Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 533 - 557 of 1886
(JNS) — Winning the lottery usually conjures images of elated people feeling set for life after receiving a check for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet for five North Shore Hebrew Academy students in the Long Island region of New York, winning the lottery meant being selected to represent their day school on an eye-opening, life-changing relief mission to tornado-devastated Kentucky. On Dec. 10, a tornado with winds of over 166 miles per hour decimated the Kentucky of towns Cayce, Mayfield, Benton, Princeton, Dawson Springs and Bremen, k...
(JTA) — Shimon Peres will soon receive a major honor for a non-New Yorker: the late Israeli prime minister will have a New York City street corner named in his honor. The intersection of West 95th Street and Riverside Drive will be renamed “Shimon Peres Place” after the New York City Council approved nearly 200 new street names last week to honor various people. The news was reported by Patch. Peres, who died in 2016, served three times as Israel’s prime minister in addition to serving as president of the country from 2007 to 2014. In 1949, h...
(JTA) — Students at a Washington, D.C., elementary school were instructed by a staff member to reenact scenes from the Holocaust Friday, according to The Washington Post. When the third-grade students asked why the Germans killed Jews, the staff member said it was “because the Jews ruined Christmas.” The student at Watkins Elementary School were supposed to be working on projects in the library Friday when the staff member told the students to reenact scenes from the Holocaust. The woman reportedly told one student, who is Jewish, to play...
ST. PETERSBURG, FL — A recent story involving a third-grade teacher who made their students simulate episodes of the Holocaust has rightfully sparked comment from around the nation. The incident, which involved a staff member having their students mimic digging mass graves and shooting their peers, highlights the need for proper educational materials surrounding the Holocaust. Students, especially those at a young age, need to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust in a responsible way that teaches them how to recognize and understand t...
(JNS) — Leaders of the Zionist Organization of America warned supporters to be vigilant against what they believe to be increasing anti-Israel positions from leaders, and the trend of encroaching tolerance for anti-Semitic rhetoric masked as anti-Zionism, during the organization’s annual gala on Sunday. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the gala was held as a webcast, highlighted by video addresses from leaders and activists in the ZOA, as well as politicians such as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Naf...
(JNS) - The last time Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, co-director of Chabad of the Bluegrass, had been in Hopkinsville, Ky., he was joined by thousands of other people to see a total eclipse. He returned to the area on Monday to find a much-changed landscape after a massive tornado ripped through the western part of the state on Dec. 10, rendering much of it temporarily uninhabitable. The tornado was one of a series of others that struck six Midwestern states on Dec. 10. "The kindness they had shown to...
(JNS) — The Council on American Islamic Relations is backing an organizational leader following a speech that national Jewish organizations are calling virulently antisemitic. During a speech at the American Muslims for Palestine’s 14th annual convention on Nov. 27, Zahra Billoo, the Pakistani-American director of CAIR California-San Francisco Bay Area, told the audience that “polite Zionist” organizations that support a two-state solution, condemn Islamophobia and promote interfaith cooperation, such as the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — It has been for decades a recurring confusion for some in Washington: does AIPAC, the country’s largest pro-Israel lobby, have a PAC? Not until today. The PAC in AIPAC stands for Public Affairs Committee, not political action committee. But after countless explanations over the years, the group is getting into the fundraising business. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Thursday launched a regular political action committee, which funnels $5,000 maximum donations to designated candidates per race, and a sup...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A bill that would create an Islamophobia monitor in much the same cast as the State Department’s antisemitism monitor cleared its first hurdle on Friday, after a House committee debate about antisemitism. The bill, whose lead sponsors were Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of three Muslims in Congress, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish, was approved Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee along party lines, with the majority of Democrats voting for it. It now goes to the House floor. During an...
(JNS) — In the last academic year, pro-Israel college students have felt vilified and ostracized as anti-Israel and anti-Zionism sentiment proliferates at schools nationwide, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. Findings included in “The Anti-Israel Movement on U.S. Campuses, 2020-2021,” identify the campus anti-Israel movement as being led by student groups and certain professors. Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace continue to be two of the most influential anti-Israel campus groups, allied often...
(JTA) — Fox News removed a cartoon depicting George Soros as a puppet master from social media after the Anti-Defamation League called out the conservative news giant for peddling antisemitic tropes. “As we have told @FoxNewsnumerous times, casting a Jewish individual as a puppet master who manipulates national events for malign purposes conjures up longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and contributes to the normalization of antisemitism,” the ADL wrote Wednesday in a tweet. “This needs to be removed.” The cartoon, by A.F. Bran...
(JNS) - Former longtime Kansas Republican senator, leader and 1996 GOP nominee for president Bob Dole died on Dec. 5 at the age of 98. Dole's death was announced by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation on Sunday morning, saying that Dole died in his sleep after it became known early this year that he had stage IV lung cancer. His passing was met with words of respect from a bipartisan swath of the Jewish community. Dole was the recipient of the Jewish Federations of North America's 2020 Lifetime...
(JTA) — Leaders of the New Hampshire House of Representatives released a statement last week condemning antisemitism after a state lawmaker tweeted in support of Palestinians using a slogan many deem to be antisemitic. Speaker of the House Sherman Packard, a Republican, and House Democratic leader Renny Cushing wrote in a joint statement Thursday that “any form of bigotry — anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry — has no place in our society” and “it is unacceptable that any member of this historic legislative body is involved in perpetuatin...
(JTA) — Student governments considered resolutions to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel at 17 college campuses in the United States during the 2020-2021 school year, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League. The watchdog group, which released the data Wednesday as part of its annual reporting, called the BDS resolutions a “cornerstone of anti-Israel campus activity during the last year.” During a school year in which a May conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was accompanied by widespread criticism of Israel on an...
(JNS) — Students Supporting Israel said in an open letter that it urges the Duke University Student Government to vote against its president, who vetoed a decision to formally recognize the organization. DSG president Christina Wang vetoed recognition of SSI on Monday because the group called out a student on social media in a way that was “unacceptable for any student group,” Wang wrote in a statement obtained by Duke’s student publication, The Chronicle. “Have we really gotten to the point where one student government leader can de-platfo...
(JTA) — Pennsylvania will allocate $6.6 million in funding for the redevelopment of the Tree of Life synagogue campus where 11 people were killed in an antisemitic attack in 2018. Speaking at a press conference outside the synagogue Monday, the last day of Hanukkah, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolfe called the state’s contribution to the renovation “a Hanukkah present.” “Tree of Life is undertaking a project to remember the past, to inform the present, and promote healing for the future,” Wolf said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazett...
(JNS) — Jewish groups are sounding the alarm after the New York City Police Department released statistics on Wednesday indicating that hate crimes have doubled in a single year. Of the nearly 500 hate crimes reported in the city as of November, some 180 were antisemitic in nature. The total is up from 121 incidents the year before and accounts for the largest number of hate crimes against any group. Scott Richman, NY/NJ regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said “it’s alarming that in the past seven weeks alone, we have had to is...
(JTA) - Michael Steinhardt, the hedge funder and megadonor to Jewish causes, has agreed to surrender 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million to their rightful homelands and to never again collect ancient artifacts. In exchange, Steinhardt will avoid criminal charges related to an investigation that found he had acquired, owned and sold more than 1,000 looted items over the past three decades. Those are the terms of a deal that Steinhardt finalized Monday with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus...
BOSTON (JTA) – Against a backdrop of disturbing revelations of antisemitic incidents, including many in local schools, Massachusetts lawmakers this week approved a bill that will require genocide education in all public secondary schools. “An Act Concerning Genocide Education,” which also establishes a public-private trust fund to support curriculum development and training for educators, is now at the desk of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker. Once signed, Massachusetts would become the 21st state to require some form of Holocaust education in sec...
(JTA) — Chelsea Clinton took Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to task Wednesday for allowing groups to use the social network to organize book burnings. Clinton compared the phenomenon to Facebook’s past resistance to banning Holocaust deniers from the platform. “Come for the book burning, stay for the s’mores,” Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said in a tweet Wednesday. “Not terribly surprising #Facebook would platform book burning events in the image of 1933 Nazi G...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - Hundreds gathered in Times Square Monday to celebrate the second night of Chanukah, with live music, speeches and, of course, a public menorah lighting. But it wasn't just about feel-good holiday cheer: The event was part of the "Shine a Light on Antisemitism" campaign, which aims to raise awareness about antisemitism in order to encourage individuals and their communities to fight against it. The campaign, which is sponsored by more than 60 North American organi...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Over the weekend, bagel lovers across the five boroughs (read: Jews and everyone else) were shaken to the core when the New York Times announced a cream cheese shortage in the city. It was news no one expected to hear. A cream cheese shortage affecting bagel shops: so niche, yet so terrifying. The piece, by Ashley Wong, detailed a frightening shortage of cream cheese base that New York bagel sellers use to make their signature cream cheeses. “Supply chain issues have plagued the United States for months, cau...
(JTA) — The Christian Zionist pastor of a major church asked forgiveness for allowing the church to host an event where Michael Flynn said that the United States should only have one religion. “Last week I allowed an event to be held at Cornerstone Church by an outside organization,” Pastor Matt Hagee said in a statement Thursday. “Regrettably, the organization was not properly vetted. It was not appropriate to allow this event at our church. The church is not associated with this organization and does not endorse their views.” Hagee’s f...
(JNS) — Democratic consultant Aaron Keyak, 36, has been appointed to serve as U.S. Deputy Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism after recently directing U.S. President Joe Biden’s Jewish outreach during the 2020 election campaign. As first reported in The Forward, Keyak’s role will not require Senate confirmation, allowing him to begin serving immediately as acting envoy until the Senate moves on the nomination of Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to serve as the U.S. Envoy for Monitor and Combat anti-...
(JTA) — When Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, picked a favorite memory from the last year for a reflective Thanksgiving-themed tweet on Thursday, he didn’t turn to the day in January when his wife was sworn in or mention their first diplomatic trip together this week. Instead, he shared pictures from the day his family affixed a mezuzah on the doorframe of the vice president’s mansion. Mezuzahs are tubes containing the text of the Shema prayer that Jews traditionally attach to their doorposts. Emhoff is the first Jew t...
