Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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When Jacquelyn Berger, Ph.D., along with her son Jeffrey and his family and daughter Marni Stahlman and her family, expressed a desire to acquire a Torah with a history of Jewish survival for Chabad of Greater Orlando, little did they dream their search would uncover a Torah buried by a rabbi to prevent its inevitable destruction by Nazis in the darkest days of the Holocaust. Dr. Berger feels that donating this Torah is a means to give a legacy of inspiration and joy to her family and way of sho...
(JNS) — Ayelet Samerano, whose 21-year-old son Yonatan Samerano was shot by Hamas terrorists and abducted by a UNRWA social worker on Oct. 7, 2023, is relieved that her desperate calls for action are finally being answered. “Today we’re seeing the results of our hard work,” she told JNS, after the Knesset passed two laws on Monday that make it illegal for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to operate on Israeli soil, and for Israeli officials to work with the U.N. agency. Sameran...
Rachel Greenspan has been appointed as the new executive director of Shalom Orlando. Greenspan, formerly interim co-executive director, is now responsible for all of Shalom Orlando's many facets including the J, its Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center, the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, Camp J, RAISE, and more. Along with her two bachelor's degrees in Early Childhood Education and Child Psychology, Greenspan's career experience makes her well suited for all these roles. She...
(JNS) — Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday passed by a large majority two laws that prohibit UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and make it illegal for state officials to be in contact with representatives of that controversial U.N. aid agency for Palestinians. The Knesset passed the laws, which followed exposures about UNRWA staff’s complicity in the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, despite pressure by the United States and other countries to desist for fear that it would complicate humanitarian projects in Gaza and beyond. Axi...
(JNS) — The son of the late American evangelist, Billy Graham, heads a list of Israel’s top Christian Allies around the world, recognized for their unwavering faith-based support for the Jewish state. The fifth annual list released Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Israel Allies Foundation comes at a time when evangelical Christian support for Israel has served as a bulwark and counterweight against international criticism of Israel for the yearlong war against Hamas in Gaza. The American evangelist and missionary Franklin Graham, 72, of...
(JNS) — A newly developed antibody-based treatment for the most aggressive type of breast cancer could also be used to treat many other cancers, the Weizmann Institute of Science announced on Sunday. The researchers at the university in the central Israeli city of Rehovot, which offers postgraduate-only degrees in the natural and exact sciences, discovered that aggressive breast cancer prompts nearby immune cells to build “molecular bridges” between themselves, which causes these cells to refrain from attacking the cancer and leads to suppr...
(JNS) — American Airlines has announced that it is suspending service to and from Tel Aviv through the end of next summer. The move, which was reported by Israeli travel agencies on Sunday, means AA’s daily non-stop service from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Tel Aviv will not resume until September 2025 at the earliest. “To provide customers with certainty when planning travel to Tel Aviv, we are expanding our travel alert to allow customers whose travel plans are impacted to rebook their itinerary for travel involvi...
(JNS) — Iran’s supreme leader has instructed the country’s Supreme National Security Council to prepare for another assault on Israel, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The report, which cited three Iranian officials with knowledge of the matter, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the decision on Monday after reviewing a report from senior military commanders on the extent of damage to Iran’s missile production capabilities and air defense systems around Tehran, critical energy infrastructure and a main port in the south. Khamenei was sai...
(JNS) — White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that Iran should not respond to Israel’s Oct. 26 retaliatory strikes. Should it choose to do so, she added, “The United States will be standing by to assist Israel in its defense.” Her remarks echoed those of U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who said on Wednesday that Washington believes the Islamic Republic “should not respond.” “I’m not going to talk about communications between our two governments, real or imagined. But as we have made clear public...
(JNS) — A Jewish resident of Oakland, Calif., and his 5-year-old son were aggressively confronted by the owner of a local cafe on Oct. 26 and asked to leave the establishment. The incident was caught on video. Jonathan Hirsch was wearing a baseball cap with a prominent Magen David, or Star of David—a symbol of Judaism and Jewish identity—when he was approached by Abdulrahim Harara, the owner of Jerusalem Coffee House in North Oakland. Harara’s family is from the Gaza Strip. After Israeli forces killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar on Oct. 16, he...
(JNS) — Hezbollah’s incessant cross-border attacks on northern Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, have burned over 57,000 acres of land, the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund said on Wednesday. According to KKL-JNF’s Forestry Department, it will take some five to seven years for nature to repair the damage. According to the data, Israel’s Upper Galilee and Golan Heights regions have suffered the most damage, with almost 43,500 acres burned, followed by the Lower Galilee (some 6,175 acres), the Western Galilee (2,223 acres) and the Hula Va...
(JNS) — The phenomenon of playing with terminology—altering the original meanings of words, replacing intentions of expressions, mistranslating and reversing narratives—has become the weapon of choice of the anti-Zionists. Whereas in previous decades their propaganda was one of simply misleading, misquoting, misrepresenting and outright lying, today’s pro-Palestine cadres create a new vocabulary and fill terms with their preferred new definitions. Not only has a new glossary of terms been fashioned, but those terms and words do not just describ...
(JNS) — Under clear pressure from the United States, Israel refrained from targeting Iran’s nuclear development sites in last week’s retaliatory strikes against Iran’s military assets. But that merely delays Israel’s dilemma of what to do about this existential danger. By all Western intelligence estimates, Iran is at most months and possibly just weeks away from having deployable nuclear weapons. Hence, both the United States and Israel face an inescapable choice: Either massively bomb Iran’s nuclear development sites now to stop and disable...
(JNS) — Steven Erlanger has been writing about Israel for The New York Times for nearly 30 years. How can it be that he still doesn’t know what the Oslo Accords say? Even before he was hired by the Times, Erlanger was writing about the Middle East for The Boston Globe in the 1980s. In early 1996—a little more than two years after the signing of Oslo I on the White House lawn—he became the Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington and wrote plenty about America’s Middle East policy. He even served as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief...
(JNS) — Young Israeli soldiers on patrol in Gaza two weeks ago encountered and eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander who plotted and implemented the invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 and the brutal massacre that followed. This long-anticipated milestone was a significant battle won in a war that will not soon end. To understand why, you need to understand who Sinwar was and the cause for which he fought. His goal was not to force Israel to end the “occupation” of Gaza because, as a matter of incontestable fact, all Israelis departed Gaza...
(JNS) — In recent years, the American evangelical community—long considered a bastion of conservative values—has been undergoing a significant shift. The younger generation of evangelicals, millennials and Generation Z is embracing a more progressive outlook, especially on issues like climate change, racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Many see this as a potential threat to evangelical support for Israel, which has been historically unwavering and tied to conservative politics. For decades, evangelical support for Israel has been a corne...
(JNS) — Believe it or not, the hero of this week’s Torah portion, Noah, needed a not-so-gentle push to get him into the Ark that he himself had built! “And Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark because of the flood waters,” (Genesis 7:7). Interpreting this verse, the great commentator Rashi says that Noah only went into the ark because the floodwaters pushed him inside. He himself wasn’t quite sure this flood thing was really going to happen, but eventually, when he was getting rather wet, he decided to seek refuge...
MORNING MINYANS Chabad of South Orlando — Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. and 10 minutes before sunset; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 8:15 a.m., 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael — Monday - Friday, 7:30 a.m.; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-644-2500. Congregation Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Daytona — Monday, 8 a.m.; Thursday, 8 a.m., 904-672-9300. Congregation Ohev Shalom — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-298-4650. GOBOR Community Minyan at Jewish Academy of Orlando — Monday – Friday, 7:45 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Temple Israel — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3...
(JNS) — A new poll reveals deep partisan divisions among American voters regarding responsibility for the escalation of the Middle East conflict, with a majority of Democrats blaming Israel. The survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted from Oct. 11-14, found that about 60 percent of voters attribute “a lot” of responsibility for the war’s escalation to Hamas, Iran’s government and Hezbollah. Partisan differences emerge regarding Israel’s role, with approximately 60 percent of Democrats saying the...
(JNS) - RISHON LEZION, Israel - When the young American social media consultant volunteering in Israel saw a handsome IDF soldier recuperating in the hospital rehabilitation ward, she offered him a Fruit Roll-Up. Miami-born Danielle Yablonka, 23, was tired of standing and listening to the older women on her solidarity mission talking, and, eyeing a soldier sitting nearby, was sure he would welcome the snack. "Israelis are supposed to like everything American," she told JNS. But Daniel Kopylov,...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - "Sitting there in a Gaza tunnel, captured on camera, pleading to return home"- with these words, Agam Goldstein-Almog, a survivor of Hamas captivity, opened her poignant post shared on Sunday, nearly a year after her release. Goldstein-Almog, abducted at age 17 by invading Hamas terrorists from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023, has revealed for the first time her emotional response to seeing the photograph taken by her captors during her 51-day ordeal, while...
(JNS) — In his first speech since being appointed Hezbollah leader earlier this week, Naim Qassem on Wednesday vowed to continue the path of his slain predecessor Hassan Nasrallah. “What is my plan? A continuation of my predecessor’s. We will carry on with the war program as it has been outlined so far,” Qassem said in the televised speech, according to a translation by Lebanon’s L’Orient Le Jour daily. Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike on Sept. 27 after heading the Iranian-backed terrorist group for more than 30 years, rema...
A senior’s age, incontinence becomes an all-too-common (but all-too-often ignored) issue. The first step toward dealing with incontinence is understanding exactly what is causing it, and it’s not as straightforward as you might imagine. Incontinence comes in various forms: 1. Stress Incontinence: Urine loss occurs during activities like lifting heavy objects, laughing, coughing, or exercising. 2. Overflow Incontinence: The bladder doesn’t empty completely, leading to frequent urination or continuous leakage. 3. Urge Incontinence: Diffi...
(JNS) — Israel is pursuing a “long-term strategy” focused on neutralizing Iran’s nuclear program and proxies, despite claims to the contrary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. Speaking at the opening of the Knesset’s winter session, Netanyahu pushed back against recent claims that Israel’s war effort lacked focus. “After each of our achievements, I hear the former officials in the television studios say: ‘Well, we understand the immediate war goals, but what’s the strategy?’” he said. “So if it’s not clear by now,...
