Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1329 - 1353 of 1886
(JNS)—The White House published a proclamation by U.S. President Donald Trump honoring the memory of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, stating that March 27 is recognized as “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” An event was scheduled on March 27 in the Oval office with Chabad-Lubavitch representatives. The date marks the Jewish calendar birthday of the Rebbe on 11 Nissan, which fell on Tuesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also marked the day, posting on Facebook a link to a Hebrew article (English version here)...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The organizers of the March for Our Lives, almost all of them under 20, had a gun control agenda packed with specifics. They were able to get 800,000 people on and off of this city's Pennsylvania Avenue in three hours. They attracted A-list celebrities. They turned out marchers at more than 800 satellite events held around the world. But the politics and logistics of the weekend often paled next to the simple, and harrowing, stories of the students who were inside Marjory...
(JTA)-The editor in chief of National Geographic Magazine made waves when she admitted that the magazine's past coverage was tinged with racism. "For decades, our coverage was racist. To rise above our past, we must acknowledge it," Susan Goldberg wrote in a letter for the magazine's April issue, which marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. The letter forced readers and staff to grapple with the legacy of the magazine, which has been reporting on the world's...
Cedarhurst, NY—The Digital Citizenship Project, a Cedarhurst based organization dedicated to teaching digital responsibility in the age of technology has released their 2-year-long study (2015—2017) on the digital life of Jewish Day School students. “This study gives us the quantitative data needed to address the growing challenges and opportunities that digital technology presents in the world of education and Jewish education” said Temima Feldman, associate director of The Digital Citizenship Project. “Our goal is to empower parents, educator...
(JNS) Legislation to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel has been adopted in more than 20 states in recent years, but it was derailed last month in Massachusetts. Pro-Israel activists are divided over the reasons why. The Massachusetts bill, known as the Act Prohibiting Discrimination in State Contracts, would have made it illegal for state agencies to do more than $10,000 worth of business with companies that discriminate on the basis of national origin, including, by implication, Israeli national origin. The bi...
By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA)—An omnibus spending bill approved by Congress more than doubles spending for security grants that have been overwhelmingly tapped by Jewish institutions. The $1.3 trillion bill approved Thursday includes $60 million for the security grants, up from $25 million last year. More than 90 percent of the grants have been used to harden security at Jewish institutions since the nonprofit security grant program was launched in 2005. Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, one of the lead a...
Charging ahead with the dramatic remaking of his White House, President Donald Trump announced the ouster of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, to be replaced by former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk entering a White House facing key decisions on Iran and North Korea. After weeks of speculation about McMaster’s future, Trump and the respected three-star general put a positive face on the Thursday departure, making no reference to the growing public friction between them. Trump tweeted that McMaster had done ...
(Cleveland Jewish News via JNS)-Judge Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio is presiding over a case involving more than 400 federal lawsuits brought by communities around the country against drug companies and pharmacy chains for their role in perpetuating the opioid epidemic. The case and Polster-a member of Congregation Shaarey Tikvah in Beachwood, and Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike-were covered in a March 6 front-page story in The New York Times It...
Thanks to the leadership of the Orlando Jewish community, UCF brought the fourth largest student delegation in the country to the AIPAC Policy Conference, which was held Sunday, March 4 through Tuesday, March 6....
(JTA)—The heads of 139 Jewish day schools have signed an open letter urging action following last month’s deadly shooting at a Florida high school. The letter released Tuesday expresses support for the student movement calling for gun reform and seeks political change. Prizmah, a group representing over 300 Jewish day schools, organized the letter. The schools that signed on are from the United States and Canada, and represent various denominations and affiliations. They include those with students from early childhood through high school. “As...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—On the second floor of the downtown convention center here, hundreds attending the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee packed a standing-room-only hall. A bouncer stood outside to control the overflow crowd. It wasn’t a session on boycotts, Iran or the peace process. It was mincha, the Jewish afternoon prayer service. Outside, smaller groups of Orthodox men gathered to form their own prayer quorums. High school students in kippahs and long skirts sat against the walls chatting. Meir Raskas k...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, decried the phrase “pro-Israel, pro-peace”—a motto closely associated with J Street—as “blasphemous.” “Pro-Israel and pro-peace sounds like a completely reasonable position,” Friedman said Tuesday addressing the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “My friends, it is not. Using that praise plainly implies that there are people who are pro-Israel and anti-peace.” Friedman, formerly a lawyer for President Donald Trump, came under fire during his...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Organizers of the Women's March renounced the anti-Semitic views of Louis Farrakhan, but they stood behind one of its co-presidents who attended a speech last month by the Nation of Islam leader and seemed unperturbed by his attacks on Jews. Tamika Mallory, co-president of the Women's March, sparked an outcry when she posted a photo of herself and Farrakhan on Instagram following his Saviours' Day speech in Chicago on Feb. 25. In that speech, Farrakhan declared that "powerful Jews...
(JTA)-Seven survivors of the Parkland school shooting were among thousands of Jewish high school students who attended the annual conference of the Chabad movement's youth group. Responding to the Feb. 14 shooting became an impromptu theme of the conference, which was hosted in New York City by CTeen, the teen arm of the Hasidic outreach movement. CTeen, which has 100,000 members worldwide, has eight chapters in the South Florida area surrounding Parkland. The shooting, which killed 17 students...
(JNS)-The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States soared in 2017, according to the annual report by the Anti-Defamation League. There were 1,986 acts classified as anti-Semitic in 2017, up 57 percent from 2016 at 1,267 and more than double the 2,015 total of 941. That makes 2017 the second-most anti-Semitic year since the ADL began tracking the incidents almost 40 years ago, and the highest-ever single-year spike. "It had been trending in the right direction for a long time," Jonat...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When candidate Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC’s Policy Conference in 2016 and said Barack Obama may be the worst thing that ever happened to Israel, many cheered, many choked and the organization apologized. The fallout from that event will haunt the proceedings when 18,000 activists, including 3,500 students, attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference here this week. Navigating an increasingly polarized political landscape is the new reality for the lobby, which remains pre-eminent among pro-Israel groups and...
(JNS)—Major American Jewish organizations are calling for stricter gun-control laws in the wake of the Feb. 14 mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 14 students and three staff members dead. A spokesperson for the women’s organization Hadassah told JNS that the group supports all three of the legislative proposals under discussion in the aftermath of the shooting. One is a bill sponsored by U.S. Sens. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to expand criminal background checks on prospective purchasers of guns. A second leg...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump spoke of the anguish of a Jewish family in commemorating last week’s school shooting in Florida. “I had them in the Oval Office, incredible people,” Trump said Friday at CPAC, an influential annual conference for conservatives, describing his meeting with the family of Meadow Pollack. “She had a beautiful, beautiful smile, a beautiful life.” Meadow Pollack was 18 and a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where an expelled classmate opened fire last week, killing 17 people. Her father, And...
(JTA)—Director Steven Spielberg and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg have pledged $500,000 each to the student-organized March For Our Lives imploring action on gun control. The nationwide protest scheduled for March 24 is the brainchild of the Never Again movement organized by the student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and joined by students from across Florida and the United States. In their announcements on Tuesday, Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, and Katzenberg and his wife, Marilyn, j...
(JTA)-The college-aged kids of a Jewish congressman from Florida are raising money to end gun violence by selling hamantaschen. Gabby, Serena and Cole Deutch launched the Bake Action Against Gun Violence initiative on Sunday. Their father is Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who represents the district where 17 people were killed last week in Parkland in a shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by a former student there. The project encourages Americans from across the...
(JTA)-They volunteered. They played soccer. They went to camp. They were sweet, mature and easygoing. They were just beginning their lives, or helping others on their way. And one died so that others could live. Jewish students and staff were among the 17 people who were killed when a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting. Among the Jewish victims are first-year students Jaime Guttenberg, Alex Schachter and Alyssa...
Tikvah Fund debuts Maimonides Scholars Program for Jewish high school juniors and seniors NEW YORK—The Tikvah Institute for High School Students has announced a new summer program in partnership with the Maimonides Fund, which will take place from June 24 through July 8, 2018. The program is geared towards Jewish public and private school students who are motivated to learn more about Jewish philosophy, culture and history. Students who will attend this two-week immersive summer institute come with a passion to learn more about the i...
(JTA)-As he leads the police response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is likely enduring some of the toughest days of his career. And he's probably looking to his Judaism to guide him through it. Israel is the county's first Jewish sheriff, and it's an identity he has embraced. A 2016 campaign flier reported on that year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel centers on the role that faith in general, and Judaism in particular, plays in his life. "My...
(JNS)-Rabbi Bradd Boxman of Kol Tikvah, a Reform congregation in the town close to Boca Raton, held a healing and memorial service after the mass shooting that was attended by community members. According to Rabbi Boxman, a large number of students from his congregation was enrolled at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Rabbi Jonathan Kaplan of Temple Beth Chai counseled parents at the local Marriott hotel whose children were still unaccounted for. Kaplan said that Jamie Guttenberg was among his...
(JTA)—An event marking Israel’s 70th year will be held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. The event scheduled for late March is organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is selling tickets for $1,000 per table, Haaretz first reported. Speakers at the event will include the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley; Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon; and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In August, nine groups canceled planned galas at the Florida...
