Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1360 - 1384 of 1886
(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...
(JTA)-Jewish singer-songwriter Neil Diamond announced he is giving up touring after recently being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The Australia and New Zealand leg of his 50th Anniversary tour scheduled for March have been canceled, according to the announcement. "It is with great reluctance and disappointment that I announce my retirement from concert touring," the artist said in a statement released Monday on his website. "I have been so honored to bring my shows to the public for the...
NEW YORK (JTA)—It wasn’t long after Nahum Amir began working for Delta Airlines as a mechanic that he says his manager started calling him “the Jewish guy.” Then Amir says the manager accused him and other Jews of “killing kids in Gaza.” During the same period, Yaron Gilinsky was working as a Delta flight attendant on flights from New York to Tel Aviv. Except, he says, his non-Jewish co-workers would call it “Hell Aviv.” Gilinsky remembers some, including managers, making fun of haredi Orthodox Jews’ beards and sidecurls. One non-Jewish fellow...
NEW CASTLE, Pa. (JTA)-It was a frigid 10 degrees on Sunday, the last day of 2017, but some 20 people gathered at Congregation Tifereth Israel's cemetery in this city of 22,000 on the Ohio border. A blue tent and folding chairs had been set up for attendees, and a pit in the ground had been opened. No hearse would be arriving at this unusual burial, which was not for a person. Still, a few attendees choked up when they greeted each other with hugs and wiped tears from their cheeks. This was a sub...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—International Jewish student leaders will launch an international anti-Semitism awareness campaign on campuses worldwide and vowed to reject any attempts to deny the Armenian genocide. The World Union of Jewish Students at its 44th World Congress, a five-day assembly that ended Monday, also aimed to seek partnership with organizations fighting for religious pluralism in Israel and committed not to work with members or affiliates of Austria’s populist Freedom Party, or FPO, which is part of the new government coalition. The gro...
NEW YORK (JTA)—A Jewish camp has created a scholarship fund in memory of a family who died in a plane crash in Costa Rica. Camp Ramah Darom, a Conservative summer camp in Clayton, Georgia, established a fund in memory of the Weiss family on Tuesday. The Weisses, of Belleair, Florida—Mitchell and Leslie, both physicians; their daughter, Hannah, 19, and son, Ari, 16—were killed Sunday when the small plane in which they were passengers went down in the Central American nation’s northwest shortly after takeoff. Another eight people died in the cra...
(JTA)—Four current and former flight attendants have filed a federal lawsuit against Delta Air Lines alleging that the company’s management has “an anti-Jewish, Hebrew and ethnic Israeli attitude.” The suit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York’s Westchester County. The plaintiffs worked on the airline’s New York-Tel Aviv route. Two are Jewish and two say there were disciplined or subjected to a hostile work environment for their association with Jewish flight attendants and passengers, attorney Brian Mildenberg said in a statem...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The suspect in a pipe bomb attack on this city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal said he was motivated by Israeli actions in Gaza, CNN reported. Akayed Ullah spoke with authorities at Bellevue Hospital, where he was taken after the bomb went off prematurely. He was among four people injured in the attack when his homemade bomb partially detonated in a tunnel connecting the Times Square subway station with the Midtown Manhattan transit hub during Monday’s morning rush hour. New York Police identified Ullah, 27, as a resident of Brookl...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Lawmakers finalizing the proposed tax overhaul reportedly have removed a provision that had sent shivers through the graduate student and Jewish day school communities. The House version of the reform bill, which was drafted by the Republican leadership, had removed the qualified tuition credit. The credit exempts from taxes the free tuition that private schools, including Jewish day schools, often extend to the children of employees. However, the Senate version maintained the...
The congregational arm of Conservative Judaism has severed ties with the longtime director of the denomination's youth movement after receiving "multiple testimonies" that corroborated an allegation of sexual abuse. Allegations about Jules Gutin, 67, who in 2011 completed his 20-year tenure as international director of United Synagogue Youth (USY) and since 2012 had conducted tours of Poland for USY, first came to light Nov. 9 through a Facebook post by a man who claimed that someone who worked...
(JTA)-Students at a Jewish school in New Jersey broke the world record for the world's largest human menorah. Over 500 students from Ben Porat Yosef, a private school in Paramus, stood in the shape of a Chanukah candelabra on Wednesday morning, the first day of the Jewish holiday, Paramus Patch reported. A representative from Guinness World Records certified that the formation was indeed the largest one in the world. Students dressed in colors to make the menorah come to life, with the younger...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—In a stunning upset, Roy Moore, the controversial Republican nominee backed by President Donald Trump in a Senate race in Alabama, was projected to lose against his Democratic challenger. Networks called the race late Tuesday night for Doug Jones, a former prosecutor. The counting closed with Jones 1.5 percent points ahead of Moore. Jones would be the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama since 1992. Moore said he would not concede until absentee ballots are counted. Moore, a former state chief justice twice r...
(JTA)-It's a shame Al Franken has to go, Minnesota Jews say. But he has to go. That's the feeling Minnesota Jewish leaders expressed a day after the Democratic senator announced he would resign his seat in the coming weeks following a string of sexual harassment allegations against him. Eight women have accused Franken of inappropriate conduct, and many of his Democratic colleagues called on him to step down. Franken denies some of the allegations. "Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus...
CHICAGO (JTA)-Baseball gloves and caricatures of famous ballplayers adorn the walls of Milt's Extra Innings-no surprise for a deli that's a short drive from Wrigley Field, the fabled home of the Chicago Cubs. But look closely and the picture becomes a little more unexpected: The memorabilia on the walls celebrate Jewish greats and not-so-greats like Sandy Koufax, Philadelphia Athletics first baseman Lou Limmer, and the catcher and sometimes spy Moe Berg. And there among the collection of...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Audience members greeted Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour with loud applause at an event here that in recent weeks became a rallying cry for both critics and defenders of Israel. Sarsour, a leading feminist as well as pro-Palestinian advocate, was the best-known speaker on a panel on anti-Semitism held Tuesday at the New School for Social Research. Billed as a discussion of anti-Semitism on the right and left, the panel was denounced by pro-Israel critics who have...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—As the Burning Bush crackles, God is heard. “Mow-zes,” God says in the mysterious mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood once trained its actors to use—the one Anne Baxter as Nefertiti used to summon Charlton Heston’s Moses in the 1956 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.” “Mow-zes, Mow-zes.” That epic, earnest and seemingly endless film has much in common with the Museum of the Bible, the $500 million extravaganza gifted to the National Mall by one of America’s leading evangelical families, the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain....
The US expressed horror on Friday, Nov. 24, over the release by Pakistan last week of Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai whose targets included Nariman House, the local Chabad center. “The United States is deeply concerned that Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Saeed has been released from house arrest in Pakistan,” a statement from the State Department declared. “LeT is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terro...
(JTA)—The team doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, accused of molesting gymnasts who sought treatment from him including Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, pleaded guilty to sexual assault against seven girls. Larry Nassar entered his guilty plea on Wednesday in Ingham County Circuit Court in Michigan. Nassar also has been accused of various levels of inappropriate or abusive sexual behavior by more than 130 women and girls, nearly all at Michigan State University. His accusers include Olympic gold medalists Raisman, M...
(JTA)—President Donald Trump will continue the White House tradition of hosting a Chanukah party. Invitations have been sent out George W. Bush started the tradition of an annual Chanukah party in 2001, the first year of his presidency. Barack Obama, his successor, continued the parties and often hosted two receptions to accommodate demand. Invitees typically include the heads of American Jewish organizations, Jewish members of the administration and Congress, and other prominent American Jews. Starting in 1979 with a lighting by Jimmy C...
Chanukah USPS Forever First class postage stamps are available on Amazon. The stamp features an illustration of a menorah in the window of a home. Forever stamps will always be valid for first class mail postage even if rates change....
(JTA)-As hurricane Harvey swept over Houston, Chava Gal-Or counted herself lucky. The water rose up to her door and a little bit seeped in, but her home did not flood. However, many in the Reform synagogue where she works had it much worse: Twenty-nine families lost their homes-about 15 percent of the congregation's members. At first, Gal-Or despaired the extent of the damage and how little she could do to help. "I can't rebuild their houses," said Gal-Or, the director of congregational...
