Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1394 - 1418 of 1886
(JTA)—Kenneth L. Marcus, an attorney who has championed the use of the 1964 federal civil rights act to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, has been appointed assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. President Donald J. Trump announced the nomination Wednesday, Oct. 26. As president and general counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Marcus has deployed Title VI of the civil rights act in urging the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to open investigations ove...
(JTA)—The booking agent for white nationalist Richard Spencer has filed a federal lawsuit against The Ohio State University for refusing a request to rent space on campus for a speech by the controversial far-right figure. The lawsuit was filed Sunday, two days comes after the university informed Cameron Padgett, a graduate student at Georgia State University who handles Spencer’s speaking arrangements, that the request to rent space was denied due to the “substantial risk to public safety.” “The University values freedom of speech,...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The Orthodox Union is founding its own division to advance women as congregational leaders, as well as to promote Jewish study and communal participation for women in Modern Orthodoxy. The announcement comes nearly nine months after the group, an umbrella association of centrist Orthodox synagogues, issued a ruling banning those synagogues from hiring women for clergy roles. The Department of Women's Initiatives, which will launch Nov. 1, aims to increase women's participation in...
Richard Spencer is an alt right leader The 39-year-old Spencer has become the most recognizable public face of the alt right, a loose network of people who promote white identity and reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Spencer coined the term “alternative right” (from which “alt right” is derived) in 2008 in an article in Taki’s Magazine, a far-right publication. At the time, Spencer was using “alternative right” to refer to people on the right who dis...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer renewed his call for President Donald Trump to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem after the president said he wanted to wait to give his relaunched peace push a chance. "President Trump's recent comments suggest his indecisiveness on the embassy's relocation," Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday in an email to JTA. "As someone who strongly believes that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, I am calling for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to...
(JTA)—Much of a Reform Jewish summer camp has been wiped out by forest fires sweeping across Northern California. The Union for Reform Judaism’s Camp Newman, an hour north of the San Francisco Bay, has been “mostly destroyed” by the fires burning in Sonoma and Napa counties, the camp posted on Facebook Tuesday evening. Camp staff have yet to be able to visit the area. Camp is not in session, and everyone living at the campsite—along with its Torah scrolls—were rescued before the fires reached the camp. At least 10 people have died in the forest...
Two Republican state lawmakers in Wisconsin last week introduced legislation to prohibit businesses from engaging in boycotts of Israel as a condition of any state contract. In recent years, more than 20 U.S. states have passed legislation condemning BDS or prohibiting government business with entities that boycott Israel, with additional states—including Wisconsin—expected to follow before the end of the year. Released by State Sen. Leah Vukmir and State Rep. Dale Kooyenga, the bill is currently being circulated among both chambers for co-...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Supreme Court is back in session with a full bench of nine justices, so expect more momentous decisions after nearly a year of caution. Now that the high court is back to its previous equilibrium—four solid liberals, four solid conservatives and one wavering conservative—expect all eyes to be focused on the waverer, Anthony Kennedy. And after a relatively quiet season, owing to the absence of a ninth justice following the death in February 2016 of Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, Jewish groups are on alert as well....
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA)-A kosher winery in Northern California sustained widespread damage from a wildfire still raging along the southern part of the Silverado Trail in Napa County. Ernie Weir, owner of Hagafen Cellars, the North Bay's only kosher winery, said Wednesday that all employees are safe and the main winery building is intact, but that the fire destroyed fencing, all of the agricultural equipment, a guest house, nearly an acre of Cabernet Sauvignon vines an...
BOSTON (JTA)-A 9-year-old school project to commemorate Holocaust victims surpassed its unlikely goal to collect 11 million stamps, representing the lives of 6 million Jews and 5 million other victims of intolerance who perished. On Friday, the eve of Yom Kippur, a community volunteer for the Holocaust Stamp Project at the Foxborough Regional Charter School delivered some 7,000 canceled stamps to the K-12 charter school, bringing the total of stamps collected to 11,011,979, according to Jamie...
(JTA)-Days after joining a pro-Israel group, Melissa Landa knew something had gone wrong: She said her mentor stopped working with her, pulling out of a conference presentation just days in advance. Landa didn't know that her mentor, John O'Flahavan, would then stop taking her calls. Or that O'Flahavan would soon dismiss her from teaching the education course she designed. Or that one year later, she would be fired from the college where she had taught for more than a decade. But in the late...
(JTA)-After he managed to bribe three van drivers to load their vehicles with aid supplies and drive him and his crew from the San Juan airport, Eli Rowe felt his humanitarian mission was off to a good start. Gas was scarce in Puerto Rico, but now all the food, medicine and hygienic supplies he had flown over from the mainland was making it into the Caribbean island's capital. Then he laid eyes on the city. It was devastated. "We saw sheer destruction everywhere," said Rowe, the CEO of Jet911,...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Mike Tolkin apologizes for checking his phone as he sits down at a café in this city's Flatiron district. The 32-year-old Democratic New York mayoral hopeful was waiting to hear Tuesday whether he would be allowed to participate in the final primary debate the following day, which would boost his exposure amid an otherwise quiet campaign. Tolkin, a technology entrepreneur and the youngest candidate on the party's ballot to challenge incumbent Bill de Blasio, had not met the...
When researchers at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America reported earlier this year that public school history textbooks and curricular materials were indoctrinating students against Israel, some high school officials were dismissive. Ruth Goldman, chair of the Newton, Mass. school committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that it is “an old subject” and “had all been taken care of.” She also said the problems cited by CAMERA “happened before my time on the committee.” However, it has since been revealed that she se...
(JTA)-A few weeks ago, Holly Davies was getting ready to homeschool her kids and preparing the family for the High Holidays. When Hurricane Harvey hit, she helped evacuate 150 people from her neighborhood by airboat and shelter nearly 100 people in a local church. Then came the hard part. For the past three weeks, Davies has been leading a force of up to 300 volunteers who have mobilized to repair homes and synagogues in and around the heavily Jewish housing development of Willow Meadows....
(JTA)—Puerto Rico’s three synagogues closed for Rosh Hashanah as Hurricane Maria pummeled the island. The synagogues, all in or nearby San Juan, canceled Wednesday evening services for the Jewish New Year and urged members to stay home, according to The Times of Israel. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday morning after causing widespread destruction on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica In Puerto Rico, which has 3.3 million residents, power outages were expected as strong winds ripped trees out of the ground Leaders of the Jew...
(JTA)-Tufts University's Hillel is described as "an organization that supports a white supremacist state" in a student-written guide to activist life at the university. The Tufts University Disorientation Guide offers information on social, spiritual, health and academic resources at the Boston-area university, but singles out Hillel for opprobrium, calling it a "Zionist space" and accusing it of "exploit(ing) black voices for their own pro-Israel agenda." The guide has been widely read and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A tweet by President Donald Trump on Friday night, with Houston recovering from Hurricane Harvey and his sister Irma set to ravage Florida, is renewing hope among Jewish groups that have long advocated for emergency assistance to houses of worship. “Churches in Texas should be entitled to reimbursement from FEMA Relief Funds for helping victims of Hurricane Harvey (just like others),” Trump said on Twitter, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Attempts in the past two Congresses to extend FEMA prote...
(JTA)-The Jewish community in Houston has seen "devastating" damage from Hurricane Harvey and could take years to recover, a federation official said. "Recovery like this-it is a disaster larger than Katrina in terms of the amount of water that fell-we're going to have short- and long-term recovery plans, but this is probably going to take us years to get back to where we were," said Taryn Baranowski, the chief marketing officer for the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. Seventy-one percent...
(JTA)-As Hurricane Harvey bore down on Houston Friday, Vicki Samuels Levy dashed over to the offices of the Houston Jewish Herald-Voice, took the proofs of this week's newspaper and went to her mother's house. Then mother and daughter spent all night editing the paper. And as the waters rose and they had to be evacuated to a neighbor's house the next day, the proofs were in hand, ready for the printer. "We want to help each other as family members, then we have to stop and do things for the...
Two teams of Israeli aid experts are on their way to Texas to provide vital relief and psychosocial support to the thousands of people who have lost everything in the catastrophic Tropical Storm Harvey. The storm, which first hit Texas on Sunday and continues to plague the beleaguered state with pounding rain, has left nine dead, and tens of thousands of people homeless as flood waters have poured through city streets in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States. The storm is thought...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia said it will place a yearlong "moratorium" on the use of the name of a founder and past president who was a known anti-Semite. The name of the library and great hall are named for M. Carey Thomas, who served as the private college's president from 1894 to 1922. According to biographer Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Thomas prevented the hiring of Jewish teachers at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, and later made sure she was not dealing with...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The mayors of America’s largest cities are launching a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to combat hate and bigotry. Nearly 200 mayors have joined the agreement, which was announced Friday, since it was first circulated Tuesday night among the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The mayors are agreeing to explicitly condemn racism, white supremacy and bigotry, and to implement educational and public safety programs to safeguard vulnerable populations and discourage discrimination. Signers include the mayors of New York Cit...
NEW YORK (JTA)-After the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, voices abounded calling the demonstration an affront to American values. Rabbi Shai Held called it an attack on God. "One of the most fundamental claims Judaism makes about the world is that every human being on the face of the earth-black and white, male and female-is created in the image of God and is therefore infinitely valuable," Held wrote last week in an essay on CNN.com. "An attack on other people's humanity is by...
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (JTA)-The white supremacists, for all their vaunted purpose, appeared to be disoriented. Some 500 had gathered at a park here Saturday to protest this southern Virginia city's plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the park. Pressured by the American Civil Liberties Union, Charlottesville had allowed the march at Emancipation Park-or Lee Park, the protesters' preferred name. That worked for an hour or so, and then the protesters and counter...
