Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1817 - 1841 of 1923
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and MyJewishLearning (MJL) announced their intention to merge the two organizations. The combination will bring together two strong, growing and respected nonprofit media organizations dedicated to providing readers with news, information, content and interaction on Judaism and Jewish topics, without political bias or denominational bent. The planned merger will allow the two organizations to increase revenues and grow readership through the formation of unified and expanded audience d...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Special Committee on Aging today heard Holocaust survivors, their family members and Jewish community professionals call for social services to help low-income survivors live in comfort and dignity in their homes and communities. The Jewish Federations of North America praised the committee’s Chairman, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Ranking Member, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), for convening the panel on this pressing issue. JFNA is submitting testimony for the record by William Daroff, Senior Vice President for...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and the only self-described socialist in Congress, has long been an outspoken voice in Washington on issues of economic inequality. But with the vanishing middle class figuring prominently in the campaign for mayor of the country's largest city, and President Obama last month calling the gap between rich and poor "the defining issue of our time," Sanders' pet political cause has moved to the forefront of the national...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The murder of Menachem Stark has sparked intense media scrutiny of the Brooklyn real estate developer's troubled business record, prompting the New York Post to ask "Who didn't want him dead?" on its front page. But while mainstream media outlets scrutinized the Satmar hasid's relationships with tenants, contractors and lenders, haredi Orthodox publications offered a decidedly different take-looking not for clues to why someone would kill Stark, but celebrating his many virtues....
By Julie Wiener NEW YORK (JTA)-When Stosh Cotler takes over as CEO of Bend the Arc, a Jewish group that fights for immigration reform, workers' rights and other domestic liberal causes, she will be one of the few women leading a national Jewish group of its size. But Cotler's gender is not the only thing that sets her apart. It's not just that she only connected with Judaism as an adult or that her appearance during an interview in her Manhattan office-all-black clothes, dark red lipstick, pale...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito, Calif., had a problem. Like many Jewish day schools throughout North America, Tehiyah has plenty of students from lower-income families and a number from affluent ones. But it couldn't seem to recruit and retain many middle-class students, even as it devoted increasing amounts to financial aid. Middle-class parents "felt they wouldn't be considered for financial aid or were just on the border of whether they could get aid," said Bathea James,...
NEW YORK—“We are pleased that we have reached a major milestone with over 100 universities publicly claiming their opposition to the boycott of Israeli universities and academia adopted by the American Studies Association. We anticipate more signing on as offices reopen and presidents return from their holiday vacations. As significant as this is, we have to be vigilant regarding efforts at other such bodies, like the Modern Language Association that will be convening on Jan. 9 in Chicago and will include a one-sided panel entitled ‘Ac...
(JNS.org) National Basketball Association (NBA) star Tony Parker apologized for using the anti-Semitic "quenelle" arm gesture. The gesture, which has been described as a "reverse Nazi salute," was made famous by French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala. Dieudonné, who ran for the European Parliament under the "anti-Zionist" party list in 2009 and supports the French far-right party National Front, began openly attacking Jews in 2002. French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said his government is c...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The disclosure last week that American intelligence spied on former Israeli prime ministers has given new momentum to the effort to secure a pardon for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several leading members of Knesset have called in recent days for Pollard's release following reports that documents leaked by former defense contractor Edward Snowden showed U.S. intelligence had targeted the email addresses of Ehud Barak and Ehud...
(JTA)-In 1992, Edgar Bronfman was preparing to leave North America for Paris for his first meeting with then-French President Francois Mitterand at the Elysee Palace when at the last minute Bronfman decided he wanted to take an unexpected meeting in Geneva instead. So he asked Serge Cwajgenbaum, Bronfman's right-hand man in Europe, to phone the palace and ask to reschedule. The Elysee secretary, Hubert Vendrine, exploded. "He asked me who Edgar Bronfman thinks he is to move around a meeting...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For years, the historic Jewish cemetery was so overgrown with weeds, plagued by toppled headstones, and littered with fallen branches, beer cans and snack-food wrappers that at least a quarter of its graves were impossible to reach. Even now, after a $140,000 cleanup and improved maintenance procedures, the 35,000-grave cemetery relies on the generosity of a non-Jewish volunteer to repair its tombstones, fences and mausoleums. The cemetery isn't in Eastern Europe. It's the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-For Jewish and pro-Israel groups, the congressional year is ending with an odd reversal: the prospect, however fragile, of bipartisan comity on budget issues coupled with a rare partisan disagreement on Middle Eastern policy. The groups that deal with social welfare and justice issues are heartened, albeit warily, by the end-of-year budget forged by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), his...
(JNS.org) Boston University international relations professor Angelo Codevilla, who was a senior staffer on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of the arrest of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in 1985, wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama calling for Pollard’s release and offering to give expert testimony on Pollard’s behalf. In his letter, Codevilla noted that Pollard is the only person in U.S. history “sentenced to life imprisonment for passing information to an ally, without intent to harm America,” a crime that normall...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Vice President Joe Biden said the White House will work with the Jewish community to help Holocaust survivors living in poverty. Speaking at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Centennial on Tuesday, Biden said the White House will appoint a special envoy at the Department of Health and Human Services to act as a liaison for survivors and the nonprofit community organizations that serve them. A partnership with the AmeriCorps VISTA program to increase the number of volunteers helping Holocaust survivors will be...
SAN DIEGO (JTA)-What do you get when you bring together 5,000 of the Reform movement's faithful for a conference in sunny San Diego in mid-December? Four days of singing, learning, schmoozing and worrying at a gathering that seemed equal parts pep rally and intervention session. For pep, there were the spirited prayer services, the morning-till-night stream of musical performances and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, or URJ, who compared the challenges facing...
NEW YORK (JTA)-With an estimated Jewish population of 275 undergraduates, the Quaker-founded Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia is home to one of the smaller Hillel chapters in the country. But that hasn't stopped student activists at the small suburban school from picking a fight of potentially epic proportions with the umbrella group Hillel International. On Dec. 8, the Swarthmore Hillel student board announced that it had voted unanimously to defy Hillel International's guidelines for...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Hillel International warned its Swarthmore College chapter that it cannot use the Hillel name if it flouts the international Jewish campus group’s Israel guidelines. Hillel delivered the warning in a sharply worded letter following the Swarthmore chapter student board’s decision to repudiate Hillel guidelines prohibiting partnerships with groups deemed hostile toward Israel. In his letter, Hillel’s president and CEO, Eric Fingerhut, warned Swarthmore Hillel’s student communications coordinator, Joshua Wolfsun, that the chapter’s...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For the first 3 1/2 weeks of the summer, one group of 5-year-olds at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, N.Y., was "very quiet" as the children went about the typical camp activities, according to Amy Skopp Cooper, the camp's director. But in the fourth week, the talking started-in Israeli-accented Hebrew. By the end of the summer, evaluations revealed that most of the 20 children-all of whom had started out as Hebrew novices-"had gone up multiple levels" in their Hebrew proficiency, Cooper...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On a bright autumn morning, Hebrew songs and phrases fill the sun-drenched, freshly painted blue and white classrooms of New York's Harlem Hebrew Language Academy Charter School. A group of kindergartners, representing such an even mix of black and white children that they resemble a 1980s Benetton ad, clasp each other by the waist and dance in a "rakevet," or train, stopping every few moments to add a new child who, as the teachers explain in Hebrew, is sitting nicely on his or...
NEW YORK (JTA)-At the federation movement's General Assembly in Jerusalem in early November, the chairman of the network did something unusual for Jewish power gatherings: He devoted the bulk of his speech to nursery school. Calling Jewish preschool the "seedbed of our community," the chairman of Jewish Federations of North America, Michael Siegal, pledged to raise $1 billion over the next decade for a Jewish revitalization plan with tuition-free Jewish preschool as its centerpiece. By offering...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Chava, a student at a Chabad seminary, has lived in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for six years, but it's only in the past few days that she started carrying pepper spray in her handbag. Her younger brother gave her the deterrent after news hit of a string of recent attacks against Orthodox Jews, seven of them in Crown Heights. The assaults, believed to be part of a national wave of so-called "knockout game" attacks in which black teens punch random white strangers for...
(JNS.org) Last Thursday, Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard entered his 29th year in American prison. Pollard, now 59, was arrested in Washington on Nov. 21, 1985. He was later convicted of spying for Israel, and is the only person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. "It's an embarrassment for America, it's a lack of justice, it's an embarrassment for the world," Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president emeritus of the National Council of Young Israel,...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—American Jews and American Muslims called on Congress in a joint statement to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a meaningful path to citizenship. In joining together as unlikely allies, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) renewed their united push to refocus Congress’ attention on the nation’s most pressing domestic policy crisis. The following is a joint statement from Alan van Capelle, CEO of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and Haris Tarin, direc...
The United States Postal Service recently introduced a new Chanukah stamp. The 2013 Chanukah stamp features a photograph of a beautiful forged-iron menorah created by Vermont blacksmith Steven Bronstein, who uses the ancient techniques of blacksmithing to create modern designs. Bronstein's blend of the primitive charm of ironwork with a contemporary design appealed to art director Ethel Kessler. "There is a rich tradition of crafts in Judaic art and that tradition goes back many generations,"...
The Jewish community is rightly concerned with a campus environment that is too often hostile to Israel. Public demonstrations, inflammatory language and personal attacks by anti-Israel organizations seek to exploit the spirit of open debate and public action central to American academic life. Rather than reflexively respond to the animosity of others, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—America’s pro-Israel lobby—and Hillel—the center of Jewish life on over 550 campuses worldwide—are working together to strategic...
