Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 15 of 15
(JTA) — As expected, on July 4, 1976, the United States celebrated its bicentennial with a flurry of patriotic pride and hype. The surprise was that the day also brought one of the most miraculous events in Jewish history: Israel’s rescue of 102 hostages being held over 2,500 miles away at an airport in Entebbe, Uganda. A week earlier, on June 27, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a radical West German group hijacked an Air France airliner full of Israeli pas...
NEW YORK (JTA)-First Bernie Sanders. Now Michael Bloomberg. This cycle's Democratic primary is shaping up to be the all-time greatest troll of white nationalist Twitter-a battle royale featuring both a Jewish socialist from Brooklyn and a Jewish billionaire who made his fortune catering to Wall Street. Talk about trope bait! It's not necessarily just the anti-Semites who will be triggered. The fight between Uncle Bernie and Mayor Mike has the potential to tap into a century's worth of Jewish...
(JTA)—Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people have made their mark in the markets, in real estate,” Netanyahu said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, with CNN’s Fareed Zakariah. “Now this is not only a real estate deal, it’s fundamentally not a real estate deal but a problem recognizing Isr...
(JTA)—Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people have made their mark in the markets, in real estate,” Netanyahu said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, with CNN’s Fareed Zakariah. “Now this is not only a real estate deal, it’s fundamentally not a real estate deal but a problem recognizing Isr...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Emotions are running high following the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Here are seven questions aimed at making sense of what went down and what it could mean moving forward. 1. Did Obama just double down on failed "settlements first" strategy? Listening to President Barack Obama's aides, the decision to allow Friday's U.N. Security Council resolution to pass was a last-gasp move borne out of...
BALTIMORE (JTA)-My teenage years were pretty Jewy. Back in high school, I happily attended Jewish day school, spent summers at a Jewish camp, went on a group Israel trip and took part in a few youth group events. So it was a strange feeling I experienced over President's Day weekend when I found myself looking back and suddenly feeling Jewishly deprived. Sounds corny. But that was my gut reaction standing among 2,500 spirited teens from around the world at the energized opening ceremonies of...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Maybe now that Bernie Sanders has become the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary he'll start getting the Joe Lieberman treatment. Back in 2000, Al Gore's decision to tap Lieberman as his running mate set off what felt like a months-long national bar mitzvah bash. But the party-and all the speculation about a Shabbat-observant, kosher-keeping vice president-proved premature, thanks in part to confused elderly Jewish voters in Palm Beach County. And then...
ORLANDO (JTA)-Last week was a big one for Daryl Messinger. A resident of Palo Alto, California, and an active board member of several organizations, Messinger was installed as chair of the Union for Reform Judaism, becoming the first woman to hold that post. And she chanted Torah for the first time-in front of 5,000 worshippers at Shabbat morning services. Following the movement's biennial here, Messinger answered a few questions via email. JTA: What are your thoughts on becoming the first woman...
NEW YORK (JTA)—“See it. You Decide,” the Metropolitan Opera of New York exhorts in a promotional push capitalizing on the controversy over its new production of “The Death of Klinghoffer.” Well, I saw it. And I’m not sure which was more of a letdown, the hubbub over the show or the show itself. Let’s start with the critics and protesters, since they are responsible ultimately for turning the show into the most buzzed about cultural happening in New York (at least since the close of the Jeff Koons retrospective on Sunday at the Whitney Museu...
NEW YORK (JTA)—President Obama did not mention Israel or the Palestinians during his address to the nation. But his pledge to lead a U.S.-coordinated effort to destroy ISIS could end up doing more to get Israeli-Palestinian negotiations back on track than anything Secretary of State Kerry and his team managed to produce with their shuttle diplomacy. Reaching a final deal is hard enough when the region is calm. But it becomes significantly more difficult, if not impossible, when Islamic extremism is on the march and U.S. influence is in r...
NEW YORK (JTA)-In Larry David's fake real-life world on the HBO sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm," he is tapped by Mel Brooks to take over the Zero Mostel-Nathan Lane role of Max Bialystock in the megahit Broadway adaptation of "The Producers." Just as Max and accountant Leo Bloom set out to make money by producing a surefire bomb, Brooks picks Larry with the (secret) goal of killing the Tony Award-winning musical and getting his life back. But in an art-imitates-art twist, Larry (like "Springtime...
(JTA)—The vote is over, but the debate rages on over the recent rejection of J Street’s application to join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Depending on where you stand, the 22-17 vote rejecting the application was either about J Street’s own missteps or the conference’s failure to live up to its billing as the Jewish community’s vehicle for bringing together organizations from across the political and religious spectrum to forge a strong pro-Israel consensus. With passions running high, it seemed like a go...
NEW YORK (JTA)—In the coming days, many eulogies will attempt to capture the magnitude of the loss suffered this week by the Jewish community. Really, though, all you need are eight words: Edgar Bronfman was a prince of his people. There are other machers who devote much of their time and money to Jewish causes. But none of them boast the same combination of lineage, intrigue, eccentricity, wonder, grandness and love for Judaism and the Jews. By birth, he was the son of Samuel Bronfman, chairman of Seagram Ltd. and president of the Canadian J...
JTA—It wasn’t so long ago that Ryan Braun was just a rookie phenom, racking up numbers that had Jewish sports junkies rushing to put the Milwaukee Brewers’ slugger in the pantheon with Greenberg and Koufax. These days, not so much. The news is that Braun has accepted a suspension from Major League Baseball for the rest of the season, all but admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. I say “all but admitting” because in accepting the time he still hasn’t explicitly acknowledged the crime:...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Moviegoers who head to “42” will see the story of how Jackie Robinson displayed legendary courage, class and talent in the face of immense pressure and racial hatred as he broke down baseball’s color barrier. Less well known is Robinson’s role in a controversy that erupted at Harlem’s most famous theater, and underscored his commitment to fighting all bigotry, including prejudice emanating from his own community. It was 1962, a decade-and-a-half after Robinson first took the fi...
