Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
(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...
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...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The vast majority of Reform and Conservative rabbis affiliate as Democrats, according to a new study. The study, published Sunday by Yale University, found that more than 80 percent of Reform rabbis, and about 70 percent of Conservative rabbis, affiliate as Democrats. Both were among the top five most Democratic clergy of the Jewish and Christian denominations in the United States, with Reform rabbis topping the list. Among Orthodox rabbis, nearly 40 percent identify as Democrats...
(JTA)-One of Israel's strongest condemnations of Donald Trump wasn't about the peace process. It didn't concern Trump's broken promise to relocate the U.S. embassy, or his reported leak of Israeli intelligence. It was about climate change. After President Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris accords, the landmark 2015 agreement to fight global warming, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz joined the chorus of international leaders criticizing his decision. "Even if...
NEW YORK (JTA)—“Voluntary dues” may sound like an oxymoron, but the idea may soon be coming to a synagogue near you. According to a new study by the UJA-Federation of New York, the number of non-Orthodox synagogues nationwide that have eliminated fixed annual dues has more than doubled in the past two years. Instead of charging a set membership fee, these synagogues are telling congregants to pay what they want—and they’re succeeding. The nearly 60 Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues that have stopped charging mandatory...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Shavuot is the “Rodney Dangerfield of Jewish holidays,” says Rabbi Shira Stutman of Washington, D.C.’s Sixth and I synagogue. Meaning: It gets no respect. Considered by Jewish tradition to be on par with the fall and spring festivals of Sukkot and Passover, Shavuot is sometimes ignored because it is six days shorter—the holiday celebrating the biblical giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai is one day in Israel and two outside of it. Shavuot, which this year starts on the evening of May 30, also lacks iconic, family-ce...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Ten days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked visited the Jewish settlement in Hebron. A community of several hundred ensconced in a city of 150,000 Palestinians, Hebron's Jewish residents are considered to be among the most extremist and controversial Israeli settlers. Shaked, 41, wearing black jeans and a loose fleece, had come to support them. "No more excuses-in 10 days we need to keep building in Hebron!" she wrote on Facebook,...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On the morning of June 5, 1967, as Arab armies and Israel clashed following weeks of tension, Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg sat anxious amid his congregants at daily prayers-fearful that the Jewish people would face extinction for the second time in 25 years. "One of the people said, 'They're going to wipe out Israel. What's going to be?'" recalled Greenberg, then the spiritual leader of a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. "I said, 'They're not going to wipe out...
(JTA)-Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States soared 86 percent in the first three months of 2017 after rising by more than one-third in 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League. There has been a massive increase in harassment of American Jews, largely since November, and at least 34 incidents linked to the presidential election that month, the ADL said Monday in its annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents. This year has seen preliminary reports of 541 anti-Semitic incidents through...
CHICAGO (JTA)—The platter, served during Passover, contained a green, a bitter herb, an egg and matzah. But it was no seder plate. Instead, it was the appetizer served during a six-course prix fixe meal at Aviv, a pop-up, kosher-for-Passover restaurant housed for one night at Rodfei Zedek, a Conservative synagogue in the Hyde Park neighborhood on this city’s South Side. The course, a pickle platter, featured pickled cucumbers, pickled asparagus tips and beet-pickled eggs, along with olive tapenade, citrus-carrot horseradish and—de rigue...
NEW YORK (JTA)-At first glance, The New York Times' hiring of another white, Jewish male opinion-page columnist is anything but news. But the arrival of Bret Stephens, formerly the foreign affairs columnist for The Wall Street Journal, may be especially resonant for American Jews. Stephens, 42, is the former editor of The Jerusalem Post, a Pulitzer Prize laureate, and an assertive defender of Israel and its current government's policies. He, along with several other Jewish conservatives, has...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Is J Street anti-Semitic? A South Carolina state legislator insists it is. But few, if any, Jewish leaders seem to agree. Alan Clemmons, a Republican lawmaker from Myrtle Beach, is a darling of the pro-Israel community. He led the charge to pass a 2015 state law outlawing contracts with companies that boycott Israel. He has sponsored legislation defining anti-Semitism, and was honored by pro-Israel groups during last year’s Republican National Convention for his support. So Clemmons, a member of the state’s House of Repre...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Lisa Greer didn't think twice when she used her cellphone to donate to IfNotNow, a Jewish organization that protests Israel's West Bank occupation. Greer and her husband, Joshua, had given millions to progressive Jewish and Israel causes, and she sits on the board of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles. So last October, she gave the $5,000 contribution to IfNotNow from her donor-advised fund at the foundation, a mechanism for philanthropists to give to specific causes...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Many Jewish groups blamed white supremacists, emboldened by Donald Trump’s campaign, for the bomb threats that have plagued Jewish institutions since the beginning of this year. It appears the groups were wrong. The news that one Jewish teen—an Israeli, no less—was behind most of the approximately 150 bomb threats that have hit Jewish community centers since the start of 2017 is a shocking twist in light of months in which the Anti-Defamation League and other groups pointed their collective finger at the far right. “We’re...
ATLANTA (JTA)—For decades, the Lippman Kanfer family has focused its philanthropy on local Jewish communities and national initiatives to teach Torah—funding causes from the Anshe Sfard Congregation in Akron, Ohio, to a Jewish day school network. But since Nov. 8, Election Day, the family has been talking about another set of issues—refugees, voting rights and civic engagement. Like so many other things, its giving has been shaken by the Donald Trump administration. “When it’s time to step up, we have to step up,” said Marcella Kanfer Roln...
ATLANTA (JTA)-When Janice Rothschild Blumberg first heard that a bomb threat had hit an Atlanta Jewish center, she had only one thought: "It's happening all over again." Blumberg, 93, remembers her shock in 1958 when white supremacists bombed her synagogue, then called the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation and commonly known as The Temple. The perpetrators, who were never convicted, were believed to be retaliating against the outspoken civil rights advocacy of the synagogue's rabbi, and her husband...
NEW YORK (JTA)-In the upstairs sanctuary of a Manhattan synagogue, a group of rabbis is studying Jewish texts on pluralism and community. One floor below, 22 students are sitting in pairs poring over the book of Exodus. The students spend all day, every weekday in the building, studying Jewish text and observing strict Jewish law in a gender-equal environment. The rabbis, by contrast, leave the building that afternoon and return to their communities across the country, which range from Reform...
NEW YORK (JTA)-On the morning of March 7, Rabbi Beth Naditch found out that two of her three children's schools had received bomb threats. The anonymous calls placed to the MetroWest Jewish Day School and the Solomon Schechter Day School in suburban Boston turned out to be hoaxes, like the rest of the calls placed to some 120 Jewish institutions since January. And while the news was shocking, the threats were something Naditch and her husband had tried to make sure their sons-ages 9, 12 and...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Thanking the FBI and police for the arrest of Juan Thompson, who allegedly made eight bomb threats to Jewish institutions, the Anti-Defamation League called the current wave of anti-Semitic acts "unprecedented." "Law enforcement at all levels is a close friend to the Jewish people in America," Evan Bernstein, ADL's New York regional director, said at a news conference Friday. "Just because there's been an arrest today around our bomb threats does not mean that the threats have...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For centuries, studying a page of the Talmud has come with a bevy of barriers to entry. Written mostly in Aramaic, the Talmud in its most commonly printed form also lacks punctuation or vowels, let alone translation. Its premier explanatory commentary, composed by the medieval sage Rashi, is usually printed in an obscure Hebrew typeface read almost exclusively by religious, learned Jews. Even then, scholars can still spend hours figuring out what the text means. And that's not to...
NEW YORK (JTA)—A person calls a Jewish institution, makes a bomb threat and hangs up. The call lasts no more than a minute, the caller’s voice is disguised and the call is made to look as if it came from inside the building. How do you catch the culprit? That’s the question the FBI is facing in investigating the 65 bomb threats that have hit JCCs and Jewish federations in three waves throughout January. The latest string of threats, targeting 17 JCCs across the country, occurred Tuesday. The first waves across the country came on Jan. 9 and 1...
(JTA)-One Jewish group that joined the Women's March on Washington has seen its online donations double since the election of Donald Trump as president. Another has twice as many guests as usual attending its annual conference. A third has seen its social media engagement skyrocket. And after bringing thousands of Jews to the streets on Saturday, they're all asking the same question: What now? A range of liberal Jewish groups took part in the Women's March, which drew more than 3 million people...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The FBI and Department of Homeland Security will be assisting local Jewish community centers in bolstering security after 16 JCCs received bomb threats on the same day. On Wednesday, officials from the FBI and Homeland Security will conduct a conference call with U.S. Jewish communal leaders to discuss Monday’s incidents, what they stem from and how to craft protocols to handle such incidents in the future. Some communities already receive federal grants to provide for security. The bomb threats, none of which appear cre...
