Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1340 - 1364 of 1886
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...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The Orthodox Union will not penalize its member synagogues that already employ women as clergy, but it has reaffirmed a policy that prohibits other synagogues from hiring women in rabbinic positions. A statement adopted at the umbrella Orthodox synagogue association's board meeting last night and obtained by JTA states that while the O.U. prohibits synagogues from hiring women as clergy, the four synagogues that already employ women clergy will be allowed to remain members...
(JTA)-Staples CEO Shira Goodman abruptly departed as head of the retailer after a year and a half on the job. The company announced Friday that Goodman was stepping down. Her successor was later announced as former Coca-Cola executive Alexander Douglas. Staples went private less than a year ago after it was acquired by Sycamore Partners for $7 billion. Goodman worked for the company in various executive roles for 26 years She was named CEO in September 2016 after serving three months as interim...
Former President Barack Obama this week defended his controversial decision to allow a December 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to pass in the waning days of his administration, blaming the “skyrocketing” pace of Israeli construction. “The pace of settlement construction skyrocketed, making it almost impossible to make any kind of Palestinian state,” Obama said during a talk at Temple Emanu-El in New York City on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported. “Voting a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—If there’s overlap between Hillel and the National Council of Jewish Women, it’s in two areas: defending Israel and combating violence against women on campus. Leaders of the campus Jewish organization took a look at the record of Kenneth Marcus, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run civil rights at the Department of Education, and liked what they saw. NCJW leaders decidedly did not. Now the groups are on the opposite sides of a nomination that has set off a quiet intra-Jewish argument over what matters more: the hostili...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The gap between how Republicans and Democrats view Israel is widening, a Pew Research Center poll found. The poll posted Tuesday showed 79 percent of Republicans sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians whereas 27 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians. Pew said this was the widest divide since 1978. The poll showed that 42 percent of Independents sympathize with Israel more than Palestinians. The drop among Democrats was especially sharp in recent years; in April 2016, 43 percent of Democrats s...
The Jewish National Fund is pleased to announce that Bruce K. Gould has been appointed to the positions of president-Elect and vice president of Campaign for the National Board. This comes at critical time, as JNF's lay leadership and professional team are diligently working on the second half of its One Billion Dollar Road Map for the Next Decade campaign. He will continue to be instrumental in helping JNF connect communities across the country to the people and land of Israel. "My involvement...
(JTA)-Former British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks met with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence to help him frame religious and historical elements of his speech before Israel's Knesset. Sacks and Pence met in New York for 90 minutes prior to Pence's departure for a two-day visit to Israel, part of trip that also included Egypt and Jordan, the Times of Israel reported. Pence sought Sacks' guidance on the sections of the speech, which dealt with the historical connection between the Jews and Israel. He...
SKOKIE, Ill. (JTA)-In an otherwise darkened theater, viewers gasped when they saw what appeared to be a seated 83-year-old man wearing a light green button-down shirt and khaki pants. Aaron Elster of Chicago seemed to be answering questions about his unbelievable escape from the Sokolov ghetto in Poland as a 10-year-old. Elster was forced to hide in a dark, filthy attic for two years during World War II. "Why didn't your sisters run away with you [from the ghetto]?" asked Suri Johnson, 11, of...
NEW YORK (JTA)—During a combative news conference in early August, White House adviser Stephen Miller told reporters that the United States should prioritize immigrants who speak English. “Does the applicant speak English?” Miller asked, describing a bill to reduce the overall number of immigrants and reform immigration requirements. “Can they support themselves and their families financially? Do they have a skill that will add to the U.S. economy?” But if English proficiency had been an immigration requirement a century ago, Miller’s...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The share of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians is falling fast, while Republican sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians is spiking. So says a new poll by the Pew Research Center. But experts are divided on what it means, and whether pro-Israel activists, and Democrats, should be worried. Do the results indicate that Democrats are abandoning Israel en masse? Is it another sign of political polarization, which makes it harder for one party to...
(JTA)-Brandeis University has received an $8.4 million bequest gift for social justice initiatives from a man who visited the Boston-area campus one time. The university announced the gift from Seymour Bluestone on Tuesday. Bluestone, a former rehabilitation doctor who lived in Clearwater, Florida, felt a strong connection to the university's social justice values, died in September at 96. Bluestone began making small gifts to Brandeis in the 1990s at the request of family friends. He visited...
