Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 39 of 39
By Steven Cardonick Spring! We survived winter without too much snow this year. A few flakes came down from the skies but never made it to the ground here. According to one of my readers, Josh the joker, they were escorted off the plane by security personnel, questioned, and sent back to their northern homes. Baseball! The grapefruit league is already winding down and regular season is about to start. Did you catch an exhibition game? The closest spring training park is over in Lakeland where...
(JNS) — In a glowing profile of a Palestinian American neurosurgeon building schools and offering hot meals to children in the Gaza Strip, The New York Times inadvertently exposed a far more consequential story than the one it intended to tell. Beneath the “feel good” narrative lies an uncomfortable truth: the curriculum used in Palestinian Authority schools is saturated with anti-Israel incitement, antisemitism and the glorification of violence—an educational framework that has served to indoctrinate generations of young Palestinians with th...
For a long time, Jews looking for representation in video games had to make do with the possible Jewishness of William Joseph Blazkowicz, the Nazi-hunting protagonist of the popular ‘90s video game series Wolfenstein. A white, muscular, machine-gun-toting GI, with a lantern jaw and blue eyes, Blazkowicz didn’t exactly look the part. But his Polish ancestry, together with his enthusiasm for vanquishing Wehrmacht soldiers, left many Jews convinced. (Eventually, in 2017, Wolfenstein creator Tom...
(JNS) — Hillel International broke ground at Cornell University on March 8 on a long-planned Jewish student center designed to strengthen campus Jewish life. The campus Hillel has operated since 1952 out of Annabel Taylor Hall, a university building shared with other faith communities. Rabbi Ari Weiss, executive director of the Grinspoon Hillel Center for Jewish Community at the private university in Ithaca, N.Y., told JNS that setting up at Harkavy Hall, a new building, has “been a dream of the Hillel and our community for at least 30 yea...
(JNS) — In a moment that could have ended in tragedy, two rabbis from Temple Israel said preparation and training helped ensure that “everything went right” during a March 12 attack on the Reform congregation in suburban Detroit. The car-ramming and shooting attack at the synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., triggered lockdown procedures, a massive law-enforcement response and panic among parents rushing to their children. Authorities say Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, rammed a vehicle into the building and opened fire...
(JNS) — Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, declined to say if Iran is better off without the ayatollah when asked during a press conference on Tuesday. “I’ve said before that the Iranian government has engaged in systematic repression of its own people, even killing thousands of Iranians who were seeking to express the most basic forms of dissent earlier this year. It is a brutal government,” the mayor said, standing alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “I’ve also said that while I may be a young mayor, I am old enough to remember the de...
(JNS) — After a vehicle-ramming and shooting attack at a Michigan synagogue, Jewish advocacy groups are pressing Congress to resolve a funding impasse they say is delaying critical security support for vulnerable nonprofits. Authorities identified Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, as the suspect accused of driving a truck into Temple Israel, a large Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., before exchanging gunfire with armed security personnel. Ghazali was killed in the exchange, and the synagogue’s director of sec...
Team Israel doubled its win total from its previous World Baseball Classic appearance and closed out the 2026 tournament with a victory on Tuesday. But it was not enough to advance to the quarterfinals. Israel defeated the Netherlands 6-2, overcoming an early 2-0 deficit to even its tournament record at 2-2—good enough for third place in the pool of five teams. By winning at least one game, the team automatically qualified for the next World Baseball Classic, likely to be held in 2029. Team Israel went 1-3 in 2023. “It’s amazing to me that even...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces has ramped up operations in Judea and Samaria since the start of Operation Roaring Lion on Feb. 28, to ensure that would-be terrorists living under the Palestinian Authority don’t take advantage of the situation to launch a new front. As part of the effort, the IDF is closely coordinating with individual communities and their security personnel to prevent terrorist attacks. During an exclusive briefing with JNS, an official IDF spokesperson said that since Operation Rising Lion in June 2025, the military has...
Israeli Tourism Ministry: 16,000 visitors have left since start of war By JNS Staff (JNS) — Eleven days after the launch of “Operation Roaring Lion,” Israel’s Tourism Ministry says about 21,500 tourists remain in the country, down from roughly 37,000 at the start of the operation. According to the ministry on Tuesday, about 16,000 tourists have departed Israel since the operation began, while approximately 2,500 have entered the country despite the security situation and travel challenges. During the period when Israel’s airspace was closed, t...
(JNS) — After a vehicle-ramming and shooting attack at a Michigan synagogue, Jewish advocacy groups are pressing Congress to resolve a funding impasse they say is delaying critical security support for vulnerable nonprofits. Authorities identified Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, as the suspect accused of driving a truck into Temple Israel, a large Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., before exchanging gunfire with armed security personnel. Ghazali was killed in the exchange, and the synagogue’s director of sec...
About one-third of $4,965,000 in security funding that Massachusetts gave to 167 nonprofits in the state went to Jewish organizations, including synagogues, according to a JNS analysis. Of the listed nonprofits, 55 (about 33%) were Jewish, and they received $1,606,876 (about 32%) of the funding, which came from the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Grant Program and the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Personnel Grant Program. In addition to the 55, Brandeis University, which states that it is “animated by a set of values that are rooted in Jewish...
(JNS) — The Israeli military said early on Thursday morning that in the prior hours, it launched a “wide-scale wave of strikes” at Hezbollah terror infrastructure across Lebanon. “As part of the strikes, the IDF located and dismantled dozens of launchers, which were ready to launch, and neutralized dozens of Hezbollah operatives while they were preparing to launch toward the State of Israel,” the military said. It added that it hit “10 terror structures in the Dahieh area,” a Beirut suburb, “including intelligence headquarters, a headquarters...
(JNS) — Israel’s elimination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was made possible by using Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on the movements of those close to the cleric. Israeli intelligence “hacked” nearly all traffic cameras in Tehran over a period of years, encrypting the footage and transmitting it to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to The Financial Times, which first reported the story, citing two sources familiar with the operation. One camera in particular provided a strategic vantage point, enabling analysts...
