Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1146 - 1170 of 1890
POWAY, Calif. (JTA)-"Those who are standing can remain standing," Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein joked, a nod to the standing-room-only crowd that had packed Chabad of Poway for Friday night services. For many of those who filled the sanctuary, showing up was an act of faith, of solidarity, of defiance just six days after a gunman entered the synagogue, killing one and injuring three, including the rabbi. Goldstein dedicated this "Shabbat of healing" to Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, who was killed in the...
(JNS)-The founding rabbi of Chabad of Poway in Southern California spoke at the White House on Thursday, less than a week after his synagogue was attacked, with one woman killed and three others injured. Chabad Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein talked about facing the shooter, 19-year-old John Earnest, even if he got killed. He said that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, taught to fight darkness with light. "It was that moment that I made a decision: No matter what happens to me, I'm...
(JTA)—On the Shabbat morning of April 27, a 19-year-old with a gun killed Lori Gilbert-Kaye and injured several others at the Chabad of Poway outside of San Diego. But before the sun had set and observant Jews were able to see the news, another teenager decided to take action. The 15-year-old, who asked to be identified only by his first name, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that while he had “never been to Poway,” and doesn’t personally subscribe to the rules of Shabbat, he didn’t want to waste any time in helping raise money. “I though...
(JTA)—The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial published Tuesday that the newspaper’s publishing of “an appalling political cartoon” is “evidence of a profound danger—not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also acknowledged its own historical contributions to the rise of anti-Semitism. “In the 1930s and the 1940s, The Times was largely silent as anti-Semitism rose up and bathed the world in blood,” it wrote. “That failure still haunts this newspaper.” The editorial said that “anti-Semitic imagery i...
(JTA)—The head of the Anti-Defamation League said Saturday’s synagogue shooting should serve as a “wake-up call” for politicians and business executives to more seriously address anti-Semitism. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the ADL, spoke with reporters on a call from Poway, California, where a gunman entered the Chabad of Poway synagogue Saturday and killed one person, injuring three. Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, was killed while shielding the rabbi from bullets. The rabbi, an eight-year-old girl and another adult were wo...
(JTA)—Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein said his Chabad of Poway could not afford to hire an armed guard. Had it been able, or if the government had helped the synagogue bring in one, he believes the deadly attack there Saturday could have been averted. “If I had the funding, we may have been spared. How many more dead bodies will we have to see before we act?” he told The New York Times. But hiring a security guard should not be the only priority in terms of security, said Jason Friedman, the executive director of the Community Security Service, an or...
(JNS)-Despite apologizing on Sunday for running an anti-Semitic cartoon that ran in its international edition on Thursday, The New York Times published another anti-Semitic cartoon in the same edition over the weekend. The weekend cartoon by Norwegian cartoonist Roar Hagen depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with sinister eyes taking a picture of himself with a selfie-stick, carrying a tablet featuring the Israeli flag painted on it. The cartoon also resembles a different one from...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Israeli ambassador to the United States linked The New York Times to the “Jew-hatred of growing parts of the intellectual class.” Ron Dermer was speaking Monday in the U.S. Capitol at the annual Holocaust Days of Remembrance organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was an unusually political attack on a day and at an event organized by an institution that generally focuses on the historical meaning of the Holocaust. Dermer listed recent lethal attacks against Jews, including Saturday’s deadly shooting at the Cha...
(JTA)-A shooting at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, near San Diego, California, has left one person dead and three injured, including a child. Police in Poway detained a white 19-year-old San Diego man in connection with the shooting on the last day of Passover, and hospitals said they were taking in the wounded people. The suspect left an "open letter" prior to the morning attack, law enforcement said. "A man has been detained for questioning in connection with a shooting incident at the Chabad...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed back against Sen. Bernie Sanders for calling Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “racist.” The pro-Israel lobby, in a tweet that did not mention the Democratic presidential hopeful by name, said it was counterproductive when American leaders used “name-calling” against their Israeli counterparts. “The U.S.-Israel alliance serves America’s interests,” AIPAC said Tuesday on Twitter. “We benefit from the close bonds between the governments and peoples. Name-calling by pol...
(JNS)-With U.S. President Donald Trump nominating Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen to be U.S. ambassador to Egypt, the nomination of Kelly Craft, announced in February, might finally be submitted to the Senate in the near future. That would enable the continuation of the administration's pro-Israel agenda at Turtle Bay, which has included calling out the anti-Israel bias long associated with the United Nations, as well as withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council...
POWAY, California (JTA)-Lori Gilbert-Kaye, who was killed in the attack at a Chabad synagogue near San Diego, is credited with jumping in front of the synagogue's rabbi to shield him from the gunman's bullets. Gilbert-Kaye, 60, of San Diego, is survived by her husband and 22-year-old daughter. "Lori you were a jewel of our community a true Eshet Chayil, a Woman of Valor," her friend Audrey Jacobs, a community activist, wrote in a post on Facebook. "You were always running to do a mitzvah (good...
(JNS)—Change.org is apparently censoring a petition by the watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org calling on U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Elan Carr, the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, to investigate the Council on American Islamic Relations and its connections to Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). The petition is currently not visible to users who search for it on the Change.org site. “There’s no doubt that Tlaib and Omar have close-knit ties with Hamas affiliated CAIR, and we, as co...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Special counsel Robert Mueller's report about Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election was released to Congress and the public Thursday, adding new details to what had been disclosed about its findings by Attorney General William Barr when Mueller concluded his investigation last month. The 448-page document, released after a nearly two-year long inquiry, says Mueller's investigation did not establish the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated" with the Russian...
(JTA)—One week after winning election to a fifth term as Israel’s head of state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. Other Jewish people on the list include: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; Jennifer Hyman, whose $1 billion company Rent the Runway allows subscribers to rent designer clothing online; and Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, who started the progressive activism group Indivisible. “Israel grows more prosperous. It grows more powerful,” Time columnist David French wr...
(Nashville, Tenn.)—Evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called out the ill-informed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for trivializing the memory of the Holocaust by tweeting a statement by Pastor Martin Niemöller in defense of the anti-Semite and Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group collaborator Ilhan Omar. The statement AOC quoted was written by Niemöller who lived under the Nazi regime and used his influence to defend the innocent victims of his government. In contrast, Ilhan Omar is a collaborator of the Muslim Brotherhood whi...
Zionist Organization of America has called on the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether federal funds were misused to organize a one-sided “academic” conference, hosted by the University of North Carolina and co-sponsored by Duke University, which was hostile to Israel and blatantly anti-Semitic. ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., director of ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice, sent a letter to Mr. Kenneth L. Marcus, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, highlightin...
(JNS)—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Tuesday that the Democratic Party has “no taint” of anti-Semitism amid such remarks coming from congressional members, especially Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whom Pelosi said is not an anti-Semite. “I don’t think that the congresswoman is anti-Semitic,” Pelosi told CNN. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t think Rep. Ilhan Omar is anti-Semitic: “I wouldn’t even put those in the same category.” She criticizes President Trump for his tweet, saying he used video of 9/11 “as a political too...
(JNS)—The local affiliates of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cornell and Binghamton universities in New York state have been promoting images created by a Palestinian terrorist organization on their respective social-media pages. Ahead of an expected BDS vote in late April, Cornell SJP hosted a recent teach-in titled “From Ferguson to Palestine: A Conversation Surrounding Struggle,” featuring an event flyer that appeared to depict a rifle and explicitly mentions the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to CAMER...
(JTA)-Pete Buttigieg has a word he likes to use to describe Vice President Mike Pence: "Pharisee." Jewish scholars would like him to stop doing that. Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running a dark horse campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has advanced the idea of liberal candidates using religious language to talk about their values. The flip side of that, Buttigieg says, is that Republican leaders don't practice the religious values they preach. He...
(JTA)—Rabbi Mordechai Shain isn’t sure about vaccines. Nearly all of the 400 kids in the school he runs, from 3 months old to eighth-grade teens, are vaccinated. About eight or 10 are not. But he’s skeptical that immunization works at all. “My doctor in shul says everyone should take a flu shot, so a lot of people went,” said Shain, the head of school at the Tenafly Chabad Academy in Northern New Jersey, about 13 miles from Manhattan. “Ninety percent that took a flu shot got flus and the 10 percent didn’t get the flu. … I speak to so many docto...
(JTA)-"This is my anti-Semitic song," Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian-Israeli rapper, said at the opening of a conference on Gaza last month at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I know it might sound [like] R&B stuff, but don't think of Rihanna when you sing it, don't think of Beyonce," he continued. "Think of Mel Gibson. Go that anti-Semitic. Let's try it together because I need your help. I cannot be anti-Semitic alone." Nafar then launched into "Mama, I fell in love with a Jew," a...
NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS—Taxpayers suing to stop anti-Israel and anti-Semitic history lessons in Newton Public Schools have added to their lawsuit new claims under the First Amendment’s religion clauses. The amended complaint alleges that instructional and educational materials used to teach about the religion of Islam in NPS ninth-grade world history classes have no secular purpose, advance religious beliefs, and coerce participation in religious exercises. As detailed in the extensively-documented 495-page complaint, public school students in...
OCEANSIDE, N.Y. (JTA)-Nine years ago, Ellen Grossman wanted to do something special for her birthday. "I said we've had enough parties and enough pocketbooks and enough jewelry-do something different," the Great Neck resident recalled. So she decided to organize a Passover seder for Holocaust survivors, many of whom who had no actual seder to go to during the holiday. That was in 2011. When the first seder was a success, Grossman decided to keep going. On Wednesday, some 85 guests-Holocaust...
The Zionist Organization of America condemned New York University today for deciding to confer a President’s Service Award on NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, a group with a horrific record of harassing and intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students. After SJP announced on Facebook that it had been selected to receive a presidential service award, the ZOA repeatedly reached out to NYU officials to confirm the truth of SJP’s announcement. Officials have not responded. The President’s Service Award recognizes student groups...
