Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 82
(JNS) — A Bronx man faces federal hate crime charges after allegedly assaulting a Jewish congregant and a black security guard during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday. Larry Montes, 46, was charged with two hate crime counts and one count of damaging religious property resulting in bodily injury. According to a federal complaint, Montes began shouting during an Aug. 14 Shabbat service attended by about 375 people and damaged two ceremonial candlesticks. When security p...
(JNS) — Jewish New Yorkers disapprove of Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, 66 percent to 26 percent, and 75 percent of them don’t agree with the Democratic Socialists of America, compared to 17 percent who approve of it, according to a new Siena University Poll of 811 likely gubernatorial voters in New York. The poll, which was conducted between Aug. 3 and 6, found that 43 percent of likely N.Y. gubernatorial voters, including 67 percent of Democrats, think that the state is on the right track, compared to 47 percent, including 86 per...
(JNS) — Anecdotal accounts of Jews and Zionists leaving or planning to vacate New York City due to Zohran Mamdani’s anti-Israel policies and rhetoric as mayor and his softness, Jewish groups have said, on rising antisemitism have trickled out. In his first month in office, New York City recorded a 182 percent surge in Jew-hatred, compared to January 2025. Rabbis and Jewish leaders in neighboring and nearby states told JNS that the threat that Mamdani’s policies and statements pose to Jews doesn’t end at official city limits. “It’s increased t...
(JNS) — It is difficult to believe that Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, one of two grand rebbes of the Satmar Chassidic movement, had purely religious intentions when he said that criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani violates Torah commandments, Dov Hikind, a former New York state Assembly member, told JNS. “I wish I could believe that it was l’shma, that it was sincere, that it was all about Torah and it was all about God,” the Orthodox founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, said. “But I don’t believe that for one second.” “I...
(JNS) — Stav Cohen, 30, an Israeli attorney and special-forces reservist, has spent more than 12 years fighting terrorists. He now plans to deploy his combat skills against another threat to the Jewish state—this one found on American college campuses. “A loaded M16 is to prevent the next attack tonight,” but it’s necessary to talk to college students before they become “the next Mamdani or the next Congress leaders,” the grandchild of Holocaust survivors told JNS. Cohen is co-founder of the Israeli nonprofit Frontline Advocates, which trains...
(JNS) - Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, urged New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip next month's Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero, arguing that his attendance at the 25th anniversary commemoration would be "divisive." The letter came as an online petition launched by a man whose wife was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, calling for Mamdani to be excluded from the annual commemoration, surpassed 74,000 signatures. Donohue wrote that Mamdani's absence from the...
(JNS) — Community leaders in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn say that the sentence handed to the man convicted of repeatedly ramming his car into the world headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch minimizes the seriousness of the attack. Dan Sohail, 36, of Carteret, N.J., pleaded guilty to one federal count of damaging religious property after driving his Honda Accord down a ramp leading to the handicapped-access entrance at 770 Eastern Parkway on Jan. 28. After first removing protective barriers, he repeatedly rammed the vehicle into the s...
(JNS) — The UJA-Federation of New York accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of targeting Jewish New Yorkers and exploiting Israel for political gain after he released a video on Tuesday calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal.” “Mayor Mamdani: New Yorkers elected a mayor to lead this city—not to make Israel the centerpiece of your political grandstanding,” the UJA stated. “Your video is rife with distortions and disinformation,” the organization stated. “At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singli...
(JNS) — A New York City “neighborhood passport,” which the city’s official marketing group created and which is on hand at libraries in the Big Apple for tourists coming for the World Cup, includes a “cultural map” of the city detailing “thriving international communities and cultures.” The map identifies 30 neighborhoods associated with immigrant populations, including “Little Palestine” (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn), “Little Egypt” (Astoria, Queens), “Little Pakistan” (Newkirk Plaza, Brooklyn) and multiple Chinatowns. The map, which is sourced from t...
(JNS) — New York City politicians denounced a Nazi swastika that was carved into a parked car on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—reportedly a vehicle in which an Israeli flag was visible. Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City who has been accused of Jew-hatred frequently and whose wife has apologized for past social media activity, including apparently lauding the Oct. 7 attacks, stated that the “swastika carved into a car on the Upper East Side is a despicable act of antisemitism.” “It is a hateful attack of intimidation on our Jewish ne...
(JNS) — Some 500 people gathered on Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan for lessons, lectures, social play and vendors at the New York Jewish Mah Jongg Festival. “I think people really just want to connect,” mahjong historian Gregg Swain told JNS at the event, which also takes place on Monday. “Nowadays, it’s just so easy to spend time doing something mindless on the computer. Mahjong really allows people to connect in different ways.” Swain told JNS that the game, which...
(JNS) - Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) drew on the recent New York Knicks NBA finals win in his opening statement during his second televised debate with former city comptroller Brad Lander, who is running to unseat him in New York's 10th Congressional District. "We cannot afford to put a rookie in the game," he said. "We have to put our best players on the court." He referred often to Lander's lack of federal government experience as his opponent being a "rookie." Both men are Jewish. Lander has...
(JNS) — The Israel Day on Fifth parade in Manhattan on May 31 made a statement both for who was and was not present, according to Ofir Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York. “To all our enemies all around the world, but specifically here in New York City, we are here to stay, we are strong, we are proud and my suggestion to all of these elected officials, who are thinking that we will disappear, the answer is ‘no,’” Akunis told JNS after the parade. “The opposite is the truth,” the...
(JNS) - Hundreds of New Yorkers filled the normally quiet and bucolic Upper East Side street adjacent to Gracie Mansion, the official home of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, on Tuesday evening, chanting "Hey, hey, no, no, Mayor Mamdani's got to go" and "stop Mamdani." Lilly Icikson was among the demonstrators-a group of mostly Jews with a few Muslims and Christians-and handed out stickers, which she prints at home and affixes to light poles and other surfaces outside Gracie Mansion and in...
(JNS) — The UJA-Federation of New York said that it purchased 20,000 bags of Bamba in response to the Park Slope Food Coop’s recent decision to boycott Israeli products. The UJA, the largest Federation in the world, which distributes $275 million in grants annually, described the co-op boycott as “divisive and hate-driven.” Food co-op members voted 67 percent to 31percent to boycott Israeli products. Some 8,400 members, out of 17,000, reportedly voted at the meeting, which was moved online due to security concerns. The Federation said it will...
(JNS) — New York lawmakers rolled a proposal for a 50-foot “buffer zone” around Jewish day schools and community centers into the state budget on Tuesday. Sam Sutton, a Democratic state senator who is Jewish, stated that “after the horrific incident outside Park East Synagogue, I became the first legislator to introduce this proposal.” “Today, buffer zone protections were included in the final state budget,” he said. Noam Abrahams, Sutton’s communications director, told JNS that the proposal was included in the budget bill that’s being discusse...
(JNS) - The Israel parade on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue this year is slated to have a Muslim group marching alongside Jewish organizations in what is believed to be a first time in the parade's 61-year history. It will also be the first time in memory that New York City's mayor will not participate in the parade, which shows support for the Jewish state. The annual event, scheduled this year for May 31, typically has thousands of participants, with groups marching from Jewish day schools,...
(JNS) — The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles forced an Orthodox Jewish woman to remove a religious head covering while posing for a driver’s license, violating state policy and the Constitution, according to a federal law suit filed on April 27. The state didn’t follow its own rules in its demand of Sara Fellig, the Brooklyn resident’s lawyer Emma Lerner Freeman told JNS. “Especially in New York City, which prides itself on being a safe place for people of all faiths, the DMV needs to do better,” the lawyer told JNS. “It must be...
(JNS) — The New York Times is defending its reporting on Israel after one of its star columnists penned an opinion piece which Israel calls one of the worst blood libels ever published and after a freelancer for the paper apparently tried to placate anti-Israel protesters by holding up a paper, upon which he wrote, “Have you read Kristof?” Nicholas Kristof and the paper have drawn widespread criticism for his recent column, in which he accused Israel, among other things, of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. Video footage circulated o...
(JNS) — Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, on Saturday condemned a pro-Palestinian march in New York as “blatant antisemitism disguised as activism,” saying demonstrators chanted slogans calling for Israel’s destruction and to “Globalize the intifada” under a “Nakba Day” banner. In a video posted on X, a woman is heard leading the crowd in the slogan “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” appearing to condone acts of violent terrorism directed against Israeli civilians and soldiers. According to Getty im...
(JNS) — Most Jewish New Yorkers, 58 percent, think that Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, is doing a poor job, while 32 percent approve of his job performance and 10 percent weren’t sure, according to a survey from the Jewish Majority. Mercury Group, which conducted the poll and surveyed 664 Jewish adults who voted in November in the New York City mayoral election, found that 84% of respondents support the city passing a law creating barrier zones around the doors of houses of worship to prevent harassment and intimidation of wor...
(JNS) — Lindsey Boylan, whom New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed and who has called the Israeli prime minister a “war criminal and a danger to Israel” and accused the Jewish state of “genocide,” conceded the special election in the New York City Council’s third district on Tuesday night. The New York Times reported that Boylan, a Democratic Socialist, called Carl Wilson, a former chief-of-staff to Erik Bottcher, who resigned the council seat to join the state Senate, to concede the race. With 99 percent of votes counted, Wilson appe...
(JNS) — On Oct. 11, 2023, five days after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel, Itay Sagi and his unit in the Israeli military went into Gaza to retrieve bodies of Israelis whom the terror organization killed. The unit was ambushed, three soldiers were killed and Sagi was gravely hurt. “My body and my soul were wounded,” Sagi told about 900 people, who filled the Moorish revival sanctuary at Park East Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation in Manhattan, on Monday for a commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day. “The images ar...
(JNS) — Members of the Jewish community in New York City gathered on Sunday for an unveiling event of a bench in Central Park commemorating the hostages kidnapped into Gaza during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel’s south. The bench, named “Hostages Bench,” is also dedicated to those who fought to release the hostages, to those who lost their lives during the Hamas-led invasion into Israel and in the war that ensued since then, to the families of the hostages, and to those who survived captivity, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum’s...
(JNS) — To mark his first 100 days in office, Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, talked about how many potholes he has filled. He should be focusing on mending his relationship with New York City’s Jews, according to Jewish leaders. “Unfortunately, in his first 100 days, Mayor Mamdani has done nothing to allay the concerns I expressed before the election regarding his stance on Israel and the safety of Jewish New Yorkers,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who leads Park Avenue Synagogue, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side...
