Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1930 - 1954 of 2213
(JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pope Francis in their first face-to-face meeting talked about the Middle East and plans for a papal trip to Israel, among other issues. Also at Monday's closed-door, 25-minute audience at the Vatican, Netanyahu presented the pope with a book about the Spanish Inquisition written by his father, the late historian Benzion Netanyahu. The dedication read, "To the great pastor and guardian of our common heritage." The Vatican said in a statement...
TEL AVIV- Fifty lone soldiers and more than 200 young professional Olim celebrated "Thanksgivukkah" at a festive event organized by Nefesh B'Nefesh and White City Shabbat. Revelers celebrated the once-in-a-lifetime double holiday of Chanukah and Thanksgiving at the landmark Goren Synagogue in Tel Aviv with a three-course meal replete with traditional holiday foods including latkes and turkey. After the meal, Tel Aviv's deputy mayor Asaf Zamir led the Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony. This...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-When reports emerged over the weekend that France's hard line was responsible for the failure of negotiations over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, supporters and critics of the diplomatic push resorted to familiar stereotypes. Conservatives scoffed that even the conflict-averse French had outflanked President Obama. Leftists accused Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, of doing Israel's bidding. The reality typically is more nuanced. France's posture in the...
Cuban Jewish leaders meet with Alan Gross (JTA)—Cuban Jewish leaders who met with Alan Gross said the imprisoned American-Jewish contractor “was in better spirits.” Havana community President Adela Dworkin and vice president David Prinstein met with Gross on the last day of Hanukkah, two days after Gross marked his fourth year in jail in Cuba, according to The Associated Press, citing a statement from the Beth Shalom Temple in Havana. The Cuban Jewish leaders have met with Gross for other Jewish holidays throughout his imprisonment. “Duri...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Breakfast costs Dov Jakobovitz $2. Lunch costs him $2.25. Both are served in the public old-age home in south Tel Aviv where he lives. But the food is not to his liking. Jakobovitz longs for the dishes he ate as a child in Transylvania-gefilte fish, goulash, chicken wings-rather than the rice-and-salad fare more typical of the Israeli diet. A restaurant he enjoys in the center of the city serves such Ashkenazi fare, but he can't afford it. For dinner, he eats leftovers from...
(JTA)-With an asylum application to her own homeland, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein was hoping to draw attention to the problem of anti-Semitism in Sweden. Hernroth-Rothstein acknowledges the bid is "absurd"-but it's working, having garnered international media coverage and stirring debate. "EU statutes provide that asylum be granted to persons with 'well-founded reasons to fear persecution due to race; nationality; religious or political beliefs; gender; sexual orientation; or affiliation to a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—For 90 minutes in a packed hotel conference room in the heart of Washington, Israel was the colonizer, the settler state, the perpetuator of apartheid. As the annual meeting this weekend of the American Studies Association demonstrated, participants who favored boycotting Israeli universities far outnumbered those opposed. Of 44 speakers, 37 supported the resolution, in which the association would endorse and “honor the call of Palestinian society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” The preamble to the resol...
BERLIN (JTA)—The extraordinary disclosure that a trove of more than 1,400 vanished artworks were found in a Munich apartment has raised more questions than it has answered. What were these works, which were produced by masters such as Chagall, Matisse and Picasso? Who are their rightful owners? And where is Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Holocaust-era art dealer in whose apartment they were found? Responding to growing international pressure, German authorities have begun to offer some preliminary answers. A few weeks ago, the state p...
(JNS.org) Australia's new Liberal Party government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott has shifted to a pro-Israel position in the U.N., saying that it will not support resolutions that are "one-sided." Earlier this month, Australia abstained from two votes in the U.N.'s General Assembly that condemned Jewish construction in the West Bank, and another one forcing Israel to comply with the 1949 Geneva Conventions. "The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided," a spokeswoman for...
A day after arriving in typhoon-struck Philippines, Israel Defense Forces field hospital medical staff delivered a baby, whom the mayor of Bogo City, where the hospital was established, announced will be named “Israel.” The new life follows the Philippines’ massive loss of life. A statement by the U.N. placed the typhoon’s death toll at 4,460, with 920,000 people displaced by the storm. The field hospital began treating the sick and injured on Friday, Nov. 8, delivering its first baby the same day. “Israel,” the male baby, was born in his eigh...
Temple Mount closed after Jewish-Muslim brawl JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was closed to visitors after a fight broke out between Jewish visitors and Muslim worshipers. The Jews visiting the site Sunday morning reportedly began singing Chanukah songs and praying. In response a group of Muslim worshipers attacked them, Israeli media reported. Two Jews and two Muslims were arrested in the incident. Jews generally are not permitted to pray or bring any ritual objects to the Temple Mount, which is considered Judaism’s holiest sit...
(JTA)-Obviously wanting to get back to work as the medical manager of the field hospital set up by the Israel Defense Forces in the Philippines, Lt.-Col. Dr. Ofer Merin speaks hurriedly about the three days his team has been seeing patients in the typhoon-ravaged nation. He tells of at least 12 babies the hospital has delivered-most of them premature-and the stabbing victim who may have died if not for the IDF hospital in Bogo City on Cebu Island, one of the areas hardest hit by last week's...
(JTA)-For Francois Hollande, the most unpopular head of state in France in more than half a century, his first presidential visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority promised a respite from the daily pummeling over his country's stunted economy and his perceived flimsiness as a leader. In Israel, everything was set for a hero's welcome for someone who supported Europe's blacklisting of Hezbollah's military unit, waged a relentless war on anti-Semitism and scuttled a nascent deal over Iran's...
(JTA)—News that Norway is planning unspecified new regulations on ritual circumcision could not have come at a more sensitive time. The announcement last week that Norway intends to introduce a bill to “regulate ritual circumcision” comes just over a month after an overwhelming majority of Council of Europe assembly members passed a landmark resolution against non-medical circumcision of boys. The resolution, which states that circumcision is a “violation of the physical integrity of children,” is unprecedented among an organization of the ca...
NEW YORK— More than 17,000 Taglit-Birthright Israel participants will attend its free, 10-day educational tour in Israel this winter season, the largest number of young Jewish adults, ages 18 to 26, traveling with the winter program since the non-profit was founded in 2000. Trips will begin rolling out in mid-November 2013 and will continue through April 2014. With more than 350,000 participants during the past 13 years, the program is expected to reach 50 percent of young Jewish adults around the world within the next five years. “Each yea...
Brandeis University announced the suspension of its decade-old partnership with Al-Quds University following a recent Nazi-style rally at the Palestinian school in Jerusalem. At the Nov. 5 rally, Al-Quds students wore black military gear, carried fake automatic weapons, gave the Nazi salute, and surrounded the main square of their campus with banners depicting images of "martyred" suicide bombers. "While Brandeis has an unwavering commitment to open dialogue on difficult issues, we are also...
NEW YORK-With more than 1.6 million members, Pastor John Hagee's Christians United For Israel (CUFI) has become a powerful force in pro-Israel advocacy in American politics. Additionally, his humanitarian work-including the donation of more than $80 million to Israeli charities-has earned him growing praise from the Jewish community. But despite the efforts of Hagee, who is arguably the face of Christian Zionism today, many Jews remain skeptical of Evangelical support for Israel. That...
Abbas: Willing to speak to Knesset on my terms JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would be willing to speak to the Knesset, but only on the issues he chooses. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a public statement last week called on Abbas to address the Knesset and said he would travel to Ramallah to speak to the P.A. leadership. “Netanyahu comes up with an offer and then immediately puts forward his own terms – that this and that should be said and so on. No, if those terms are put forward, I do no...
Jewish groups organized relief efforts following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded. Authorities said it is possible that more than 10,000 people died from the storm. "We immediately activated our network of global partners and will leverage our previous experience in the region to provide immediate, strategic relief to survivors in their time of need," Alan Gill, CEO of The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), said in a statement....
Firing of bearded Hasidic police recruit ruled religious discrimination (JTA)—A Hasidic police recruit who said he was fired from the New York Police Department because he would not trim his beard was the victim of religious discrimination, a federal court ruled. Fishel Litzman, 39, could be reinstated in the coming days, according to the New York Daily News. U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer issued his decision last Friday. Litzman had filed a civil rights lawsuit in June 2012 against the NYPD, the City of New York and Police C...
JERUSALEM-The changing nature of the American Jewish community has been a much-debated topic ever since the release of the recent Pew Research Center survey, whose findings revealed rising assimilation and intermarriage rates. The Jewish Federations of North America's (JFNA) annual General Assembly, which took place in Jerusalem this year, provided a chance to place that debate within the context of Israel-Diaspora relations. "We are now undergoing a real historical change," Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for...
JERUSALEM-The changing nature of the American Jewish community has been a much-debated topic ever since the release of the recent Pew Research Center survey, whose findings revealed rising assimilation and intermarriage rates. The Jewish Federations of North America's (JFNA) annual General Assembly, which took place in Jerusalem this year, provided a chance to place that debate within the context of Israel-Diaspora relations. "We are now undergoing a real historical change," Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for...
Former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently urged South African Jews to immigrate to Israel, following incendiary comments by that country’s international relations minister. Writing on his Facebook page, Lieberman said the South African government is creating an anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic atmosphere, which means that a pogrom against the country’s Jews is now all-but inevitable. “I call on all the Jews still living there to immigrate to Israel without delay, before it’s too late,” he stated emphatically. Last Friday, South Af...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—It looks like a futuristic salon hair dryer. Connected to a computer by a bright orange strip, the half-cube with rounded corners sits comfortably atop the head, a coil of wires resting on the skull. As a doctor stands at the computer, the patient gets comfortable. A few seconds later, a brief electromagnetic pulse hits the head. Do this every weekday for six weeks, doctors tell Alzheimer’s patients, and you’ll feel your brain come back to life. The technique, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, uses elect...
Liberman nears reappointment as foreign minister JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Cabinet approved the reappointment of Avigdor Liberman as foreign minister. Following the approval on Sunday, Liberman’s reappointment now goes before the full Knesset, which is set to follow suit. The head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party will be sworn in on Monday. Liberman was acquitted last week on a charge of fraud and breach of trust, clearing the way for a return to his old post. The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled Nov. 6 that Liberman did not unreasonably advance...
