Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(JTA) — In what some are heralding as a watershed moment in the Orthodox world, reports of sexual abuse by a prolific author of children’s books have now led multiple booksellers to stop making his work available. Meanwhile, advocates and at least one leading rabbi are urging Orthodox parents to remove books by Chaim Walder from their homes. Many are doing so. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an investigation last week alleging that Walder, a therapist as well as a writer, psychologically groomed multiple minors before proceeding to abu...
(JTA) - The only Jewish kicker in the NFL for years now, Greg Joseph is used to how mentally taxing the position can be. On Sunday, he found himself in another one of its do-or-die situations. With two seconds left to go in a tied game against the division-leading Green Bay Packers on Sunday, Joseph kicked his Minnesota Vikings to victory with a 29-yard field goal, keeping the team's playoff hopes alive. He was carried off the field by his teammates. Joseph, who attended Jewish schools in...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden held an outdoor ceremony at the White House on Monday to sign the hard-won Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the infrastructure bill, joined by legislators and politicians from all over the United States who helped craft and promote the legislation. Nathan Diament, executive director of Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, was there celebrating the inclusion of another part of the bill — a $50-million pilot program for nonprofit organizations to apply for a grant to reduce energy con...
(JTA) — A rally is set to take place at George Washington University Monday after a fraternity on campus said a small replica Torah used in its initiation process was damaged during a vandalism spree. The president of Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity on George Washington’s campus, said the vandalism took place early Sunday morning, according to a report in the university’s student newspaper. He said hot sauce was poured throughout the house and many objects were thrown around, the newspaper reported. The damage that most caught the public eye w...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — In what was billed as her first speech to a Jewish audience as New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul vowed to fight hate crimes and criticized fellow Democrats over their positions on Israel. The speech, delivered virtually to the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York on Wednesday night, hit the usual notes sounded by Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in August in the face of sexual misconduct allegations. Hochul pledged to fight antisemitism and help bolster security at Jewish institutions....
(JTA) — Republican Glenn Youngkin, a businessman, has defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe to become Virginia’s governor in a race that was fraught with charges of antisemitism. Local and national media organizations called the race, which was widely viewed as a barometer for Republican electoral strategy in the post-Trump era, early Wednesday morning. Youngkin embraced former President Donald Trump in the primary but distanced himself from Trump in the general campaign, while still managing to retain the support of Trump’s core const...
(JNS) Addressing supporters with a "heart filled with hope purpose and love for this city," Eric Adams accepted his win as New York City's mayor-elect with a nod to strong support from the Orthodox Jewish community, especially in Brooklyn, N.Y. Adams, a Democrat, received 66.5 percent of the vote to Republican Curtis Sliwa, 67, founder of the Guardian Angels, who won 28.8 percent with nearly 78 percent of precincts reporting as of Wednesday afternoon. In the district that includes the Crown...
(JNS) — Long well-documented on college campuses, pro-BDS and anti-Semitic sentiments are now gaining traction in kindergarten through 12th-grade public-school systems. The United Educators of San Francisco in May became the first teachers’ union in the country to pass a resolution supporting BDS. In September, while United Teachers Los Angeles voted to postpone a pro-BDS resolution, San Diego’s American Federation of Teachers Guild stated that “condemning Israel for its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occupation, apartheid and war crimes is...
(JTA) — The Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2020 conference was one of the last Jewish conferences to be canceled as the pandemic set in: The group had gone so far as to order branded hand sanitizer. Now, it’s one of the first to resume, and it’s doing so amid a great deal of change relevant to the group’s agenda. There was the election of President Joe Biden last fall and the tumultuous transition as Donald Trump exited the White House while remaining a looming figure in the Republican Party. Then there was the death, in January, of Sheldon A...
