Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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After more than a decade in planning and three years of construction with a multi-disciplinary team of archaeologists, architects, curators, researchers, designers and creatives, the new Tower of David Jerusalem Museum opened to the public in the ancient citadel as the capital's official museum on June 1st with a completely immersive experience that combines ancient Jerusalem and interactive technology. And, for the first time in its history, the ancient citadel is now accessible. The Tower of...
(JNS) - After 30 years of legal and political battles, Israel will inaugurate an elevator to improve handicap accessibility at Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs on June 8. The Defense Ministry's Civil Administration sent out invitations on Wednesday. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is the burial place of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. It is one of Israel's most visited tourist sites. The $1.6 million project includes a sloped path linking the parking...
This is an ongoing article. Heritage will print articles as JTA reports them. Day 1: 911 dispatcher and rabbi take the stand PITTSBURGH (JTA) — When Shannon Basa-Sabol was asked to recount the events of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in court on Tuesday, what stood out was her memory of the death of Bernice Simon. Basa-Sabol, a 911 dispatcher, took the stand for close to an hour, describing the ins and outs of her job. But when the crowded courtroom heard a recording of Simon’s 911 call from the Tree of Life Congregation, Basa-Sabol pau...
The bladder can change with age. Follow these 13 tips to keep your bladder healthy. Drink enough fluids, especially water. Most healthy people should try to drink six to eight, 8-ounce glasses of fluid each day. Water is the best fluid for bladder health. Ask your healthcare provider how much fluid is healthy for you. Limit alcohol and caffeine. Cutting down on alcohol and caffeinated foods and drinks — such as coffee, tea, chocolate, and sodas will help. Quit smoking. If you smoke, take steps to quit. If you don’t smoke, don’t start. Avoid...
Two weeks ago, the White House released a national strategy to fight antisemitism. In December, President Biden established a government task force to create a national strategy to counter antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry. Among the initiative, monitoring technology platforms was mentioned, with over 10 separate calls for tech companies to establish a zero-tolerance policy for hate. This part of the strategy will help shield our students from the onslaught of online antisemitism. President Biden said, “It sends a clear and f...
Summer is just starting but now is the best time to plan for the next school year 2023-2024. When the school day ends many parents know this is just the beginning of homework, enrichment activities and searching for ways to entertain their children while they continue working. The Rosen JCC After-School Program offers just what the busy parent needs. The After School program offers onsite certified tutors to provide homework help. The staff supervises kids with playground time, games, snacks and crafts. It offers enrichment activities...
(JNS) - The singer and actor, who was president of ZOA's California chapter, died on May 21 at the age of 95. Some 15 or 20 years ago, Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, saw a man who looked a lot like entertainer Ed Ames at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington. "He was tall. He stood out among everyone," Klein told JNS. "I knew it wasn't Ed Ames, because he was at an AIPAC conference. Ed Ames wouldn't be at an AIPAC...
(JTA) — Israel’s under-20 men’s team defeated Brazil 3-2 in the quarterfinals of the FIFA U-20 World Cup on Saturday, their most shocking win in a string of dramatic underdog victories at the tournament. The player who scored the winning goal in extra time dedicated the win to three Israeli soldiers killed in an attack the previous morning. The team, making its first-ever appearance at the under-20 World Cup, is now through to the semifinal round, in which they will face Uruguay on Thursday. Israel — facing a country known for its interna...
(JTA) — A man rushed the stage and unfurled an Israeli flag at a Roger Waters concert in Frankfurt on Sunday in protest of the former Pink Floyd frontman’s continued criticism of Israel. Video circulating on social media showed a group of fans chanting “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The people of Israel live”) while the protester makes it to the main stage, where he lasts a few seconds before security guards chase him away. Since at least last week, Berlin police have been investigating Waters over a costume he has been wearing at concerts for years t...
(JNS) — German police have launched a criminal investigation after former Pink Floyd bassist and anti-Israel provocateur Roger Waters wore a Nazi-style uniform during a recent concert in the German capital. On May 17 at Mercedes-Benz Arena, the British musician dressed up in a costume resembling that of an SS soldier and pretended to fire a rifle. Waters also compared the murder of Anne Frank in the Holocaust to the accidental killing in Jenin in May 2022 of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. “The State Security Department at...
(JNS) — While the Palestinian Arabs are determined to memorialize and perpetuate their displacement as a national emblem of victimhood, tens of millions of people who were displaced in other modern wars have bravely moved on to create new lives in new lands. Now 75 years on, the Palestinians repeatedly make the false claim that Israel expelled 700,000 of them en masse and stole their homeland. The truth is that most Palestinians who left their homes in Israel during the country’s War of Independence in 1948-49 did so voluntarily. Fur...
A realistic goal must be three things: specific, measurable and achievable. Will the proposals outlined in the White House’s first official strategy to counter antisemitism, released with much fanfare this week, pass this test? Or are they more political pablum? The report, which followed conversations with more than 1,000 community leaders, distills the challenges American Jews face. It is a thoughtful and comprehensive effort that should be applauded. But understanding a problem and fixing it are two very different things. And reducing a...
(JNS) — From April 3-7, Students for Justice in Palestine hosted their annual “Palestine Liberation Week,” also known as “Israeli Apartheid Week.” SJP is a campus group supported by the radical American Muslims for Palestine, an anti-Israel organization many of whose members support Hamas. Each spring, SJP leads a propaganda campaign on UCLA’s Bruin Walk, spreading misinformation about the Arab-Israeli conflict. This year, this campaign was held during the Jewish holiday of Passover. Many practicing Jews went home for the holidays and could n...
(JNS) — The Mishnaic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai spoke 18 centuries ago about a group of people in a boat. One of the passengers brandished a hand drill and began to drill a hole under his seat. When the others panicked, he asked why they would care if he confined his drilling to the space where he sat. To his fellow passengers, the answer was obvious: He was causing the entire boat to sink. Last week, the White House released its unprecedented U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. There is much to commend in this comprehensive s...
(JNS) — There were many expectations for Biden’s “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” among the usual organizational types, but anyone with common sense could have seen this coming a mile away. The “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” fails to address Muslim and leftist antisemitism. It briefly delves into campus antisemitism but does not address its source, has a single throwaway line about the attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York City and gives the pro-Israel IHRA definition of antisemitism nearly equal billing wit...
Dear Editor: Thirty-three centuries ago, G-d gave Moses the 10 Commandments and Moses gave them to us. One of them — “Thou shall not commit murder,” Exodus 20:13 — can be either with the tongue or physically. Antisemitism fits that commandment. In the United States there is freedom of speech. The “N” word was finally forbidden to be mentioned because it was always frowned upon and finally, finally not mentioned anymore. This is what has to be done with antisemitism. Any mention of it should be violently attacked verbally and physically...
MORNING MINYANS Chabad of North Orlando and Chabad of Altamonte Springs are holding in-person 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...
This story originally appeared on My Jewish Learning. (JTA) — The Shavuot holiday that we observed last month commemorates two different kinds of harvests. Originally an agricultural festival, Shavuot marked the culmination of the wheat harvest in the ancient land of Israel. Only later did the rabbis layer on the receiving of the Torah to the holiday. Just as we celebrate the bounty of the land, we celebrate the bounty of Torah — the sustenance that feeds our hearts and nourishes our souls. In ancient days, as the wheat blossomed in its gol...
(JTA) — The Israeli satirical drama film “Concerned Citizen” opens with the sacrosanct rituals of a bourgeois Tel Aviv life: a robot vacuum slides gracefully across the floor; lush house plants are watered; vegetables are blended into green juice. The score from the Bellini opera “Norma” plays in the background. Then a car alarm rudely interrupts the utopia. It only gets worse from here for Ben and Raz, a progressive Israeli gay couple (played by actors Shlomi Bertonov and Ariel Wolf, who are a...
(JTA) - After five seasons, 20 Emmy awards and plenty of Jewish jokes, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" aired its final episode. The lauded Amazon Prime show from Amy Sherman-Palladino has enveloped viewers in a shimmering, candy-colored version of New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s - a world in which "humor" has meant Jewish humor and "culture" has meant Jewish culture. But as it comes to an end, the show's Jewish legacy is still up for debate: Did its representation of Jews on...
(JNS) - Police detectives working in eastern Jerusalem who stopped a vehicle discovered 2,000-year-old bricks with imprints of Roman seals, the Israeli Police announced on Wednesday. A 68-year-old Palestinian was arrested on Tuesday night and is suspected of intending to sell the bricks on the black market. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has examined the artifacts, the bricks came from the Hebron area, and were used in a structure by the Roman military unit that destroyed...
(JNS) - Israeli President Isaac Herzog met on Monday morning with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose ChatGPT has quickly become an international sensation. Launched in November, ChatGPT is an artificially intelligent chatbot that can have human-like conversations, answer questions and assist people in writing assignments. The software has been made available to the public through an app, and millions of users have used it primarily for writing and research. Herzog made waves in February when, while...
(JNS) - The U.S. seeks to silence Israeli opposition to a revived Iran nuclear deal by offering to broker a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal in exchange, Israel Hayom reported on Thursday. Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi flew Wednesday to Washington for meetings with U.S. officials about the possible Iran deal, which Israel strongly opposes, and Saudi-Israel relations, which Israel strongly supports. Although U.S. President Joe Biden...
(JTA) - An Egyptian security officer opened fire on Israeli soldiers on a routine patrol, killing two, and hours later killed a third before being felled in a shootout, the Israeli army said, in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a "severe and extraordinary incident." The Egyptian military said the shootout occurred while the officer, who has now been identified as Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, was pursuing drug smugglers across the border. Cross-border attacks are rare between...
(JTA) - On Wednesday morning, Alfred Moses, 94, sat in a small white armchair at a round wooden table in a Manhattan office building as a historian gingerly turned the pages of a more than 1,000-year-old book in front of him. Two weeks earlier, Moses had paid a record-setting sum for the book - more than $38 million in total. But this was the first time he had ever seen it. The book was the Codex Sassoon, the world's oldest nearly-complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, and Moses had purchased it on...
