Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)-Nearly six years ago, when President Barack Obama was set to elevate one of his top emissaries to the Jewish community to the Israel ambassadorship, Dan Shapiro asked for-and got-the endorsement of one of Obama's fiercest pro-Israel critics. "Dan has always spoken to us, patiently and carefully explaining the administration's position, and he does so with aplomb, with concern, and with intense appreciation of the other side's position," Morton Klein, the Zionist Organization of America president, said at the time. Don't expect... Full story
BERLIN (JTA)-Even before the deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Jews in Germany were divided in their approach to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Muslim countries since 2014. Citing a Jewish moral duty to aid the displaced, many Jewish organizations, synagogue groups and individuals have rallied to help the newcomers, including asylum seekers fleeing the civil war in Syria. But some Jews have warned that the influx of immigrants risks importing to Germany the... Full story
UN passes anti-settlement resolution, US abstains JTA—The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, with the United States abstaining. The resolution was adopted Friday afternoon with 14 votes in favor and only the U.S. abstention. It called Israeli settlements “a flagrant violation of international law” that damage the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sustained applause greeted the passage of the resolution. American presidents have long protected Israel from extreme censu... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)-When Northwestern University's student Senate passed a resolution in February 2015 asking the university to divest from six corporations they said contributed to the violation of Palestinians' human rights, freshman Ross Krasner was hurt and surprised. The rhetoric of the measure, portraying Israel as an oppressor, was more extreme than what he had expected. Krasner decided to become more involved with the campus pro-Israel group, Wildcats for Israel, and became its president... Full story
NEW YORK—The Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, which serves as New York’s Holocaust Museum, has announced an international fellowship program for scholars, museum curators, artists and Holocaust educators supported by a $1,150,000 grant from The Vivian G. Prins Foundation. Vivian Prins was a successful businessman and entrepreneur who emigrated to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi Germany. “The Foundation is proud to make this grant in honor of Bronia Brandman, a survivor of Auschwitz and one of the Museum... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-It's been nearly 50 years since Israel captured eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. For the past eight years, Nir Barkat has been this city's mayor. On Sunday evening, six months ahead of the "united Jerusalem" jubilee, Barkat received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he gave the keynote speech. A staunch advocate of Israeli control over all of Jerusalem, he thanked... Full story
Israeli intruder charged with assault for breaking into Arizona home, holding child (JTA)—An Israeli man has been arrested in Arizona after he broke into a stranger’s apartment and was found holding the family’s 2-year-old child. The suspect, Oren Aharon Cohen, claimed he did not harm the toddler, whom he had drunkenly thought was “a midget.” An unnamed man in Tempe, Arizona, woke up to a find a stranger holding his crying daughter early morning last Thursday, The Washington Post reported. Cohen, 34, told the homeowner that he was his frien... Full story
Following six days of devastating fires that ravaged Israel, Jewish National Fund (JNF-USA) is stepping up fundraising efforts to raise the many millions of dollars needed to help the nation recover. Since Tuesday, Nov. 22, approximately 10,000 acres of forests have been destroyed by fires. Some 137 people have suffered fire-related injuries. At least 569 homes burned down throughout Israel and in Haifa alone, more than 700 homes were damaged, 37 were destroyed, 400 are uninhabitable, and... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Call them Israel's American volunteer fire brigade. Dozens of firefighters from across the United States put their lives on hold-leaving behind jobs and families-to help subdue the wildfires that swept Israel over the past week. While they all share a love of Israel, only a handful of them are Jewish. "We're just firefighters. When guys hear about a situation like this one, where the Israelis are working as hard as they can, they want to come help," said Billy Hirth, a Protestant... Full story
More than 5,600 Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rabbinic emissaries and communal leaders from 90 countries, hailing from as far away as Bangkok and Kenya gathered for the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, held in the Queens borough of New York on Nov. 25. The event is considered the largest Jewish gathering in North America. This year's conference carries an added significance as the North American Jewish community marks 75 years since the Lubavitcher Rebbe-Rabbi Menachem M. Schn... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Stephen Bannon recently called Breitbart News "the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America." That will not change with Bannon leaving the far-right news website for the White House, according to Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief. Saying he shares a worldview with Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump's chief White House strategist, Aaron Klein plans to expand the Israel operation, which staunchly backs the Jewish state's political right wing. There is talk of moving... Full story
NYPD sees ‘huge spike’ in hate crimes post-election—Jews targeted most NEW YORK (JTA)—The New York Police Department said it has seen a dramatic rise in hate crimes following the election of Donald Trump, with the majority of incidents directed at Jews. There has been a 115 percent increase in bias crimes in New York City following Election Day, with Jews being targeted in 24 of the 43 incidents during that nearly monthlong period. The anti-Semitic incidents represented a threefold increase from November 2015, The New York Observer reporte... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry signaled in a speech that the Obama administration was still considering action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its final days, although it might fall short of a direct intervention on the issue. There's no way to "force-feed" peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Kerry said in a lengthy speech delivered Tuesday at the Women's Foreign Policy Group conference, but there are "other things we can do" to preserve a two-state... Full story
By Sean Savage JNS.org Improving weather conditions, a massive influx of support from the international community and efforts by Israeli first responders have enabled the Jewish state to get raging wildfires under control. This week’s fires are expected to be among the costliest in Israeli history, with unofficial preliminary estimates projecting about $520 million in damage. The damage to Israeli homes is estimated to be more than $182 million, while destruction to public property such as roads, electrical power systems and other i... Full story
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-Forty years after his reporting exposed one of the worst war criminals in Dutch history, Hans Knoop is still celebrated in his native Netherlands as a hero. On Nov. 23, more than a million television viewers watched a public broadcaster's historical period drama on how Knoop, a Dutch Jewish journalist, unmasked the art collector Pieter Menten in 1976 as a monster who murdered hundreds of Polish Jews and stole their property with help from German Nazis. It was the highest rating f... Full story
ISRAEL21c-Doctors diagnose as many as 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's disease (PD) every year in the United States. Yet diagnosing PD with certainty can take years-long after early signs and symptoms have appeared. The Israeli startup BioShai has a game-changing product on the horizon: PDx, the world's first simple blood test for the early diagnosis of PD. The test results can be combined with clinical data, providing a more accurate diagnosis to help physicians decide on the best course of... Full story
The Jewish National Fund asks everyone to turn attention to homes and forests that are in immediate danger across Israel. A series of wildfires are raging across Northern and Central Israel. Many homes have already been destroyed, families displaced, and more residents are being evacuated. Israel's firefighting capacity is being stressed to its limits. The threat is so great that the prime minister has put a request out to surrounding countries for assistance. Always underfunded, KKL's and... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Fires throughout Israel, fanned by dry conditions and high winds, have led to the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes. Several homes have been destroyed by the conflagrations on Tuesday and Wednesday. A brush fire that began Tuesday and spread to Zichron Yaakov, located at the southern tip of the Carmel Forest in northern Israel, continued to burn on Wednesday, destroying at least 10 homes and damaging dozens more. Several adults and children were treated for... Full story
Air Supply gives free concert tickets to wives of Israeli firefighters JERUSALEM (JTA)—After postponing a concert in Haifa last week due to massive fires there, the band Air Supply gave away 200 tickets to the wives of Israeli firefighters. The concert was rescheduled for Sunday after being canceled last Friday. “This is a gesture to wives of firefighters, who went through incredibly difficult days and nights,” concert producer Dudi Berkowitz said, according to Ynet. “We decided to give them an evening away from it all with some good music.... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-In recent months, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have each emphasized what in recent years hardly needed emphasizing: mainstream Jewish support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reiterations of support signify a concern growing among Jewish organizations about deepening partisan differences on what has been since 2002 a rare area of broad political consensus in Israel and... Full story
Israeli army conscription rate drops 3.5% since 2010 (JTA)—The rate of enlistment into the Israel Defense Forces has dropped by 3.5 percent over the past five years, army sources said. In 2016, the IDF saw the conscription of 72 percent of people who are initially listed as duty bound to serve in the military, Army Radio reported Wednesday. Among the 28 percent who do not enlist are tens of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews, who once were allowed an automatic exemption from serving until a 2014 law decreed they sign up for the army or other f... Full story
(JTA)-As a Jewish family originally from the Ivory Coast, Amy and George Camara and their four children felt somewhat immune to the rising anti-Semitic thuggery in France. The Camaras, relieved to leave their war-torn African country, settled in the northern French city of Lille in 2012. Because they fit no one's Jewish stereotype, they said they were able to live as Jews without fear-despite, in recent years, the rise in attacks on French Jews from a small segment of Muslim extremists. But the... Full story
The Hadassah Medical Center is continuing to receive positive findings with its Phase II clinical trial using its unique stem cell approach to stop the progression and reversing the disabilities of multiple sclerosis. The Hadassah-developed treatment involves intrathecal injection-injection of the patient's own bone marrow-derived stem cells directly into the spinal fluid-so that the cells circulate all the way around the brain and the spinal cord, where they are needed. Hadassah began its... Full story
New York Observer, owned by Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, ceases print edition (JTA)—The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper owned by President-elect Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, will cease publishing a print edition. The Nov. 9 edition was the last print edition, the Observer’s parent company, Observer Media, announced in a statement. The newspaper will continue to be available online as Observer.com. The decision to end the print edition and change its name “signals an end of an era when The Observer served as a fixture of M... Full story
AMSTERDAM (JTA)—His name was never mentioned during the Netherlands’ main commemoration event for Kristallnacht, but Donald Trump was likely on everyone’s mind at the ceremony at the Dutch capital’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue. It wasn’t for any imagined parallels between Trump’s election as U.S. president and the campaign of violence that the Nazis unleashed 78 years ago against German and Austrian Jews, which many historians see as the opening shot of the Holocaust. Most European Jews, whose families still live in the shadow of that pogrom... Full story
