Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1877 - 1901 of 1920
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Reps. Eric Cantor and John Lewis stood together recently at a Montgomery, Ala., memorial to martyrs of the civil rights struggle, joining hands to sing “We Shall Overcome.” With the Supreme Court decision two weeks ago gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act—one of the landmark pieces of legislation from that era— Virginia’s Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Georgia’s Lewis, a Democrat and civil rights hero, now have that to overcome....
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A slight bump up on affirmative action, a plunge on voting rights, and on gay marriage, the mountaintop: federal legitimacy. It’s been a week of roller-coaster highs and lows at the Supreme Court for liberal Jewish groups. Their collective pledge: Stick it out. “These are critical decisions and it’s going to be a fight” on voting rights, said Sammie Moshenberg, the director of the National Council of Jewish Women, one of several groups that had weighed in on the recent ca...
Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah remarked when he was sworn-in to succeed Salam Fayyad at the helm of the Palestinian government last month that his government’s life will by necessity be short-lived. It was intended to last until August, at which time it would be dissolved in order to pave the way for a long-awaited national consensus government comprised of both Fatah and Hamas loyalists. Doubtless, not even Hamdallah expected his tenure to last merely 18-days. Following intense back-and-forth between the recently appointed prime minister and P...
McROBERTS, Ky.—The morning mist hovers over the narrow valley in the lush Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. A creek rushing by the side of the main road passes through the town of Neon in once prosperous Letcher County, deep in the state’s coal mining region. The empty storefronts reflect the industry’s losing battle with mechanization, depleted coal deposits and cheaper-to-mine western coal. Up the road a piece, people sit in rocking chairs on the porches of mostly rundown homes watch...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Liberal Jewish groups fired a verbal barrage against a restrictive abortion bill passed by the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives, calling it “egregious,” “outrageous,” “an affront,” and “deeply disappointing.” Such strong language is unusual in any case for groups that must engage with Congress, but especially when a bill is dead in the water. The bill, passed last Tuesday in a 228-196 vote, would ban abortions after 20 weeks, a time when the bill’s sponsor, R...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—For much of the past two years, Israel has taken a singular approach to the Syrian civil war: Stay as far away as possible. But with a recent string of victories by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the crumbling of the U.N. peacekeeping force that has kept the peace along the border for four decades, the tack is becoming considerably harder. Assad’s statement that he had decided to engage in military action against Israel, published June 10 in an interview with a Lebanese paper, was followed by a terse warning fro...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have much in common. Both are longtime U.S. senators, Democrats, Jewish and fiercely independent West Coasters. They’ve also both been members of the Senate Intelligence Committee since before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and privy to classified materials that describe how the government systematized radical changes in intelligence gathering in their wake. Now the two lawmakers are on opposite sides of the debate over the massive inf...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Susan Rice has said that a “huge” portion of her work at the United Nations was defending Israel’s legitimacy. Her new job will likely be no less Israel-centric. President Obama named Rice June 5 his national security adviser and replaced her at the U.N. with Samantha Power, one of his top White House advisers. Rice succeeds Tom Donilon, who has been in the post since 2010. Rice has scored mostly high marks from Jewish groups for her defense of Israel at the United Nations...
Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s replacement for Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has a history of controversial comments about Israel, reigniting concerns regarding the Obama administration’s support for the Jewish state that were raised after the nomination of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), told JNS.org last Wednesday that a look at the list of Obama’s nominees and appointments to po...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—With its talk of signal books, sketches and photographic negatives, the Espionage Act suggests a period long ago consigned to Cold War-era thrillers. In fact, the law is even older, first drafted in 1917, at a time when secret orders were conveyed by telegraph and semaphore codes were bound in pocket-sized books weighted with lead so they could be thrown overboard at the approach of the enemy. The era also was the beginning of the Red Scare, the belief that the socialist r...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Jewish Scouting leaders are taking a vocal role in efforts to pass a historic resolution that would partially lift a ban on gays in the Boy Scouts of America. In a meeting of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting in February, members voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution lifting the BSA’s longstanding ban on gay members. Now the Jewish Scouting group is working to shore up support for a resolution to be voted on at the Boy Scouts of America’s annual convention in Da...
CLEVELAND (JTA)—The voice of the 911 caller is frantic, pleading for help. In the background, the victim is heard moaning, her words unclear. “There’s blood everywhere,” the caller says. “I’ve never seen so much blood.” Paramedics arrive on the scene in downtown Cleveland moments later and rush the victim to the MetroHealth Medical Center some five miles away, but it’s too late. Aliza Sherman, a 53-year-old mother of four, is dead. Sherman sustained 11 stab wounds to her neck, head, back and arm...
(Cleveland Jewish News) Hennes Paynter Communications, a firm co-owned by a Jewish resident of Cleveland, has been tapped to handle public relations for the victims of the Cleveland kidnappings that have become a global news sensation. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight on May 6 broke free of Ariel Castro’s house after nine to 11 years of captivity. Bruce Hennes, a Cleveland Heights resident who is Jewish, is co-owner of the Hennes Paynter Communications company with Barbara Paynter. On May 10, Jones Day, the Cleveland law firm h...
When President Bill Clinton stepped to the podium at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., 20 years ago, most of the audience no doubt expected him to offer the usual generalities about the importance of not forgetting the past. Instead, Clinton went much further, delivering the harshest words ever uttered by an American president about our country’s response to the Nazi genocide. Clinton made clear that the response of the U.S. to news of the Holocaust was an important part of the events that need t...
While the gun control debate intensifies in the U.S., a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pointing to improved treatment of mental health issues, rather than stricter gun laws, as the proper preventive measure for high-profile shootings such as those at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colo. Understanding the past may yield the solution to this modern problem, as some experts and advocates say contemporary mistreatment of mental health issues...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—He had them until abortion. U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) was addressing the Reform movement’s Consultation on Conscience conference about his passion, human rights and success in creating mechanisms to combat human trafficking and shine a light on global anti-Semitism. The crowd that gathered in a large Capitol Hill conference room on the afternoon of April 23 was transfixed, laughing along with Smith’s practiced self-deprecation and applauding his commitment. Until Joann...
KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—Marching in formation, six young men in dark jackets approach an anti-government rally in Cherkasy, a city some 125 miles southeast of Kiev. At the appointed moment, they remove their windbreakers to reveal white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Beat the kikes.” Their jackets carry the name of Svoboda, the ultranationalist Ukrainian political party. A small riot quickly ensues. Angry protestors rip at the T-shirts, but the Svoboda-labeled men give as good as they get....
WASHINGTON (JTA)—In the battle to end the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, it’s all hands on deck. Increasingly for the Obama administration, which is deadlocked over the budget with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, that means reaching out to Jews. In conference calls and in appearances at Jewish events, administration officials are soliciting Jewish support in their bid to end the congressionally mandated budget cuts that kicked in March 1 and which cri...
In a fiery speech in Edison, N.J., attended by about 70 supporters, controversial anti-jihadist blogger and author Pamela Geller warned Americans and Jews about a war being waged against Western ideals by Islamist radicals. Geller had accepted an invitation three days earlier from Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg to speak April 14 at Congregation Beth-El, after a Long Island synagogue cited security concerns in canceling her appearance there. Geller, who runs the blog “Atlas Shrugged,” has angered Mus...
Many of the injured in the Boston Marathon bombings last week were rushed to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Several days later, on Friday, the two suspected bombers, Tamerlan and Dzohkhar Tsarnaev, were admitted, separately, to the hospital’s emergency room after sustaining wounds from their shootout with the police. The older brother, Tamerlan, later succumbed to his wounds. Jewish immigrants founded the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston in 1916. Eighty years later, it merged with t...
In less than three weeks, the gutting will begin. After 58 years of use, the building that houses Congregation Beth Shalom in Napa will be getting a major face-lift. The synagogue will be gutted, renovated, expanded and modernized. The size of the sanctuary will be increased by 1,500 square feet, a second level will be added to one building and a new conference room will be built. In all, more than 5,700 square feet will be added. Beth Shalom held its final Shabbat service in its old building on April 12, and now will spend the next 12 months ...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Until [two weeks ago], Michael Broyde was considered one of the most respected Orthodox rabbis in America. A professor of law at Emory University, the author of dozens of books and articles, and a leading authority on the intersection of religious and secular law, Broyde was sought after regularly to render opinions on matters of ritual practice and Jewish ethics. He was among the handful of members of the Beth Din of America, the centrist Orthodox community’s religious court. He reportedly was shortlisted as a candidate to rep...
NEW YORK (JTA)—With the summer travel season fast approaching, providers of Israel programs for teenagers are bracing themselves for what several say could be a season of historically low travel in a year unaffected by major security concerns. Over the past decade, Israel travel among those aged 13 to 18 has seen a dramatic falloff. Though exact figures are difficult to come by, leaders of several leading North American teen programs say they have seen drops of 30 percent to 50 percent in participation in their Israel trips since 2000. Two r...
(Jewish Exponent)—“It was a beautiful day. I was so excited to run and having such a good run. The crowd was unbelievable. The whole experience was amazing. It was almost magical.” That’s how the Boston Marathon began for Rabbi Benjamin David, head rabbi at Adath Emanu-El in Mount Laurel, N.J. It’s not how it ended. David, 36, had completed the marathon and was back at his hotel when the twin explosions went off Monday afternoon near the finish line. The apparent terrorist attack killed at...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A legislative effort led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to enable Israelis to enter the United States without visas may be stymied by the government—Israel’s government. The hitch is Israel’s inability or unwillingness to fully reciprocate, something required for visa-free travel to the United States. Israel, citing security concerns, insists on the right to refuse entry to some U.S. citizens. AIPAC is pushing for an exemption for Israel from this rule. But con...
