Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 193 - 217 of 1923
(JTA) – Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned in the wake of plagiarism allegations and months-long criticism of her response to allegations of antisemitism at the school. Gay is the second Ivy League university president to step down following congressional testimony on campus antisemitism last month that drew intense criticism. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned her post on Dec. 9. Gay had also faced criticism over the school's initial statement on Hamas'...
(JTA) — Dean Phillips is running for president. And he wants to talk. Talking runs in the Jewish Minnesota congressman’s family — his grandmother is Dear Abby. And he’s friends with Ilhan Omar, despite their polar opposite views on a range of issues, including Israel, because they like to talk things through. Now, Phillips, 54, is hoping that penchant for dialogue will fuel his latest endeavor — a long-shot bid to defeat Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary. “The greatest ch...
(JTA) – Earlier this month, a lawyer acting on information from a pro-Israel group of North Carolinians told the federal government that their state’s flagship public university should be investigated for allowing anti-Israel rhetoric on campus. Now the government has acted on it. The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has opened a new Title VI investigation into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with two others into George Mason University and Newark Public Schools, related to complaints of mis...
(JNS) — The members of Doctors Against Genocide, which calls itself “a global health coalition committed to stopping genocide” and has some 3,100 combined followers on Instagram and X, may have taken their Hippocratic Oaths. But the group first did a good deal of harm. First, the group announced a Dec. 28 gathering at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at 11 a.m., followed by a 3 p.m. gathering outside the White House. “Urgent call to action,” it announced. “Stop the genocide in Gaza.” The announcement urged attendees to get free tickets to the...
(JNS) — New York Republicans selected Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian-born, Orthodox Jew and Israel Defense Forces veteran, on Thursday to run for New York’s 3rd Congressional District. A current Nassau County legislator, Pilip is running for the seat that Republican Rep. George Santos held before being expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives, on Dec. 1, following federal criminal indictments for fraud. It was also revealed that Santos had fabricated his backstory, including his supposed Jewish heritage. Santos’s inventions stand in dr...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives called on the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to resign after they declined to say clearly in a congressional hearing that their schools would take action against those calling for the genocide of Jews. The vote Wednesday night was 303-126, with three voting “present.” All but one of the votes against the resolution were by Democrats, including seven of the caucus’ 24 Jewish Democrats. The three voting “present” were likewise Democrats,...
(JTA) — The Lincoln Memorial closed temporarily on Wednesday after its steps were vandalized with graffiti reading “Free Gaza” in multiple places. U.S. Park Police are investigating the graffiti, which was discovered Wednesday morning at the Washington, D.C. monument, according to ABC News. Crews were dispatched to clean up the vandalism. The steps of the memorial were splattered with red paint and pro-Palestinian messages, which the National Park Service said could take some time to complete. “National Park Service conservators have begun t...
There is a petition circulating, initiated by Defenders of Free Speech, to stand with Dr. Darren Klugman, who is a doctor and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. On Oct. 7, Dr. Klugman spoke out about the atrocities committed by Hamas that day. As a result of speaking out on social media, he has been suspended by Hopkins with possible termination, and the American Board of Pediatrics has begun the process of revoking his board certifications. His family has received death threats, requiring round-the-clock security. Why...
(JNS) - David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple, a conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, joined Harvard University's Antisemitism Advisory Group in the hopes that he could persuade the school to make some serious changes. "I wanted immediate, visible action," he told JNS. "In fact, what I saw was that the anti-Jewish agitation on campus was getting worse, not better." Earlier this month, the Anti-Defamation League's inaugural rabbinic fellow, named by Newsweek as the most influential rabbi...
(JTA) — In Oakland, California, an 11-foot-tall Chanukah menorah was broken and thrown into a lake. In New Haven, Connecticut, a Palestinian flag was planted in a publicly displayed menorah. In Juno Beach, Florida, a menorah made of sand was destroyed. As Jewish communities around the United States celebrated Chanukah over the past week, numerous stories of vandalism and destruction circulated online as public menorahs — many of them sponsored by local outposts of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement — were targeted. Some of the incidents are being...
(JTA) – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Davis, both of which have recently experienced widely publicized episodes of conflict around Israel, are among six new institutions facing U.S. Department of Education investigations. The department has indicated it is taking a newly aggressive approach to addressing it and Islamophobia on campus since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and is announcing new investigations at a rapid clip, dramatically increasing the pace of civil rights inquiries that it o...
(JTA) — A 3-0 score is extremely rare in the NFL. But when the Minnesota Vikings beat the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday night in the league’s lowest-scoring game since 2007, the moment held extra significance for the player who scored those three points. Vikings kicker Greg Joseph, one of only a handful of Jewish players in the NFL, had worn cleats before the game that showed support for Israel as part of the league’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program. His shoes displayed Stars of David and the phrases “I Stand with Israel” and “Am Yisrael Chai,...
(JNS) — The Jewish Federation of North America announced recently that its post-Oct. 7 fundraising has surpassed $700 million. The $242 million that it has allocated—of the $711.5 million raised—is going to about 300 partnering organizations, including Jewish Agency for Israel, United Hatzalah, Magen David Adom, ZAKA and Chabad, the Federations stated. Its areas of focus include food security, support for Bedouin Israelis and people with disabilities and rabbinic services and pastoral guidance. Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Federatio...
(JTA) — Rabbi David Wolpe is stepping down from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard University, citing “events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony” of the university’s president, Claudine Gay, during a congressional hearing this week on campus antisemitism. “Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members of the committee, the short explanation is that both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I ca...
(JTA) – Harvard University’s board of directors will keep Claudine Gay as the school’s president despite pressure to force her out after she declined to say outright that calls for the genocide of Jews violated campus rules. The Harvard Corporation, the school’s board, met behind closed doors for hours Monday night before formally announcing it would “reaffirm our support for President Gay.” The board said its decision was unanimous, and the statement was signed by all 11 members, including its senior fellow and former Commerce Secretary P...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives approved a nonbinding resolution saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, with support from all but one Republican and a substantial minority of Democrats. The resolution was introduced by the two Jewish Republicans in the House, Max Miller of Ohio and David Kustoff of Tennessee. It was notable for the number of Jewish Democrats who voted “present,” effectively abstaining, in part because they did not agree with the resolution’s contention that all forms of anti-Zionism were antisem...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Wearing black T-shirts bearing the photos of their captive loved ones, families of American hostages held by Hamas met face-to-face with President Joe Biden for the first time, part of a high profile U.S. tour by the group to keep the hostages' plight at the front and center of public discussions about the Israel-Hamas war. "We are grateful to President Biden for his steadfast commitment to bringing our family members home and the compassion he demonstrated today," said a...
(JNS) — The U.S. Senate passed H.R. 2670, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 which outlines how Pentagon’s budget for next year, by a vote of 87 to 13 on Wednesday evening. Six Democrats and six Republicans—including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio)—voted against the bill, as did Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “It’s nothing to celebrate,” Hawley wrote of the bill. “Defense contractors get paid billions, while Missourians poisoned by their government get nothing. It...
By Ben Sales (JTA) — The president of the University of Pennsylvania announced her resignation on Saturday, Dec. 9, after facing growing backlash for declining to say outright that calling for the genocide of Jews violated the school’s code of conduct. “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania,” Scott Bok, the chair of the school’s board of trustees, said in a statement. Bok subsequently said he would als...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — If there’s a trait that unites the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, it is volubility: These folks, who invented the filibuster, know how to talk. It was remarkable to see them then exiting a screening room on Tuesday in the bowels of the Capitol building, barely able to shape their mouths into a single word. The unusual silence came after two senators, Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Nevada Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, screened for their fellow senators 43 minutes of harrowing footage of the carnage Hamas ter...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Candidates sparred over whether to send U.S. troops to Gaza and Vivek Ramaswamy endorsed a conspiracy theory that has inspired antisemitic violence at the Republican primary debate last night. The debate was held at the University of Alabama less than six weeks before the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating contest. Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who is rising in the polls and has received an infusion of donor money, was the prime target of the other three candidates on stage: former New Jersey Gov. C...
(JTA) — Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is reportedly selling a majority stake in his NBA franchise to casino magnate and Jewish philanthropist Miriam Adelson. Cuban, the Jewish billionaire known for entrepreneurial endeavors including his starring role on ABC’s reality show “Shark Tank,” is selling a stake valued at $3.5 billion to Adelson, the widow of longtime Jewish megadonor Sheldon Adelson. The deal was first reported by NBA reporter Marc Stein. The deal represents something of a partnership for Cuban and Adelson, whose daughter is on t...
(JTA) — Over the course of a week, three synagogues across the United States were tagged with anti-Israel and antisemitic graffiti. The vandalism follows weeks of similar defacement at a variety of American Jewish sites, including cemeteries, Chabad Jewish centers, and Jewish buildings on university campuses. The incidents occurred more than a month into the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has come alongside a reported spike in antisemitism nationwide. The recent vandalism targeted synagogues affiliated with three different r...
(New York Jewish Week) — At least two protesters brandished signs with swastikas at an anti-Israel protest targeting the annual Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday night. One demonstrator held a sign with the Nazi symbol and the words “Israeli military.” The protester was forcibly ejected from the event by other participants who shouted at him and trampled his sign, prompting police to separate the two sides. Another protester carried a sign that compared Jews to Nazis via a blood-spattered swastika inter...
(JTA) – Jewish congregations, politicians and campus groups in the Vermont area and beyond condemned the shooting of three Palestinian college students in Burlington, an incident authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime. A 48-year-old Burlington man has been arrested in connection with the shooting of the students, whose names are Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed. At least three area rabbis and four different Hillels were among the voices expressing shock and sadness over the shooting, the latest outbreak of v...
