Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Yes, “all men are created equal”, but that doesn’t mean we are all identical. Champions of woke ideology have found a new enemy: special educational programs for the gifted. Last week another special ed curriculum for the gifted in mathematics in New York City has been canceled. It joins a movement spreading around the country to eliminate any special programming which supports the needs of academically advanced and diversely talented students. After first scrapping gifted entrance exams, the conclusion in woke thinking is to abolish gifte...
Be careful who you are exposed to. Public health officials around the world are desperately trying to cope with the spread of the coronavirus. There is growing fear that a global pandemic may be impossible to stop. So far, this respiratory illness has infected more than 80,000 people and killed at least 2,800 to the best of our knowledge. Cruise ships, unwitting tourists, travelers and others are slowly transmitting this angel of death to destinations far from its Chinese source. Modern medicine, with all of its miracles, is stymied. There is... Full story
How could the world forget the Beatles? “Yesterday”—first the song, now the movie. For fans of the Beatles, “Yesterday,” the song Paul McCartney says came to him note by note in a dream, has a well-deserved claim on the best popular song ever written. Released as a single on Sept. 13, 1965, “Yesterday” went to the top of the charts globally and was broadcast on American radio more than seven million times in its first 30 years. According to the “Guinness Book Of Records” it is the most covered pop song of all time. Now it is back in the news... Full story
By Rabbi Benjamin Blech Aish Hatorah Resources A Starbucks latte in medieval England is merely ludicrous. Destroying lives and legacies without taking into account historic context is a far more serious distortion. Tens of millions of faithful followers of Game of Thrones noticed the glaring error. In the fourth episode of the show’s last season, a celebratory feast in Winterfell included a very 21st-century Starbucks coffee cup sitting in front of Emilia Clarke’s Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen among all the metal goblets of wine. Ima... Full story
George Elliott is credited with saying, “History repeats itself.” Mark Twain sharply improved on it with his observation that “history doesn’t repeat itself—but it does rhyme.” No matter how much things may change, one constant always remains: the Hamans of the world, the Jew haters who seek “to destroy, to murder and to bring to an end all Jews, from young to old,” are somehow forever with us. It was foretold in the Torah. In the first battle against Amalek, prototype of the anti-Semite throughout the ages, we are informed that although t... Full story
If we learn from an experience, there is no such thing as failure. Harvard University is perhaps the most prestigious academic institution in the world. Oprah Winfrey has often been called one of the most successful women in the world. So it was fitting that this June it was Oprah who was given the honor of serving as commencement speaker to the graduating class of some of America’s most elite students. But what was truly remarkable was the subject that Oprah chose as her theme. To a group almost certainly assured of great success in life, O... Full story
The mystical meaning of the next eclipse which is only seven years away. Amazingly enough, the “totality eclipse” which took place this past Monday across the continental United States was not the end of the story. While eclipses of this magnitude are fairly rare occurrences—scientists tell us that if you stood in one place on earth you would have to wait on average another 360 years until you again saw another total eclipse—this time round is going to be different. A sequel is due a mere seven years later, on April 8, 2024. This proximi... Full story
Yes, he was a Jew. But he was killed because he was an American. The tragedy of Otto Warmbier took a strange twist shortly after his death last week. It was only then that we discovered that the young American imprisoned by North Korea to 15 years of hard labor at a one-hour show trial for the crime of stealing a propaganda poster as souvenir was Jewish. After his release following 17 months of brutal captivity and return to his parents in the United States, in a coma and suffering severe brain damage, we learned what was purposely suppressed d... Full story
No matter how financially blessed, we all need to call upon a higher power to help us make our lives a blessing. At age 32, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest of the world's ten richest people. His fortune presently hovers over the $60 billion mark. Financially there certainly isn't a thing that he lacks. What could someone like Zuckerberg possibly pray for? At the Harvard graduation ceremony last week we heard the answer. The university from which Zuckerberg never graduated, cutting his education... Full story
Hello... Anybody else out there? For us here on earth it is certainly one of the most intriguing and far-reaching questions imaginable. Are we alone in the cosmos or are there others-perhaps like us or perhaps totally different-somewhere in the universe? And for those of us who believe the account of creation as recorded in the Torah, are the opening words-"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"-meant as full disclosure of the creation of life by the Almighty or is this merely... Full story
It is pointless to argue with those who happily pervert reality in the service of their profoundly held prejudices. Is there no limit to the United Nations’ willingness to ignore every readily verifiable fact and provable source of historic truth in order to give expression to its obsessive and all-consuming hatred of Israel and the Jewish people? The resolution passed by UNESCO last week replaces more than thousands of years of recorded history with a version of the story of Jerusalem and the site of the holy Temples of the Jews which is far m... Full story
He cannot move to Israel for at least five years. The reason reeks of hypocrisy. After 30 long years of imprisonment, unprecedented punishment for the crime of spying on behalf of an American ally, Jonathan Pollard is at last a free man. Almost. Pollard’s incarceration in a maximum security prison which he spent in solitary isolation for lengthy periods of time is finally over. Even those appalled by his offense must surely find sufficient compassion in their hearts to be gladdened by his long-awaited release, having more than paid for his u... Full story
What is the value of spending our time on lost causes? As I watched the proceedings at the United Nations last week I couldn’t help but remember the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and my father—and, most important of all, the lesson my father taught me I needed to learn from that historic moment. I would’ve liked to say the time my father met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but that wouldn’t be true. That meeting should have happened, but it didn’t. And therein lies a remarkable tale that happened two days before Yom Kippur in 1943. It... Full story
We are indeed one family. And one that dwells alone. More than two weeks have passed. Naftali Frankel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, are still in captivity and all we can do is continue to pray—to pray that they are still alive and to pray that they will soon be reunited with their families, their friends and all those who love them. Initially, I thought my pain was greater than most. Naftali is a cousin. Just a few short weeks ago I celebrated the traditional Yom Ha-Atzmaut Bar-B-Q with him at his home, together with our f... Full story
