Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 973 - 997 of 1886
(JNS)—As synagogues nationwide debate whether to have armed individuals in their building to prevent possible terror attacks, the Secure Community Network has issued new research and scenarios on who might carry arms in a congregation—from trained law-enforcement personnel to congregational members—and how to keep attendees safe. Titled “Firearms and the Faithful: Approaches to Armed Security in Jewish Community,” the 24-page white paper was crafted by SCN—the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—We ran a story last week on where the top seven Democrats running for president stood on Iran policy. Try as we could, we could not pin down a position for Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who was not included in the last debate, where he might be forced to elaborate a position on one of the burning issues of the day. (He has high enough polling numbers to qualify for a debate, but has not crossed the outside contribution threshold set by the Democratic National Committee because he is bankrolling his own campaign.) T...
(JTA)—Half of American adults are unaware of basic facts regarding Nazism and the Holocaust, including the number of Jews who were killed and how Nazis came to power. Those are some of the findings of a new study by the Pew Research Center released on Tuesday, about a week ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The study asked nearly 13,000 respondents, Jewish and non-Jewish adults and teenagers, four questions about the Holocaust. Most knew that the Holocaust took place between 1930 and 1950, and that Nazi ghettos w...
(JNS)—A bipartisan resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives will be introduced on Monday, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. It will be introduced by Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), their offices announced on Thursday. The resolution honors the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime and the millions of others whose lives were tragically cut short, many of them from minority groups. The measure also reaffirms t...
(JNS)-In the seventh and final Democratic debate before the Iowa Caucus on Feb. 3, hosted on Tuesday by CNN and The Des Moines Register at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, the six candidates on stage slammed U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East policies, especially regarding the Iranian threat. "We're in a situation where our allies in Europe are making a comparison between the United States and Iran, saying both ought to stand down, making a moral equivalence. We have lost our...
A Republican Muslim candidate is looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in the upcoming U.S. elections. Dalia al-Aqidi, an award-winning international journalist and Muslim refugee, announced her candidacy on Thursday in order to fix the discord that Omar has sown in the country. "Ilhan Omar and I may seem alike, both women, Muslims, and refugees, but we couldn't be more different," said al-Aqidi in a video on her election website. "Omar has spent her entire time in Washington sowing...
(JTA)—South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order on Tuesday prohibiting state offices from doing business with companies that boycott Israel. South Dakota is the 28th state to have enacted an anti-Israel boycott executive order or legislation. Its measure requires vendors who want to contract with South Dakota agencies, authorities, commissions, departments or institutions not to work with companies that participate in boycotts of Israel. It applies to companies or contractors with more than five employees and on contracts of $...
NEW YORK (JTA)-A local NAACP official in New Jersey has been suspended from his position for six months after giving a speech castigating Orthodox Jews in Jersey City and the largely Jewish city of Lakewood. James Harris, the chair of the education committee for the Montclair, New Jersey branch of the civil rights organization, has apologized for his remarks. Harris gave a speech at a Dec. 30 community meeting on gentrification in which he called Hasidic Jews unfriendly and blamed Hasidic...
(JNS)-Pro-Israel students from 30 university campuses across the United States and Canada gathered last week in New York City for a three-day conference to learn about defending Israel effectively, confidently and unapologetically at their schools. The conference was hosted by Student Supporting Israel, a nonpartisan, non-Jewish campus group, and took place at Columbia University, which has been called one of the most hostile colleges for pro-Israel students. "That was why it was important for...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The post-debate analysis this week focused largely on the ongoing spat between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While we hope they can sort that out soon, the debate featured something else more relevant to JTA readers: Everyone on stage thought that President Donald Trump made a huge mistake in 2018 when he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and said outright or implied that as president, they would return to the deal. (To be more precise, Warren did not speak up on the topic, but she has expressed similar sentiments e...
NEW YORK (JTA)-An estimated 25,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and held a rally on Sunday to protest rising anti-Semitism in and around New York City. The rally comes following a spate of attacks on Jews-including, most recently, a stabbing attack at a rabbi's home in the New York City suburb of Monsey and a shooting in a Jersey City kosher supermarket that claimed four lives. There has also been an unending stream of verbal and physical assaults on Jews in neighborhoods of Brookly...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, whose home was the site of a stabbing last month on the holiday of Chanukah, delivered an invocation at Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address. Joseph Gluck, the man who stopped the attacker by throwing a coffee table at his head, was also in attendance and received a standing ovation. The attacker injured five people at Rottenberg's home in Monsey, New York, on Dec. 28, including the rabbi's son. One of those wounded, Joseph Neumann, remains...
(JTA)—New York Times columnist Bret Stephens came under fire on social media for an op-ed in which he wrote that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other people and cited a paper by a researcher who promoted eugenics. The reference to the paper later was removed. “The Secret of Jewish Genius” published on Saturday had received nearly 700 comments on the online edition of The Times by Sunday afternoon when the comments were closed. Many of the comments also thanked Stephens for his column and praised his conclusions. The column cited...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Bernie Sanders campaign has named an insider in both the Jewish and Democratic establishments-entities that the presidential candidate has previously kept at a distance-as its liaison to the Jewish community. The appointment of Joel Rubin, 48, a former Obama administration official with longstanding ties to an array of Jewish groups, was announced Thursday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Rubin was a co-founder of J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, and...
NEW YORK (JTA)-New York City will launch three initiatives aimed at combating anti-Semitic hate crimes. Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement at a dramatic news conference Sunday afternoon at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library following weeks of anti-Semitic assaults and vandalism that have plagued the city and state. "I don't want people to forget that we've confronted hatred in this city before, we've confronted division," de Blasio said. "We have done it before, and we...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The black-Jewish coalition that has fought for civil rights since the 1960s has the city of Atlanta as its nexus. Folks there cite three reasons for this: a substantial African-American population, a relatively large Jewish community and John Lewis. Lewis, 79, the longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia who announced Sunday that he was suffering from stage 4 pancreatic cancer, has been close to Jewish groups for decades. And that longstanding relationship was on full...
(JTA)—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to fight for a quadrupling of funding for federal security grants for nonprofit organizations. It would raise the amount provided by the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $360 million annually from $90 million. The program provides funding to improve the security of nonprofit organizations at risk of being targeted for terror attacks such as synagogues, churches, mosques, schools, Jewish community centers and other faith-based community centers. Schumer, D-N.Y., also called for financial s...
NEW YORK (JTA)-In the wake of several attacks on Jews in the New York area in recent months, seven House Democrats representing districts of New York City held a news conference to emphasize that they are committed to stamping out anti-Semitism. But in addition to discussing initiatives designed to help decrease anti-Semitic attacks, the lawmakers admitted that finding specific root causes of the recent incidents is proving difficult. Reps. Max Rose, Yvette Clarke, Eliot Engel, Hakeem Jeffries,...
(JNS)-Less than 24 hours after five people were stabbed at a rabbi's home on Forshay Road in Monsey, N.Y., Jews gathered on the lawn to sing and dance as a Torah scroll was dedicated at a nearby synagogue, making for a far different scene from the night before. On Saturday night, Grafton Thomas, 38, entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg and began stabbing people who had come to celebrate the seventh night of Chanukah. Using what has now been described as a machete, the attacker began...
NEW YORK (JTA)-All of the gloom and doom that many in the Jewish community have felt toward the end of this decade should not obscure the fact that the 2010s were full of innovation. Yes, there was an alarming rise in anti-Semitism across the U.S. and the world, which culminated in several violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. But that didn't stop the community from growing, evolving and adapting to modern life. Here's a look back at 10 huge developments from the past 10 years that...
(JNS)—The Trump administration is reportedly opposing a bill that would sanction Turkey for purchasing Russian missiles, claiming that it would push both countries towards further cooperation. The administration also opposes a part of the measure that would assist Syrian Kurdish refugees to resettle in the United States. The Daily Beast first reported the developments on Monday, citing a seven-page memo sent by the U.S. State Department to senators. The bill, the “Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act...
(JNS)-Deputy Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development Bonnie Glick made headlines last week after Bloomberg reported that she placed a hold on U.S. economic assistance to Lebanon-a story that she denies. Her agency administers U.S. civilian and development assistance to countries overseas. "There was no hold on assistance to Lebanon," she told JNS. "We have a large assistance program in Lebanon that is robust and ongoing." She added, "I am absolutely concerned that there...
(JNS)—Eight Republican members of Congress on Thursday called on U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to ensure that taxpayer funds do not go toward Middle East Studies’ centers at colleges and universities that support boycotting Israel. In a letter to DeVos, the congressional members express alarm over Middle East Studies National Resource Centers allegedly misusing funds under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to support the anti-Israel BDS movement, consisting of, but not limited to, prohibiting conferences and other events inv...
(JTA)—A federal complaint has been filed against Columbia University accusing the school of anti-Semitic discrimination. It is the first case filed since President Donald Trump’s executive order on combating anti-Semitism, which grants Jewish students the same protections as other minority groups. The complaint requests a formal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into alleged anti-Semitic discrimination at Columbia. It was filed by the Lawfare Project on behalf of a Jewish Israeli-American under...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—If where you spend your money is the clearest sign of your priorities, Congress seems to be saying that it remains invested in Israeli-Palestinian peace and in robustly supporting Israel’s defense systems. The House of Representatives threw its support this week behind a spending package that restores support for what have long been considered key planks upholding an eventual two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Senate is expected to likewise approve the bills. The $1.3 trillion spending package inc...
