Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1852 - 1876 of 1920
NEW YORK—The Jewish Council for Public Affairs released a new study, “Reluctant or Repressed? Aversion to Expressing Views on Israel Among American Rabbis.” The report, written by Steven M. Cohen, research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Rabbi Jason Gitlin, project manager of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s ReFrame initiative, is the first large-scale survey of American rabbis’ connection to Israel and their challenges in expressing their views. “American rabbis have a great deal...
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you’re pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building, what do you do when a survey comes along showing that the number of U.S. Jews engaging with Jewish life and religion is plummeting? That’s the question facing major funders of American Jewish life following the release of the Pew Research Center’s survey on U.S. Jews. The study—the first comprehensive portrait of American Jewry in more than a decade—showed that nearly one-third of American Je...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The first lawmaker to speak at a closed-door Capitol Hill confab convened by the Republican Jewish Coalition’s women’s affiliate was, naturally enough, a woman. So was the second. Against the background of the current federal budget battle, that’s about all that united Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Ayotte has been a leading Republican voice calling on her GOP colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to stand down in their battle over President Obama’s signature health care law—a fig...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Meals on Wheels may disappear, Iran sanctions are at risk and yoga is filling in the gaps. This is what the federal government shutdown looks like in Jewish Washington. While national Jewish organizations are sorting through the essential services that the impasse may cut, regional Jewish service providers in the Washington area are dealing with the tens of thousands of furloughed workers in their midst. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, Md., is adding exercise and yoga classes for furloughed g...
In a story of “what goes around, comes around” in the pro-Israel world, Jacob Baime will seek to empower Jewish students through a group that empowered him. Baime credits a $2,500 grant from the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC)—enabling him to charter a bus of fellow Brandeis University students to Washington, DC, to lobby some 25 members of Congress from 12 states—with helping to launch his pro-Israel career. After working in multiple capacities for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the 28-year-old Baime was recentl...
NEW YORK (JTA)—There are a lot more Jews in America than you may have thought—an estimated 6.8 million, according to a new study. But a growing proportion of them are unlikely to raise their children Jewish or connect with Jewish institutions. The proportion of Jews who say they have no religion and are Jewish only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture is growing rapidly, and two-thirds of them are not raising their children Jewish at all. Overall, the intermarriage rate is at 58 per...
DENVER (IJN)—Before the start of Yom Kippur, a flood of historic proportions swallowed Boulder, Colo., and surrounding areas, displacing families, damaging synagogues and threatening services on the holiest day of the Jewish year—until determination came to the rescue. Orthodox Boulder Aish Kodesh hit the Internet first, sending a mass email to 500 residents announcing that heavy rains and flooding had destroyed the tent it had prepared for the holiday. The email offered alternative loc...
New York, NY— Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) 49th Assembly and centennial celebration will take place Dec. 11-15, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. It will be the first time since its biennial conference began in 1913, registration will be open to any individual who wants to learn, celebrate, and worship with the Reform Jewish community. The main WRJ Centennial celebration will be Saturday night when WRJ receives the URJ Eisendrath Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Reform Movement, a...
NEW YORK (Forward)—Does Jewish culture need a central address in order to thrive? Not according to the people who work there. The Foundation for Jewish Culture, a New York-based organization that has given more than $50 million to Jewish scholars and artists since 1960, will cease its operations in the coming year. According to the FJC’s president and CEO, Elise Bernhardt, the organization will wind down its activities in 2014, work with attorneys to distribute its assets and seek new homes for its programs. “Our operating model isn’t really...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Nine months ago, Natalia Demidova crouched on the second floor of her Staten Island home and watched her neighbor’s SUV race a 10-foot wave down the street. The wave crashed through Demidova’s quiet residential block in the South Beach neighborhood and flooded her home with more than two feet of water. Demidova is among the many residents of South Beach still struggling to restore the life she had before Hurricane Sandy hit the northeastern United States last October. For most...
With the start of a new school year, there’s reason to be concerned: Anti-Semitism is a serious problem on some college campuses, causing Jewish students to feel threatened and even fear for their safety. Yet the U.S. government is not enforcing the law to protect them. Legal protection exists, at least in theory. After a six-year battle by ZOA and others, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a 2010 policy that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act would be enforced to protect Jewish students and students of oth...
The first comprehensive nationwide study of Jewish and religious giving, “Connected to Give,” finds that social engagement with Jewish community is a key predictor of giving to all causes, not just Jewish ones Jumpstart released Connected to Give: Key Findings Today, the first in a series of reports detailing the giving habits and motivations of American Jews across all ages, economic groups and geographies. Findings are based on a survey of nearly 3,000 American Jewish households plus 2,000 households from other religious groups, as well as...
By Josh Lipowsky NEW YORK (JTA)—It started when she was 13. “Sarah” became involved with a man 10 years her elder. He began setting her up with his friends for sex. She knew they would sometimes pay him, but she always thought she could trust him. He became her world. Even though he would beat her, Sarah internalized it as affection. When she tried to leave, threats to her family kept her coming back. “I didn’t realize I was a sex-trafficking victim until I got out,” said Sarah, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and is now in her 20s. “I...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice briefed Jewish leaders on Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The Aug. 8 evening meeting at the White House lasted 90 minutes, participants said, and was characterized mostly by Kerry’s enthusiasm for the resumed talks and the serious commitment he said he saw from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Kerry appeared bullish about talks he has worked assiduously to revive since becoming secretary of state i...
In a major new report on “next-gen” Jewish giving whose findings are likely to produce a collective sigh of relief among nervous communal professionals, young Jews of means appear seriously committed to donating to Jewish causes. And they are often moved to do so by a strong sense of Jewish and secular values passed down from their families. Yet the report, “Next Gen Donors: The Future of Jewish Giving,” a collaboration among the nonprofit group 21/64, the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and the Jewish Funders Network, finds that yo...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The election for Massachusetts governor is still 16 months away—too soon to know what the issues are or who the viable candidates will be. But apparently it’s never too soon for tikkun olam. Four of the declared candidates are Jewish, and all are grounding their campaigns in the religious imperative to repair the world. Steve Grossman, the state treasurer and a past chairman of the Democratic National Committee, quotes from Isaiah in describing his ambition to close the gap b...
JTA—It wasn’t so long ago that Ryan Braun was just a rookie phenom, racking up numbers that had Jewish sports junkies rushing to put the Milwaukee Brewers’ slugger in the pantheon with Greenberg and Koufax. These days, not so much. The news is that Braun has accepted a suspension from Major League Baseball for the rest of the season, all but admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. I say “all but admitting” because in accepting the time he still hasn’t explicitly acknowledged the crime:...
On June 1, 2010, the day after the Gaza flotilla incident in which nine Turkish militants were killed after attacking Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara, famed reporter Helen Thomas didn’t hide her opinions about Israel in a briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “The initial reaction to the flotilla massacre, deliberate massacre, an international crime, was pitiful. What do you mean you regret something that should be so strongly condemned? And if any other nation in the...
WASHINGTON, DC—Sam Bain knew that life could be dangerous in southern Israel, with rockets fired indiscriminately across the border from Gaza. But it wasn’t until the Ohio college student visited an Israeli day care center near the Gaza border that the reality truly hit him. This day care center was a bomb-safe facility. “We don’t have bomb-safe day care centers in America,” Bain told JNS.org. “It was almost a wake-up call” about the reality of life in Israel, he said. Bain visited the Jewish st...
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you want to lead a major Reform Jewish organization, here’s a piece of advice: Go to the Westchester Reform Temple. With this week’s announcement that Rabbi Aaron Panken will be the new president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the temple in suburban New York now has produced two major Reform leaders in two years. (The other is Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who two years ago ceded the pulpit of the Scarsdale synagogue to become president of the Union for Refor...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the incoming Iranian president’s plea for engagement with the United States and called for ratcheting up military pressure, a bipartisan letter circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives is urging President Obama to test Hassan Rohani’s offer. The letter, spearheaded by Reps. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and David Price (D-N.C.), had garnered 118 signatures by the afternoon of July 18, more than a quarter of the House...
WASHINGTON—Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life announced that Eric Fingerhut will serve as its president and CEO. The appointment was approved unanimously on Sunday by the Hillel Board of Directors, who met in New York. “Eric is an ideal fit for Hillel at this important time in our history,” said Sidney Pertnoy, Chairman of Hillel’s Board of Directors. “He has a passion for Hillel’s mission and a proven innovative record of successes in both the public and private arena. We are conf...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Mikey Weinstein couldn’t be happier to have an amendment in his honor approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. Yes, the amendment, passed June 13 and designed to keep Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation as far away from the Pentagon as possible, is more in his “dishonor.” But Weinstein is the kind of guy who revels in the dislike of his adversaries. “How terrified are these little pu***es in Congress that they have to pass an amendment about me?” he s...
For 90 years, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life has provided what many call a “tent” welcoming students of every Jewish background and denomination on campus. But as Hillel prepares to nominate its next president and CEO, questions persist over how open that tent should be when it comes to opinions about Israel. Hillel was created in 1923 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was adopted by B’nai B’rith International in 1924 until the 1990s. The organization has grown to more than 500 campuses across North America. In...
NEW YORK (JTA)—In his letter announcing he was stepping down as Yeshiva University’s chancellor and rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Norman Lamm acknowledged his failure to respond adequately to allegations of sexual abuse against Y.U. rabbis in the 1980s. Lamm, now 85, became the school’s third president and head of its rabbinic school, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, in 1976. He stepped down as president in 2003, becoming chancellor, but stayed on as the head of RIETS. His resignation July...
