Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 771 - 795 of 1886
By Ben Sales (JTA) — Weeks after a federal complaint alleged an anti-Semitic climate at the University of Illinois, the university announced it would work with Jewish groups to improve conditions for Jews and pro-Israel students on campus. The campus in Champaign-Urbana, home to 34,000 undergraduates and some 3,000 Jewish undergraduate students, was recently the subject of a legal complaint asking the U.S. Education Department to investigate a “hostile environment of anti-Semitism.” The complaint cited multiple instances of swastika graff...
(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — The student government at San Francisco State University has approved a divestment resolution targeting Israel that would have the school pull out of investments in companies that do business in Israeli settlements. Following a lengthy and contentious public comment period, Associated Students passed the measure in a 17-1 vote with two abstentions. Nearly two dozen speakers had offered testimonies on both sides of the resolution. The passage of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions r...
(JNS) — Despite retaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democrats saw a number of significant defeats in the Nov. 3 elections that will shrink their majority going into the 117th Congress. One of the biggest upsets was by Republican Nicole Malliotakis, who defeated incumbent—although newly elected himself two years ago—Democratic Rep. Max Rose in New York’s 11th Congressional District. Rose, 33, who was first elected to Congress in 2018, conceded to the New York State Assembly member on Nov. 12. Out of 717,708 people...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump pulled their children out of a Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., two weeks before Election Day and three weeks after an outbreak of COVID-19 cases in and around the White House. The couple’s children had attended the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital since moving to Washington in 2017 after Donald Trump, Ivanka’s father, became president. Their three kids started a different school, the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in suburban Maryland, on Oct. 19. “They withdrew...
(JTA) - DOC NYC is one of the world's foremost documentary film festivals, and this year it's all online, just like most other arts festivals in this pandemic moment. Among its 200-plus films are six gems with powerful Jewish themes - from a look inside the powerful AIPAC pro-Israel lobby to the chronicling of Black-Jewish friendship forged in the process of taking a racist case to the Supreme Court. All the movies will be accessible for $12 each, or in special packages of 5 or 10; there are all...
(JTA) - The doctor burst into public view in the pandemic's early days, vaulting from behind the scenes to the front lines of a crisis bringing his community to its knees. Community members hung on his every word and changed their behavior because of him. Seven months later, he still has his adherents, but he also knows that weighing in about ways to curb the spread of COVID-19 comes with a cost - from being dismissed at best to facing violent threats from people who are tired of restrictions...
(JNS) -Jewish groups reacted immediately following the U.S. Senate confirmation on Monday of Amy Coney Barrett as the 115th U.S. Supreme Court justice a week before the Nov. 3 election. Barrett, previously a judge on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court and a professor at Notre Dame Law School, her law school alma mater, was confirmed 52-48. All but one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), voted in favor of her nomination, while all Democrats voted against it. She succeeds the late Ruth Bader Gin...
(JTA) — Some Orthodox neighborhoods classified as “red zones” by the state of New York due to their high COVID-19 test positivity rates in recent weeks will soon be allowed to reopen schools and nonessential businesses. But the areas of Brooklyn where Orthodox Jews have staged protests against the restrictions imposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo still have so many new cases that that will remain red, Cuomo announced Wednesday. Cuomo instituted the color-coded zones earlier this month after he criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to...
(JTA) — A virus forced the World Zionist Congress to go virtual for the first time since its founding in 1897. But that didn’t stop last week’s gathering, held once every five years, from being any less crucial — or less contentious — for the future of Israel and the Jewish people. Nor did it dampen enthusiasm for the event among the American delegation, which hailed from 28 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., after an election last winter that saw record voter participation. Of the 750 delegates to the 38th World Zionist Congress,...
(JNS) — Hate online, particularly anti-Semitism, is continuing to grow at alarming rates, and stopping it will require education, collaboration and a cohesive definition were the findings from the first-of-its-kind, two-day symposium sponsored by the U.S. State Department. “Nowadays, bigots everywhere can spread anti-Semitism online anonymously. In the first eight months of 2020, the Israel anti-Semitism monitoring system recorded 1.7 million anti-Semitic messages from more than 445,000 users on Twitter and YouTube; 37,000 of those mes...
(Israel21c via JNS) — Ten Israeli firefighters flew to California on Aug. 30. Over the course of 15 days of exhausting, dangerous work, they became a battalion of brothers with their California colleagues. “During the time we spent with these Israelis who came to help us, we became much more than coworkers. We bonded with them as part of our firefighting family,” said Chief Scott Lindgren of the Amador-El Dorado Unit of California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). “They b...
(JTA) — Four Jewish candidates are among those vying for 35 open Senate seats this year — and two of them are seen as contenders to convert Republican-held seats to Democratic. All of the Jewish Senate candidates are Democrats or supported by the Democratic Party. (Ten of the 43 Jews in the running for House of Representatives slots are Republicans.) They include a doctor who has killed a bear, a scientist who makes a mean matzoh ball soup, a son of a former vice presidential candidate and a star of the anti-Trump resistance on the cam...
(JTA) — Jewish voters are set to vote 75 percent to 22 percent for Joe Biden, according to a poll by the American Jewish Committee. The poll released Monday shows the Democratic nominee expanding his support among Jewish voters from a 67-30 split in a poll last month and it includes other signs that President Donald Trump is faring poorly among Jewish voters. Trump’s record on bigotry may be the animating factor in his poor performance: Asked which candidate in the Nov. 3 presidential election would better handle anti-Semitism, respondents prod...
By Ron Kampeas, Ben Sales WASHINGTON (JTA) — In an unusual move, the State Department is planning to formally identify three large international human rights organizations as anti-Semitic, citing disputed aspects of the groups’ agendas. Elan Carr, the department’s anti-Semitism monitor, is planning to release a statement calling on governments not to support Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam, congressional sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The planned statement was first reported by Politico on Wednesday, just as as...
The president, Morton Schapiro, said it could be. The activist group said it was not. The ensuing debate has divided Northwestern’s campus just north of Chicago this week, with the school’s Hillel offering students the opportunity to reflect on the incident virtually in small groups Wednesday. The activist group, called NU Community Not Cops, chanted “piggy Morty” outside Schapiro’s home over the weekend, according to an open letter Schapiro wrote on Monday. The group is calling for the abolition of the Northwestern University Police Departmen...
(JNS) - The American Jewish Congress announced on Tuesday that it has picked Joel Rubin, who served as the liaison to the Jewish community for the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as its next executive director. Rubin, 49, a co-founder of the American Jewish lobby group J Street, is AJCongress's first Washington-based director in a decade. Jack Rosen, president of the 102-year-old organization, said in a statement, "The Jewish community is facing significant risks...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two Orthodox umbrella groups and the Jewish Federations of North America joined a faith groups’ letter to congressional appropriators asking them to quadruple funds for security grants for vulnerable nonprofits, to $360 million. The letter, also signed by Christian, Sikh and Muslim groups, says the $90 million available has run out. “At a time of increasing extremism and antagonism towards different religious groups and religion in general, we believe significant increased funding for this important government program in fi...
(JNS) Supporters of a grassroots group seeking to end anti-Semitism held a rally outside of the New York Public Library last Thursday to express their dismay with recent comments and actions by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that have been perceived as targeting the Jewish community. “Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio’s continued attacks against the Jewish community are outrageous. Never in my life did I think I would see this type of blatant Jew-hatred from our public officials,” said Brooke Golds...
(JNS) — If the U.S. elections were held today — two weeks before the Nov. 3 election — 83 percent of Orthodox Jews would vote for U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a poll released on Wednesday. An Ami magazine poll of 1,000 Orthodox Jews in 22 states reported that only 13 percent of respondents would vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, while 4 percent said someone else or noted that they were undecided. In response to the question of how Trump “is covered by the mainstream media,” 76 percent said “mostly unfair,” 14 percent said...
(JTA) — Protests by Orthodox Jews against New York’s crackdown on gatherings in their neighborhoods turned tense and at times violent Tuesday night as throngs of young men demonstrated in the streets of Borough Park. The late-night protest in a heavily Orthodox area of Brooklyn took aim at new restrictions that would close schools, limit attendance at synagogues services and close nonessential businesses in areas with upticks in COVID-19. The protesters set fire to a pile of masks, at one point surrounded a city bus that was moving through the...
(JTA) – It won’t just be schools that close in areas of New York City with many COVID-19 cases. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced new restrictions on houses of worship, with services in some parts of the state capped at just 10 people. The new restrictions will go into effect by Friday, as Jewish communities begin celebrations of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, the last of the fall holidays, which are generally celebrated with large gatherings and dancing. The decision marks the first time in-person religious services, central to Ort...
(JNS) — Professing his “respect and love” for the Orthodox Jewish community, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced major restrictions and closures in parts of the state designated as “COVID clusters,” areas that have an overwhelmingly large Orthodox community. “I understand the imposition this will place on them,” the governor said on Tuesday afternoon after a morning meeting with leaders in the Jewish community. “I said I need their cooperation; I need their assistance. I asked them to work with me to follow these guidelines, and that was po...
(JTA) — The county health commissioner in upstate New York’s Orange County issued an order Monday closing schools serving students from Kiryas Joel, a community made up of mostly Satmar Hasidic Jews. The village has the highest COVID positivity rate of any town or village in the county, according to the commissioner’s order, with 27.6 percent of COVID tests confirming a positive result in a three-day average. Schools for whom a majority of students come from Kiryas Joel and Palm Tree, a town that overlaps with Kiryas Joel and which is also...
“Blindsided.” That’s how Melissa Engelberg felt after being laid off in April due to COVID-19 cutbacks. “I was shocked, I was sad and I was worried,” said Engelberg, who lost her job as director of grants and programs at the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County. “I understood the reason — the times are just so unprecedented — but this was my dream job and I had never lost a job before.” Engelberg let colleagues and friends know she was seeking a new position. Soon afterward, two people alerted her to Rise, a new initiative to help the r...
(JTA) — A new report from the Department of Homeland Security names white supremacists as the biggest domestic terror threat in the United States. The Homeland Threat Assessment, released on Tuesday, details an array of violent domestic threats in the United States. It also notes that, among other qualities, white supremacists are characterized by their hate of Jews, or by “their perception that the government is controlled by Jewish persons.” It comes a week after President Donald Trump declined to denounce white supremacists from the presi...
