Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Hope Hospice is among a select number of organizations across the country that has earned accreditation from the National Institute for Jewish Hospice. Hope Hospice is one of 52,000 members of NIJH working together to provide enhanced care to address the diverse needs of Jewish families in a caring, dignified manner. “At Hope, we make every effort to serve each person, at every stage in their life’s journey, in a culturally sensitive way,” said Samira K. Beckwith, president and CEO of Hope Healthcare. “We seek programs and accredi...
(JNS) — The American Jewish Committee announced on Monday that U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) will succeed David Harris as the organization’s CEO. “I have worked closely with AJC throughout my tenure in Congress and I am deeply honored to have been chosen to serve as the organization’s next CEO,” Deutch said in a statement. “For 116 years, AJC has worked to protect global Jewry, strengthen Israel’s place in the community of nations, and advance democratic values around the world. I couldn’t be more excited to passionately lead AJC at this cri...
(JTA) — The University of Washington has put its five-year-old Israel Studies Program on hold after a major donor, angry about a professor’s criticism of Israel, took her money back. Becky Benaroya, a prominent Seattle philanthropist, gave $5 million in 2016 to create the program. But after a professor who held the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies was among hundreds of Jewish studies and Israel studies professors to sign a widely circulated statement criticizing Israel last year, Benaroya became concerned about wha...
(JNS) - The Ohio House Higher Education Committee heard testimony on Feb. 15 on a bill that would require colleges and universities in the state to provide accommodation for students when there are conflicts between class assignments, exams and religious observances. A number of Jewish organizations, including dozens of Hillels, Chabad Houses, historically Jewish fraternities, Jewish Federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils, are supporting the legislation. The bipartisan bill was...
(JTA) — It seemed a slam dunk: The popular conservative cause of banning “critical race theory” in schools, being taken up for a vote in one of the country’s most lopsidedly conservative legislatures. Then a Democrat, one of just seven in the 60-member Wyoming legislature, stood up Thursday and said he could not support the bill because he was Jewish. “In this bill, page 9, line 19 states, ‘The teaching of history must be neutral, without judgment,’” state Rep. Andy Schwartz said during debate. “Now, how can that be possible? If I were a Native...
(JNS) — Neo-Nazis in Florida. Synagogue desecration in Chicago. Regular assaults in Brooklyn, N.Y. When it comes to antisemitism in America, it’s time to start connecting the dots. “If we’re going to better understand the nature and scope of the threats, we need the FBI to lead, taking everyone out of their silo, getting all the information that they’re uniquely positioned to get, and then having a desk that’s going to review things and have access to other agencies — domestic and otherwise — in order for us to quantify and qualify what’s...
BOSTON (JTA) — For nearly a month, a small liberal arts college just miles outside of Boston has been roiled by a spate of hate incidents, including antisemitic graffiti and threatening racist language, prompting the school to offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved. The incidents at Curry College, located in Milton, a suburb south of Boston, began Jan. 27, when International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed worldwide, with reports of drawings of swastikas and discriminatory and h...
(JNS) - A Jewish man from Ann Arbor, Mich., is hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether anti-Jewish protesters outside a local synagogue on Shabbat morning violate his right to freely practice religion. "I think Jews have to stand up for themselves against people who are obviously Jew-haters," says Marvin Gerber. "People of Beth Israel have the right to be free from harassment." The case stems from weekly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protests led by Henry Herskovitz in front of...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Julie Platt is a one-time banker who has become a leader in promoting Jewish education and helping to rescue Jewish camping from the ravages of the pandemic. Now, she's about to make history as the second woman to chair one of the largest Jewish fundraising powerhouses in the United States, the Jewish Federations of North America. She's also musical star Ben Platt's mom. The JFNA on Tuesday said that Platt would assume the leadership of the umbrella body for Jewish federations...
ANN ARBOR, Michigan (JTA) – In the latest twist in the long-running legal saga over a small group of protesters who have gathered weekly outside a Michigan synagogue for the past 18 years, a judge has ruled that Jewish worshippers who lost a lawsuit against the protesters must pay them more than $150,000 in legal fees. U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ruled on Jan. 25 that the two plaintiffs - including one who is a Holocaust survivor - and their lead attorney who had sued the group o...
(JTA) –When Rabbi Larry Sernovitz was asked to deliver the morning devotion to the Georgia state legislature, he came armed with an ancient alarm: A shofar, the ram’s horn blown in synagogues during the high holy days. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Sernovitz made history Tuesday when he blew a shofar in the legislature, a first for the state legislature — and, according to Howard Mortman, an author who has tracked rabbinical benedictions in legislatures, probably the first in any U.S. legislature. Sernovitz, the rabbi of Kol E...
(JNS) — In a video conversation with Jewish leaders and community members last week, White House liaison to the Jewish community Chanan Weissman spoke about the tense moments and actions he took last month when an armed assailant held four congregants hostage, including the rabbi, at Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, leading to a nearly 11-hour standoff with authorities. The moderator of the Feb. 7 event, Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, asked Weissman what i...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after the Jewish Federations of North America removed hot button items such as addressing gun violence and defending LGBTQ rights from their annual priorities list, the umbrella group added them back into a subsequent and more detailed policy document. The JFNA’s Working Public Policy Agenda, released late Friday, includes more than a hundred words on gun violence prevention. It encourages Congress to double funding for research into the causes of gun violence and calls for increased funding for the enf...
(JNS) — When Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid took office in June, his first call to an American organization was not to one of the legacy Jewish groups or umbrella organizations of American Jewry. It was to Democratic Majority for Israel. DFMI is an advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies in the Democratic Party and pro-Israel Democratic candidates. During that call, Lapid emphasized reinvigorating Israel’s ties with the Democratic Party. Of course, it’s no coincidence that DMFI...
(JNS) — The Biden administration’s nominee Deborah Lipstadt to lead the U.S. State Department’s office that monitors and combats antisemitism appeared in the Senate on Tuesday for her confirmation. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lipstadt made the case that antisemitism is on the rise. “Increasingly, Jews have been singled out for slander, violence and terrorism,” she said. “Today’s rise in antisemitism is staggering.” Her confirmation has been delayed for several months reportedly over concerns raised by Republicans of...
(JTA) — A Jewish woman in Chattanooga, Tennessee, says her child was taught “how to torture a Jew” in a public school Bible class. The woman, Juniper Russo, wrote about the incident in a Facebook post that is no longer public. In it, she alleged that the teacher engaged in “blatant Christian proselytizing” in a Bible history class that was meant to be “non-sectarian.” Hamilton County Schools, the Chattanooga public school district, is investigating the incident. Michael Dzik, president of the Jewish Federation of Chattanooga, told the Jewi...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — New York City saw nearly three times as many antisemitic hate crimes in January 2022 compared to the same period a year ago, prompting concern from local lawmakers. City Council member Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, hosted a virtual “Antisemitism Town Hall” Wednesday night that featured remarks by Sen. Charles Schumer and fellow Council member Eric Dinowitz. The event, co-hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, drew some 200 attendees and brought together politicians and representatives from...
U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) paid $170,000 to a political consultant who has repeatedly called Israel an apartheid state, Fox News reported on Tuesday. According to Fox, since March 2020, Tlaib’s re-election campaign has paid $147,000 to Unbought Power LLC, a political and advocacy consulting firm based in Orlando, Fla. and headed by Rasha Mubarak. Mubarak’s website describes her as a “Palestinian Muslim American community activist.” A separate $23,000 was paid to Unbought Power by Tlaib’s PAC, Rooted in Community Leadershi...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Five Orthodox Jewish New Yorkers have joined a suit challenging the city’s vaccine requirements for indoor spaces. Two of the plaintiffs are rabbis at yeshivas. The suit, filed Feb. 7 in New York, challenges the “Key to NYC” program and a recent Covid vaccination mandate for religious and private school employees. The mandate was opposed by many haredi Orthodox yeshivas and groups representing them, including Agudath Israel of America. Three of the Jewish plaintiffs are parents suing on behalf of a total o...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — A federal investigation has been launched into complaints by Jewish students at Brooklyn College that they have been subjected to “severe and persistent harassment” in the Mental Health Counseling master’s program. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights last week informed the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which prepared the complaint, that it had opened the probe. The complaint alleges that Jewish students in the MHC program have been “bullied and harassed in class discu...
(JTA) — Some members of Congress are openly hostile to Israel. But it was Rep. Andy Levin, a Detroit-area Michigan Democrat and a scion of a storied Jewish political family, whom a former AIPAC president identified in an email earlier this month as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” David Victor, a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made the comment in an email Jan. 19 to pro-Israel donors in the Detroit area, where he is from. Victor, who led AIPAC in the late 2000s...
(JTA) — ABC has suspended Whoopi Goldberg from her role as a co-host of a morning TV talk show for two weeks amid criticism of Goldberg’s characterization of the Holocaust. Goldberg will take two weeks off from the show, ABC News President Kim Godwin announced in a statement Tuesday evening, hours after a leading Jewish organization that had been among Goldberg’s critics said it had welcomed her apology for saying the Holocaust “isn’t about race.” “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful c...
(JTA) - Activists on the Jewish left celebrated over the weekend as Emma Saltzberg, a Jewish activist who helped co-found the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow, extended a "Jeopardy!" winning streak that has some comparing her to the game show's most successful contestants. Saltzberg took the lead for three episodes in a row and earned a total of $54,199 in prize money. Saltzberg, a consultant who lives in Brooklyn, is a senior fellow at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, according...
(JTA) — The first thing to know about the Yeshiva Har Torah Twitter account is that, contrary to the account’s bio, the head of school does know about the account. And he has given it his blessing. “I don’t think the school is attracting kids because of its Twitter account,” said Rabbi Gary Menchel, head of the Modern Orthodox day school in eastern Queens, New York. “But I think, ultimately, anything we can do to broaden that experience, and engage people in the yeshiva experience is a positive thing.” And engage people have. While the sch...
Esteemed Shillman Journalism fellow Daniel Greenfield from Frontpage Maga-zine revealed that the ADL hired an activist named Tema Smith to serve as its director of Jewish outreach. Smith’s hire is newsworthy because Smith has a long record of anti-Israel, pro-terror and anti-Jewish postings on social media. In other words, she has a long record of antisemitic activism, which Greenfield documented. Consider a few examples of Smith’s publishing history: • During the Hamas war against Israel in 2014, Smith posted and endorsed an article that...
