Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shelved a controversial bill that would have made the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Netanyahu's office announced Friday that the legislation will not be considered for six months while a "team" he will appoint comes up with recommendations for an "arrangement" on the issue. The decision comes after an outcry by the Reform and Conservative movements and American Jewish...
(JTA)-American Jewish leaders are calling it a betrayal. They say that 17 months after achieving an historic agreement to provide a non-Orthodox space at Judaism's holiest prayer site, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged in a Cabinet vote Sunday, effectively canceling the deal and caving to the interests of his haredi Orthodox coalition partners. Netanyahu disagrees. Far from killing the compromise, he believes the vote has given it new life. And far from betraying Diaspora Jewry,...
Mortar shells fired from Syria into the Israeli Golan Heights Saturday prompted the IDF to respond with a retaliatory strike in Syria, purportedly killing Syrian soldiers. Despite the incidents, a military escalation between Israel and Syria is unlikely and is in neither side's interest, said Prof. Efraim Inbar, former director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University. "This is nothing new for the IDF to retaliate to spillover from Syria," Inbar told...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For years, Laurie Grauer had waved a rainbow flag emblazoned with a Jewish star at the Chicago Dyke March, sometimes marching near activists waving Palestinian flags. It had never been a problem. But this year, Grauer was confronted by the LGBT parade's organizers, questioned about her support for Israel and asked to leave because she was carrying the flag. She was one of three women with Jewish flags kicked out of Sunday's parade. Grauer says she was used to Israel being a...
J Street meets with US ambassador to Israel David Friedman (JTA)—The leadership of J Street, the liberal American Jewish Middle East policy group, met with David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel who before his nomination had derided the group as worse than Nazi collaborators. “We appreciate the willingness of Ambassador Friedman to meet members of Congress under the auspices of J Street,” said a statement from J Street distributed after the meeting on Monday. Friedman at the meeting was joined by a congressional delegation trave...
(JTA)-Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders are fighting again over an age-old question: Who counts as a Jew? And who gets to decide? This week, Israel's government inflamed simmering tensions over Jewish conversion when a Cabinet committee advanced a bill that would further empower the country's haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. The measure declares that the rabbinate is the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Defenders of the bill say it consolidates the...
(JTA)-They've tried strongly worded statements. They've tried private meetings with the prime minister. They've tried negotiations, protest and prayer. But for the past five years, despite broad internal consensus and consistent pressure, the American Jewish establishment has been unable to persuade Israel's government to create an equitable space for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall. The latest setback in that fight came Sunday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the...
During the 20th Maccabiah Games next month, about 7,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries will descend upon the Holy Land to join 2,500 Israeli athletes in the Olympic-style competition. Held every four years, the Jewish multi-sport competition is the world's third-largest sporting event. From July 4-18, the Maccabiah Games will have the added significance of coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the reunification of this year's host city, Jerusalem. "Fifty years after unification, we have fin...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-When the Islamic State claimed credit for an attack on Israeli soil for the first time Friday and vowed to strike again, the response here was not fear but incredulity. Israeli officials generally dismissed the militant Islamist group's assertion that it was behind the shooting and stabbing in Jerusalem that left a 23-year-old policewoman dead along with her attackers. Top U.S. experts on the group said the officials would be wise to think again. "This is a pattern that we see....
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA)-A cache of 75 original Nazi objects discovered earlier this month by the Argentine Federal Police has been evaluated as "unprecedented" and "the biggest" discovery of its type. The objects, discovered earlier this month in a hidden room of a house in the northern part of the city, included equipment used for Nazi medical experiments during the Holocaust. They were analyzed a week ago at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, Federal Police Commissioner Marcelo El...
(JTA)-Nearly 50 years after she left her native South Africa for Britain to escape apartheid, Sharon Klaff again is finding herself unable to imagine a future for her family in her country and society because of racism. And this time, the problem is hitting nearer to home, said Klaff, 69, a yoga teacher and Jewish mother of two. Troubled by the Labour Party's recent electoral successes despite its perceived failure to tackle anti-Semitic vitriol in its ranks, Klaff felt even more concerned...
BERLIN (JTA)-It's a drizzly Saturday morning in May. Some 160 young Jews, mostly European and ranging from Orthodox to secular, have come to the Hotel Berlin to talk about everything under the sun. Well, almost. The upbeat, weekend-long event did not focus on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust or Israel, and thus the gathering reflected a shifting approach to Jewish continuity in Europe, 72 years after the end of World War II. Under the theme "Our World in Transition," participants in Junction...
Netanyahu’s office defends vote to freeze Western Wall agreement JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Prime Minister’s Office in Israel said it was working to ensure that Jews of all streams can feel comfortable praying at the Western Wall after the Cabinet voted to freeze an agreement that would have made a permanent space there for women and men to pray as they wish. Non-Orthodox and feminist groups in Israel and the Diaspora reacted with outrage Sunday at the news that the government had suspended the 17-month-old agreement under pressure from haredi Ortho...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Eighty percent of Jews live in two countries—Israel and the United States—but Jewish organizations are spending more and more of their money elsewhere. Jewish aid to the developing world—the impoverished set of countries your zayde called the “third world”—has grown quickly in the past couple of decades. What used to be a handful of groups has grown to become a constellation of organizations working on anything from solar power in Rwanda to agricultural sustainability in Nepal. Together, the groups aid millions of people. Jewish...
(JTA)-Before he threw Sarah Halimi to her death from a window of her third-story apartment in Paris, 27-year-old Kobili Traore called his Jewish neighbor "Satan" and cried out for Allah. These and other facts about the April 4 incident that shocked French Jewry are known from testimonies and a recording made by a neighbor, according to the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism watchdog. Years before the attack, Traore called a daughter of his 65-year-old victim, whom he beat...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s security cabinet agreed to reduce the amount of electricity Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip at the request of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas said he would reduce by 40 percent how much money the P.A. pays Israel to supply the electricity, with a concurrent reduction in the amount of electricity delivered, Haaretz reported. He reportedly made the decision in order to put pressure on Hamas in Gaza. At the security cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli military officials described a worsening eco...
RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (JTA)-An Israeli soldier clapped football great and Vietnam War veteran Roger Staubach on the shoulder at a soccer field here, telling the 1963 Heisman Trophy winner and U.S. Naval Academy grad that he and his brother serve in the paratroopers. The introduction Thursday evening prompted Staubach to hark back to early June 1967, when he was serving in Vietnam and heard a report on his walkie-talkie that Israel was about to be attacked. Staubach recalled being concerned for...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel's minister of education says he wants to protect students from political coercion in the classroom. But critics of a new code of academic conduct he is proposing say it's a power play meant to stifle left-wing opinions in higher education. The code of ethics for institutes of higher education, which would bar the expression of political views in classrooms, was drafted at the request of Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the pro-settler Jewish Home party. It has...
Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt returning to Jerusalem this week (JTA)—Two top advisers to President Donald Trump, including his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, will return to Jerusalem this week to push for restarted peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The visits to Jerusalem and Ramallah by Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, and national security aide Jason Greenblatt were widely reported on Sunday night, all citing unnamed White House officials. The visits were first reported in The Wall Street Journal. It will be the first m...
Following Saturday night's terror attack that killed seven people and injured as many as 50 in London, British Prime Minister Theresa May said "enough is enough" and vowed to crack down on the "evil ideology of Islamist extremism." In response to the U.K.'s third major Islamist terror attack in recent months-prompting May to describe the attacks as a "new trend"-the prime minister asserted, "We cannot, and must not pretend that things can continue to carry on as they are." May also reiterated th...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to suspend his demand that Israel freeze Judea and Samaria settlement construction as a condition for restarting peace talks, a top adviser said. Abbas is also willing to mute his campaign to single Israel out for condemnation at the United Nations and prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. “We have not made the settlements an up-front issue this time,” Mohammad Mustafa, a senior economic adviser to Abbas and a former PA deputy prime...
"Wonder Woman" may be a hit at the box office, grossing $228 million worldwide in its first weekend, but not in much of the Arab world. The reason? It's Israeli star, Gal Gadot. After being banned in Lebanon, Wonder Womanis now facing bans in Tunisia, Jordan and Algeria. The Hollywood media site Deadline.com reported Thursday that the movie's scheduled release in Tunisia was suspended because of Gadot's defense of Israel's 2014 incursion into Gaza. Deadline said the secular Arab nationalist...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Five Arab nations cut ties with Qatar on Monday, June 5, escalating a long-simmering competition for preeminence in the region into actions that could set the stage for war. Saudi Arabia, which is leading the charge, has cut off Qatar's only land crossing-and what one Saudi-friendly estimate says is as much as 40 percent of the tiny emirate's food supply. The other four nations cutting all ties with Qatar are Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Yemen. Meanwhile, Iran...
(JNS.org) The U.S. Senate urged President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of relocating the American embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, unanimously passing legislation in support of the move Monday. The Senate voted 90-0 in favor of a resolution introduced in May by Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), commemorating the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification and acknowledging Israel’s sovereignty over its capital. The resolution urges the “president and all United States officials to abide by” the 1995 Jerusalem Emba...
1. In Hebrew, Gal Gadot's first name means "wave" and her surname means "riverbanks." 2. Gal Gadot was born in Rosh Ha'ayin, and her maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. 3. At the age of 18, Gadot won the Miss Israel beauty pageant. She then went on to compete in Miss Universe in 2004, but was so reluctant to win that she turned up late for events, wore the wrong kind of evening wear, and even pretended that she couldn't speak English. 4. Gadot carried out two years of service as a...
