Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 18 of 18
(JNS) — New Yorker Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor in the world, died on Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, at 113. Born in Poland, Girone fled Nazi persecution in 1939 with her husband, who had been incarcerated at the Buchenwald concentration camp, and baby daughter on a chance visa to Shanghai, which opened its doors to nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and was one of the last open ports in the world. After the war, they immigrated to the United States in 1947. She ran a knitting shop in Forest Hills, Queens, a trade t...
(JNS) — Eighty years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted the immigration quotas for the only time during World War II and allowed almost 1,000 European refugees to enter the United States. The 982 men, women and children—874 of them Jewish—were housed behind barbed wire in Fort Ontario in Oswego, N.Y., about 40 miles north of Syracuse. They remained there for 18 months until Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, allowed them to become American citizens after first crossing into Canada and then returning to the United States. Now leg...
(JNS) - The Empire State Building was lit orange on Wednesday night in memory of Shiri Bibas and her sons Ariel and Kfir, whom Hamas killed in captivity and who were buried earlier in the day in Israel. Some four-and-a-half miles north in Manhattan, anti-Israel Barnard College students took over an administrative building on campus. Classes were canceled, and a Barnard staff member was assaulted and hospitalized, Jewish Insider reported. Kassy Akiva, a reporter for Daily Wire, wrote that Barnard spokesperson told her that “a small group of m...
(JNS) — The New York State Education Department wrote in English and Yiddish to two Chassidic schools in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 11, notifying them that they will no longer receive public funding and directing the schools to tell parents that the institution “is no longer deemed a school, which provides compulsory education fulfilling the requirements of Article 65 of the Education Law.” According to section 3204 of state law, “instruction given to a minor elsewhere than at a public school shall be at least s...
(JNS) — Jewish groups have expressed outrage after a man was sentenced on Wednesday to community service for hassling New York City subway riders last summer. “A mere four hours of community service and an anti-bias course for blatant antisemitic harassment? This is not justice—it’s a disgrace,” Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, a grassroots watchdog organization, told The New York Post. “Anas Saleh’s threats against fellow passengers on the NYC subway warranted real consequences, yet he walks away with a slap on the wrist. Th...
(JNS)- The way Dani Dayan figures it, many people will walk along 67th Street in Manhattan, between Second and Third Avenues, and notice the new sign for "Yad Vashem Way" and have no idea what the first two words mean. "Some of them, not all of them, but some of them will Google 'Yad Vashem' and learn about the Shoah," Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, told JNS at the street naming on Thursday. "Yad Vashem is the vehicle, not the purpose," he sai...
(JNS) — Testimonials and photo and video footage on social media showing men donning tefillin and women wearing Stars of David or lighting Shabbat candles have emerged amid a Jewish great awakening after the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Add Shai Davidai, the Columbia Business School professor who has been one of the most prominent defenders of Israel on campuses and beyond, to that trend. Davidai, 41, who is Israeli-American and a self-described atheist, told JNS that he has largely stopped using his phone on Shabbat since the Oct. 7 attacks, and i...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an unsanctioned student group, planned a “Martyrs Day” protest in rejection of Veterans Day, according to Fox News. “Veterans Day is an American holiday to honor the patriotism, love of country, and sacrifice of veterans. We reject this holiday and refuse to celebrate it,” the group’s flyer stated. “The American war machine should not be honored for the horrors unleashed on others. Instead, we will celebrate Martyrs Day in honor of those martyred by the Israel-US war machine.” In...
(JNS) - Amid a sharp increase in Jew-hatred after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in southern Israel, many elected officials and university presidents stood silent. That's why Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center gathered Jewish groups to "find ways to start fighting back," Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the Israeli nonprofit's president, told JNS. Shurat HaDin aimed "to retake the streets, to retake the campuses, to retake the social media, to combat antisemitism in a way that we haven't,"...
(New York Jewish Week) — Republican Rep. Mike Lawler retained his seat in New York’s 17th Congressional District in a race that saw both candidates vie for the area’s large Jewish vote and spar over support for Israel. The race was one of several swing districts in New York State that could sway control of the House. Lawler defeated Democratic challenger Mondaire Jones in the district, which covers territory north of New York City in Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess and Westchester counties. Lawler won around 57 percent of the vote, 16 points ahead...
(New York Jewish Week) - Shai Davidai, an Israeli assistant professor at Columbia University's business school and outspoken pro-Israel activist, said he has been barred from the school's campus again. In a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Davidai said his lawyer had been informed that Davidai was barred from campus after he posted videos of himself confronting university officials about anti-Israel protests on Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of Hamas' attack. "The university decided to...
(New York Jewish Week) — Three hundred and seventy years ago this week, a group of 23 Sephardic Jews arrived on the shores of New York — then called New Amsterdam — and created the first organized Jewish community in the city. What a difference a few centuries make: Today, New York City is home to the largest Jewish population of any city in the world. On Thursday, the City Council will vote on a resolution to honor both, turning Landing Day from an event marked by a few Jewish leaders into an official date on the city’s calendar. The resolut...
(JNS) — Some 120 protesters gathered near the Columbia University campus on Tuesday evening to call on U.S. universities to ban people from protesting on their campuses with face coverings masking their identities. Columbia was one of many sites of anti-Israel encampments that spread across campuses. In April, school’s president Minouche Shafik, who has since resigned, called police to campus to remove anti-Israel vandals who occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, largely dropped charges again...
By (New York Jewish Week) - Vandals defaced the apartment building of Cas Holloway, Columbia University's chief operating officer, on Thursday, splattering red paint around the entrance to the building and painting inverted red triangles, a Hamas symbol, on its facade. The vandals also smashed a glass door, put up threatening posters, and released insects inside the building, according to the New York Post. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul condemned the vandalism, saying the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task...
(New York Jewish Week) — Columbia University restricted access to its campus on Monday, a sign that the university is girding for a renewal of anti-Israel student protests as the fall semester is set to begin. The university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, said in a Friday statement that the campus would effectively be closed to members of the public starting on Monday. The official first day of classes is Sept. 3, though some schools’ orientation activities begin this week. “This change is intended to keep our community safe given r...
(JNS) — Three deans at Columbia University, who the university’s president said exchanged messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes,” have resigned, the New York Times reported on Thursday, adding that a fourth, who participated “to a lesser extent,” remains in his job. “About time. Actions have consequences, and Columbia should have fired all four of these deans months ago,” stated Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “Instead, the university continues to send mixed sig...
(JNS) — Reports from watchdog group Middle East Media Research Institute show a boisterous anti-Israel demonstration in Times Square on the evening of July 31 against a Jewish-organized rally to support the Israel Defense Forces. The New York Post reported that about 300 people attended the rally, which featured a speech by Jonathan Conricus, former spokesperson for the IDF during its ongoing war with Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel. The Post wrote that the demonstration was reportedly organized by the r...
(JNS) — Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, should either step down or be fired by the school’s board, the Coalition for Jewish Values says. The group, which represents 2,500 Orthodox rabbis, noted that Shafik allowed a dean to remain in his role after exchanging text messages mocking the panelists during an event on Jew-hatred. Three other Columbia officials involved lost their administrative roles, but remain on the payroll and the faculty. “The bigotry and double standards are blatant, and entirely at odds with the exper...
