Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 579 - 603 of 1890
(JTA) — Fear of antisemitism spurred 40 percent of American Jews to change their behavior over the past year, according to a new survey about antisemitism in America. The survey, released Monday, is the latest in an annual series commissioned by the American Jewish Committee to understand how Jewish Americans and the general public experience and perceive antisemitism. A survey of American Jews found that over the last year, 17 percent said they “avoided certain places, events, or situations,” 22 percent avoided making themselves visua...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Washington D.C. branch of a national climate action group turned down a role at a voting rights rally because a “number of Zionist organizations” will be taking part. “Given our commitment to racial justice, self-governance and indigenous sovereignty, we oppose Zionism and any state that enforces its ideology,” Sunrise DC said in a statement it posted Tuesday on Twitter. The group named the National Council of Jewish Women, the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs as...
(JNS) — The pro-Israel student group Maccabee Task Force organized its first three-day conference to help strengthen the relationship between Black and Jewish communities. Roughly 100 people from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) attended the Black Student Leaders Summit, which was held from Oct. 1-3 in Atlanta, where many of the student leaders were based. The goal of the summit was to help re-establish an alliance that has increasingly split in the last decade as a result of politics and various social movements in the U...
(JTA) — The statue of Thomas Jefferson that will be removed from the chambers of the New York City Council at the urging of Black lawmakers was a gift in 1834 from one of the first Jewish officers in the U.S. military. The city’s Public Design Commission decided to remove the statue following complaints from Assemblymen Charles Barron, Councilwoman Inez Barron and others that Jefferson was a slaveholder. The statue, which has stood in the city council’s chambers for over a century, was commissioned by Uriah Phillips Levy, a lifelong fan of Je...
NEW YORK (JTA) — Three rabbis and six Jewish teenagers were among those arrested Monday at a climate protest at the Manhattan headquarters of BlackRock, the largest investment management company in New York. The demonstration, organized by the Jewish Youth Climate Movement with support from the interfaith organization GreenFaith, demanded the firm stop its investments in and cut ties with companies that fund the fossil fuel industry, which include Enbridge, Inc., Formosa Plastics and Shell. Rabbis Rachel Timoner and Stephanie Kolin of Congregat...
(JTA) — A Jewish man who asked for a new trial on the grounds that the judge who sentenced him to death was antisemitic will be granted a new trial. Randy Halprin, 44, was originally set to be executed on Oct. 10, 2019 but won a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after he alleged that the judge who presided over his 2003 murder trial was biased against Jews and referred to him using antisemitic slurs, including “f—in’ Jew” and “k-ke.” The stay sent Halprin’s case back to Dallas County, where Judge Lela Lawrence Mays heard Halprin’s...
(Israel InSight via JNS) - The Northeast Alabama Cherokee held a ceremony on Sept. 25 in Guntersville, Ala., to establish a relationship with Israel. There, the tribe presented a resolution, unanimously passed by the Tribal Council, recognizing the "sovereign Jewish nation" of Israel, with Jerusalem as its "eternal undivided capital." "We vow our full support in the pursuit of the peace of Jerusalem and the Nation of Israel by whichever means may be necessary," it said. The event, centered...
By (JTA) — Teachers in a Texas school district were told last week that a new state law requiring them to present multiple perspectives about “widely debated and currently controversial” issues meant they needed to make “opposing” views on the Holocaust available to students. NBC News obtained an audio recording of the official, the Carroll Independent School District’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, speaking to the teachers about how to work under the constraints of the new law, known as House Bill 3979. The law was passed...
(JTA) — After months of controversy and tens of thousands of public comments, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed off on legislation that eventually will require students to pass at least one course in ethnic studies in order to graduate from California high schools. Under the law, schools will have to offer at least one class in ethnic studies by 2025, and the graduation requirement will go into effect in 2029. Newsom’s signature on Friday caps an extended debate over the legislation, which was accompanied by a recommended curriculum tha...
(JNS) — For the second year in a row, the Jewish Federations of North America decided to go virtual, condensing its traditional multiple-day General Assembly into a 90-minute online video stream on Sunday due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The conference highlighted the fact that despite an unusual year-and-a-half, JFNA has had more to do than ever in the midst of the COVID crisis and a worldwide rise in anti-Semitism. Multiple speakers noted the goal of strengthening Jewish communities, both in identity and physical security. Despite t...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Jewish Federations of North America is launching a campaign to expand its security program to every federation in the country, an initiative that will cost $54 million. JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut announced the initiative on Monday at the organization’s General Assembly in Washington. The new funding, to be raised over three years, will assist the 101 communities that have faced fundraising obstacles in establishing the security points in their communities so they too can join LiveSecure, a program launched after a spate of...
(Cleveland Jewish News via JNS) — Someone in a vehicle reportedly threw a beer bottle at a 13-year-old Fuchs Mizrachi School student in an Orthodox neighborhood in University Heights, Ohio, and screamed, “F******g Jews, you’re f*****g idiots, Jews,” and then drove away. Naava Prero had just gotten off a public school bus at the corner of Milton and Groveland roads at about 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday when the reported incident took place. As the bus pulled away, another vehicle pulled up to the girl, her mother, Rachel Prero, told the Clevela...
(JNS) — Hillel International has teamed up with the Anti-Defamation League and the Secure Community Network to launch an online portal where college students can report anti-Semitic incidents on their campus and receive immediate support. The creation of ReportCampusHate.org is in response to the growing threats of anti-Semitism on college campuses. Hillel International recorded 244 anti-Semitic incidents on college and university campuses last year, up from 181 the year before. It also comes after a recent survey found that 74 percent of c...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul blocked an expedited vote to approve $1 billion in funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system and received swift criticism from an array of pro-Israel groups. Sen. Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, launched a bid Monday to pass the bill by unanimous consent, a procedure that accelerates passage by minimizing debate. Paul objected, saying he wanted the funding to come out of money earmarked to assist Afghanistan as it recovers from yea...
PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) - Tahara, the act of washing and purifying the deceased, is paramount to Jewish burial. So when the pandemic descended on the United States in March 2020, members of a Pittsburgh-based Jewish burial society devoted to the practice made a difficult decision. Given fears of COVID-19 transmission, members of the New Community Chevra Kadisha stopped traveling to funeral homes and performing the sacred act of tahara in person. Instead of physically...
(JTA) — When Rivka Taub Rivera decided to apply for a religious exemption to New York City’s vaccine mandate for teachers, she didn’t turn to the rabbis of Borough Park, the Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn where she lives. Instead, she asked Michoel Green, a Chabad rabbi who has openly opposed vaccination, to submit the required letter from a clergy member. Based in Massachusetts, Green was disaffiliated by a Chabad organization because of his anti-vaccination social media posts and has become a folk hero for some Orthodox Jews who oppos...
(JNS) Basketball player Deni Avdija was the talk of the town in Israeli and Jewish circles last season. The 19-year-old Israeli was drafted No. 9 in the first round of the NBA draft by the Washington Wizards and was off to a fairly impressive start until he fractured his right ankle on April 21 during a game against the Golden State Warriors. Avdija, now 20, has been recovering and rehabilitating, and is cleared to return for his second year in the NBA. He will play on the same Wizards team,...
(JNS) - A state-of-the-art security command center was unveiled this week by the Secure Community Network to ensure that the Jewish community is prepared in the event of any violence or threats. Dubbed the National Jewish Security Operations Command Center, JSOCC, was built with funding by private donors and gives the SCN - the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations - a high-tech, centralized location where...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Vice President Kamala Harris "strongly disagrees" with a university student who told her that Israel was carrying out "ethnic genocide," her office said, pushing back against claims that she encouraged the student's view. "Throughout her career, the vice president has been unwavering in her commitment to Israel and to Israel's security," Harris's spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, said Friday in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "While visiting George Mason University...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A GOP flier distributed to homes in the Virginia suburbs of Washington depicts the Jewish Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates at a table stacked high with gold coins, a pairing of images of Jewish candidates with money that has proliferated in political attack ads in recent years. “Dan Helmer has raised Virginia’s cost of living to new heights,” the mailer said. It was distributed this week by Helmer’s Republican challenger, Howard Pyon. Helmer, the incumbent in the House of Delegate’s 40th District, which cover...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, said she changed her vote from “no” to “present” on a bill for special funding for Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome defense system because of the “panic and horror” that seized the moment. Ocasio-Cortez could be seen weeping on the floor of Congress Thursday after casting her vote. She was one of 11 representatives, including the other members of “the Squad” of progressives, who did not vote to support the $1 billion in Iron Dome funding; 420 representative...
(JTA) — In a contentious meeting last week, the Seattle City Council narrowly voted down legislation that would have prohibited the city’s police department from conducting training with Israeli forces. The bill, which was defeated by a vote of 5-4 at the council’s meeting on Sept. 20, was conceived following the May conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Its lead sponsor was a socialist council member, Kshama Sawant, who also led a protest in June seeking to block an Israeli cargo ship from docking at Seattle’s port. The defeat of the bil...
(JNS) — Several Jewish groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of a case that could determine whether public funding could be given to parochial schools for secular education. In Carson V. Makin, parents of parochial-school students argued that the Maine Department of Education discriminated against their children by denying them tuition assistance available to nonsectarian schools. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Maine Department of Education. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the s...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved an extra $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, following a pushback effort from Israel-critical progressives that had limited reach. The vote Thursday was 420-9, with two voting present. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be approved. Israel asked the Biden administration for $1 billion to replenish the batteries depleted during its conflict with Hamas in May. The Biden administration agreed, and the Democratic lea...
(JTA) — Los Angeles’ main teachers union voted Thursday to indefinitely postpone a motion in favor of boycotting Israel. For months, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which has approximately 30,000 members, has been debating a motion to support BDS, or the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. The motion was first raised in the wake of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in May. It has since been adopted by several local chapters of the union. The resolution calls for the union to “endorse the international campa...
