for a good...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly condemned the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. The House vote Tuesday, July 23, on the non-binding resolution was 398-17. Opposing were 16 Democrats, including two who back BDS, Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The resolution, backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also enshrines the two-state outcome to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at a time that the Trump a...
(JNS)-Among the some two-dozen 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has sought to position himself as a consensus moderate backing long-held positions within the party. But even with a long track record of executive experience, campaigning this way in such a crowded field that seems to be shifting leftward makes it increasingly difficult to stand out. His candidacy also comes at a time when the Democratic Party is facing questions over its bipartisan...
(JNS)-U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a veteran Democratic lawmaker and icon of the civil-rights movement, is currently co-sponsoring a resolution for and against the anti-Israel BDS movement, leading to questions as to whether or not he supports boycotting the Jewish state. Last week, Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-Minn.) introduced a bill affirming the right to boycott countries. It was widely seen as a bid by Omar, who openly supports the BDS movement, to push back against U.S. laws banning the boycott...
NEW YORK (JTA)-In the 1960s, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn were household names, idolized as god-like figures by a public enraptured by NASA's forays into space. There was also Jules Bergman, who almost attained the same fame despite never actually going into space. The charismatic television reporter covered all of NASA's 54 manned space flights during his lifetime. One of those was Apollo 11, which, 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, became the first manned spacecraft to...
(JTA)-In July 1939, eight months after Kristallnacht and seven weeks before Hitler would invade Poland, Congress killed a bill that would have allowed 20,000 Jewish refugee children into the United States. Opponents of the bill, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said America should help its own poor people before foreigners, and worried that letting in children could later lead to admitting their parents. "I have nothing against the Jews," said a woman quoted by JTA at the time as Mrs....
(JTA)—U.S. Jews know more about religion in general than their non-Jewish neighbors, a new survey shows. Americans who are not Jewish, meanwhile, don’t know a lot about Judaism. But they like Jews more than any other religious group. And they think there are more Jews in the country than there actually are. The more non-Jews know about Jews, the more they like them. The data comes out of a new survey on what Americans know about religion published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. The survey asked a group of diverse Americans a set of 32 que...
(JNS)—Williams College has reached a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education in lieu of an investigation over the student government rejecting a new pro-Israel group, Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI), in an anonymous vote in April. The college administration overrode the student government’s rejection of WIFI the following month. “This Agreement contains no findings of fact, does not constitute an admission of liability on the part of the College, and does not repre...
NEW YORK (JTA)-If you're going to physically block an entrance to an ICE detention center, the handbook says, don't act nice about it. Do chant in Yiddish. Do sing Hebrew prayers. "Defiant, angry, urgent, Jewish," reads the #NeverAgainIsNow Action Toolkit, a six-page Google Doc meant for Jews planning to protest at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. "The goal is to actually make it impossible for ICE and/or the Democratic Establishment to do business as usual. Find the...
(JNS)—The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Friday to block U.S. President Donald Trump from militarily striking Iran. The measure was added by a vote of 251-170 to a $733 billion National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit the Trump administration from utilizing any taxpayer funds for military action “in or against” the regime unless the president gets explicit authorization from Congress, although it would not prevent Trump from retaliating if Iran were to strike on the United States. The Senate rejected such...
BOSTON (JTA)-Two anti-Semitic fliers that deny the Holocaust were posted at a Massachusetts synagogue, with reports of similar incidents at synagogues in two other states. Police are investigating what the Anti-Defamation League described as a coordinated campaign by a national online white supremacist group. The fliers at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead, a town of nearly 20,000 with a sizable Jewish population on the state's North Shore, were discovered Monday morning by a teacher at its...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-U.S. Attorney General William Barr called anti-Semitism a "cancer" at a Department of Justice summit on the topic notable for its focus on anti-Israel activity and for speeches by the top leaders of the departments of Education, the Treasury and the FBI. Monday's Summit on Combating Anti-Semitism, held at the DOJ headquarters here, featured panel discussions and an audience of about 150, mostly men representing various Jewish organizations and government agencies that deal with...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Bernie Sanders wants you to know that he's not grumpy all of the time. "There are some times I'm not grumpy. Now is not one of those times," he says, a wry smile crossing his face. This might be the most Jewish moment of Sanders' latest interview with NowThis-a progressive social media video site with a following-even though he was asked about what it would mean to be the first Jewish president. The ten-minute interview, titled "Twenty Questions for 2020," was designed to help...
(JTA)-When the ushers locked the door to the sanctuary, and the congregants prepared to flee the synagogue in preparation for a mass shooting, Rabbi Neil Cooper made sure it all happened before they had to take the Torahs out of the ark. Ten minutes later the worshippers were back in the pews, doors unlocked, and getting ready to hear the weekly Torah portion. The first active shooter drill at this suburban Philadelphia synagogue was over. "It was not a high-energy, kind of catching people...
(JNS)—Representatives of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other religious groups gathered together recently at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a discussion on security issues facing faith communities. The timing couldn’t be more apt, as one FBI source noted that this is the most “complex and dynamic threat environment we have ever been in.” Every day, said the source, foreign governments are researching and identifying ways that they can “exploit” and “sow discord,” and turn people against their own communities. He added that faith comm...
(JNS)—Walmart, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are among retailers selling an edition of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” featuring a neo-Nazi blurb and a price tag with numbers that reference white power. “This book has set a path toward a much higher understanding of the self and of our magnificent destiny as living beings part of this Race on our planet,” stated the blurb on the Barnes & Noble website, which has apparently removed the listing. “It shows us that we must not look at nature in terms of good or bad, but in an unfiltered manner. It de...
BOSTON (JTA)-A group of some 1,000 Jewish activists and others brought rush hour traffic to a halt in downtown Boston to protest immigrant detention in the city and across the country. Tuesday's protest followed a similar event Sunday where 36 Jewish activists were arrested during a protest at a New Jersey detention center. Following a rally at the New England Holocaust Memorial, protesters marched through the city's streets to the Suffolk House of Correction, where 18 people were arrested...
(JNS)-Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems announced on Wednesday that its U.S. subsidiary has been awarded a $26 million contract by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to install a multi-sensor system to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border. According to a report in the Israeli financial daily Globes, Elbit will install an Integrated Fixed Towers system in Arizona. Elbit has been involved in a number of projects with U.S. Customs regarding border security. The IFT system is a...
(JNS)—U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) rejected an invitation on Sunday to tour Auschwitz with a Holocaust survivor. The organization From the Depths, whose president, 93-year-old Edward Mosberg, is a Holocaust survivor, invited her to see the camp, where an estimated 1.1 million people, almost all of them Jews, were killed. “The opportunity you will have of visiting the German Nazi Concentration Camps along with Mr. Mosberg, a 93-year-old survivor of history’s most brutal genocidal regime, will enable you to become a witness of a wi...
(JTA)-Gary Rosenblatt, the editor and publisher of The New York Jewish Week for 26 years, is stepping down. Under his stewardship, the newspaper started Write On For Israel, an educational/advocacy program to prepare high school students for the Mideast debate on campus, in 2002; and The Conversation, an off-the-record retreat with a diverse Jewish participation, to discuss major issues facing American Jewry, in 2005. It also launched the publication Fresh Ink for Teens, The Jewish Week Investig...
BOSTON (JTA)—A rabbi here has asked congregants to consider bringing guns to religious services as a form of protection in response to recent shootings at synagogues across the country. Rabbi Dan Rodkin of Shaloh House in Brighton, a Boston neighborhood with a large number of Russian-speaking Jews, told the public radio station WBUR that the rise in hate crimes across the country and the loss of life at the Chabad at Poway and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh influenced his thinking. Rodkin fears that increased safety measures i...
(JNS)-In the aftermath of two synagogue shootings exactly six months apart, in addition to arson incidents at Chabad Houses in Massachusetts and an attempted arson attempt at a Chicago synagogue last month, the issue of security, specifically armed personnel, has been in the spotlight. Some have called for supporting the idea, while others, especially those who favor strict gun control, have expressed their opposition to the idea. Three arson incidents occurred in Massachusetts within a week...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reiterated a strong rejection of analogies to the Holocaust in the wake of the debate surrounding the term “concentration camps” sparked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The museum “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the museum said in a statement. “That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter.” The statement linked to one from D...
