Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Former Jewish Academy of Orlando students who graduated from area high schools this year enjoyed a reunion held in the library of the Jewish Academy of Orlando at the end of the academic year. Historically, Jewish Academy of Orlando graduates continue on to some of the best colleges in the country. The Class of 2019 was no exception. Graduates from the Class of 2019 will be studying at University of California in Berkley, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin in Madison, University...
Driving to the Orlando International Airport the morning of July 9, the Star of David on the tail of an EL AL plane was visible above the building. It was thrilling to see, because this morning at 11:30 history was made as EL AL's inaugural flight from MCO to Tel Aviv took "to the skies," (EL AL literally means that). Prior to the flight, a media event, complete with ribbon and cake cutting ceremonies, was held to announce the new flights. Guest speakers included Gov. Ron DeSantis; Lior Haiat,...
(JTA)-When the ushers locked the door to the sanctuary, and the congregants prepared to flee the synagogue in preparation for a mass shooting, Rabbi Neil Cooper made sure it all happened before they had to take the Torahs out of the ark. Ten minutes later the worshippers were back in the pews, doors unlocked, and getting ready to hear the weekly Torah portion. The first active shooter drill at this suburban Philadelphia synagogue was over. "It was not a high-energy, kind of catching people...
(JNS)—Representatives of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other religious groups gathered together recently at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a discussion on security issues facing faith communities. The timing couldn’t be more apt, as one FBI source noted that this is the most “complex and dynamic threat environment we have ever been in.” Every day, said the source, foreign governments are researching and identifying ways that they can “exploit” and “sow discord,” and turn people against their own communities. He added that faith comm...
WASHINGTON-Adam Lehman will take the helm of the world's largest campus Jewish organization as interim CEO after serving as the organization's chief operating officer since 2015. Hillel International also announced today that Samuel E. "Skip" Vichness, Ph. D. will begin his term as the chair of the Board of Directors after serving for three years as vice chair. For the past four years, Lehman has managed the day-to-day activities and operations of Hillel International and played a pivotal role...
Zena Sulkes has dedicated her professional life to education. As a Hebrew School Aid at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Detroit, Sulkes began to feel her way around the classroom and understand the essential elements that make for a successful educator. After graduating from the University of Michigan, she started her teaching career in the public schools in Michigan, Baltimore and Illinois. A move to Clearwater, Florida, afforded Zena the opportunity to transfer from public education to Hebrew ed...
Former Winter Park and Longwood resident, Arnold "Arnie" Irving Sager, passed away at the age of 86 on Tuesday, July 2, 2019 in Danvers, Mass. Sager was born Oct. 11, 1932 to the late Bessie and Morton Sager. He was predeceased by his two sisters, Rebecca Whitney and Lillian Green. He was the loving husband of Barbara L. Sager for 66 years, and devoted father of Bobby Sager and his wife Elaine Sager, David Sager and his late husband Brian Churchill, and Ronald Sager. He was also the proud and...
The Jewish Pavilion welcomes Hope McCormack to their staff of program directors. The Jewish Pavilion has been a part of McCormack's life for over 10 years. "For my bat mitzvah project, I delivered challahs to the elderly," McCormack said. "I enjoyed meeting the elderly and learning their side of history as everyone has different life experiences." After her project ended, she continued to help out at the Jewish Pavilion by helping with services and other events as a volunteer. So when an...
(JNS)-The second Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday night barely featured a discussion on Iran, let alone foreign policy. However, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said that, if elected, her "first act will be to engage Iran to stabilize the Middle East and make sure we do not start an unwanted, never-ending war." She also accused U.S. President Donald Trump for being "hell-bent on starting a war with Iran." Whereas Gillibrand said that Iran would be the first country she would...
(JNS)-Suheib Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef and younger brother of "Green Prince" Mosab Yousef, deserted his post in Turkey, flew to an undisclosed Asian country and then gave an interview to an Israeli journalist in which he excoriated the terrorist organization's corruption. Mosab Yousef became know as the "Green Prince" during the decade he worked with Israel's Shin Bet security agency to thwart Hamas terrorist attacks. In the interview, which aired Wednesday on...
(JNS)—Despite multiple raids and a detainment made by the Palestinian Authority against participants of the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop in Manama, Bahrain, Ashraf Al-Ghanem says that he will remain strong and courageous. Al-Ghanem is the CEO of Al-Ghanem Furniture Company and a participant in last week’s workshop, making him a target of Palestinian Authority arrests. While he told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that he feared for his life, by Tuesday, Al-Ghanem said, “I feel stronger than yesterday.” His home was one of four raided...
(JNS)—U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called on the Trump administration on Tuesday to increase pressure on Iran. “We write to urge you to increase pressure on Iran’s nuclear program, in the aftermath of Iran publicly violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action by stockpiling more than 300 kg of low-enriched uranium and threatening further violations within weeks,” stated the letter, which was in response to International Atomic Energy Agency announcing on Monday that Iran has exceeded the ura...
(JNS)—The critics are right about U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s presence at the ceremonial opening of Jerusalem’s “Pilgrimage Road” being unprecedented. None of his predecessors would have been caught dead at a Jewish site on the wrong side of the “Green Line.” Up until last year, the United States had stubbornly refused to recognize that any part of the ancient capital of the Jews belonged to the Jewish state. But even if we concede that the participation of Friedman and U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt was a departure fro...
In January 1966, I found myself living and working in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I had been recruited by RCA Missile Test Project, the scientific and engineering manager of the Air Force’s Eastern Test Range for rockets and missiles being test fired from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Prior to arriving in Cocoa Beach, I had been doing research in radiation physics at the Radiological Research Laboratory at Columbia-Presbytarian Medical Center in New York City, under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor to the Nuclear Regula...
(JNS)—“The two-state solution,” as America and Israel define it, calls for “two states for two peoples”— for Israel and a new Palestinian-Arab state, sharing the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. The Palestinian Authority has expressly rejected “two states” in this sense, demanding a “right of return” to Israel for millions of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. Reservations to this idea also exist on the Jewish side. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again recently stated that Israel will not cede secur...
(JNS)—Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights. Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying. It’s not tha...
(JNS)—For years, the pundits have been telling us that Israeli democracy is in danger because of the Arab birthrate, or because of the Jewish nation-state law, or because of the debates over the powers of Israel’s High Court. I wonder if they will recognize the danger posed by the 10 left-wing American Jewish organizations that have formed a new umbrella organization, the essential purpose of which is to undermine Israeli democracy. Last week, J Street and nine other Jewish left-wing groups declared themselves part of the new “Pr...
(JNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump’s last-minute decision to pull back from a retaliatory strike on Iran is nothing new in the annals of modern history. According to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu was on the verge of attacking Iran three times between 2010 and 2012, but was blocked each time by other cabinet ministers or by the IDF chief of staff. These attacks were planned for the most part before the Obama administration came into power; the Obama administration put an end to Israel’s plans to attack Iran. This ma...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) 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 of Orlando—Monday—Friday, 7:45 a.m.—8:30 a.m. Temple I...
(JNS)—Walmart, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are among retailers selling an edition of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” featuring a neo-Nazi blurb and a price tag with numbers that reference white power. “This book has set a path toward a much higher understanding of the self and of our magnificent destiny as living beings part of this Race on our planet,” stated the blurb on the Barnes & Noble website, which has apparently removed the listing. “It shows us that we must not look at nature in terms of good or bad, but in an unfiltered manner. It de...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Twenty-five years ago, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 92-year-old Lubavitcher Rebbe, succumbed to his many ailments and died, to the horror of his Hasidim. Since suffering the first of several devastating strokes on March 2, 1992, while visiting the grave of his late father-in-law and predecessor Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the Rebbe had been trapped speechless and physically disabled in a failing body. He was widowed and childless, and his Hasidic aides, who now...
(JNS)-Iran has exceeded the uranium enrichment limit under the 2015 nuclear deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Monday. Tzvi Kahn, senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that Iran's aim is to preserve relations with European allies in the face of the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign against the regime since it withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018, reimposing sanctions lifted under it along with enactin...
(JNS)—An exhibition that offers the public a glimpse into the role of faith as a mechanism for survival during the Holocaust opened at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland on Monday. “Through the Lens of Faith” was arranged and organized by the Amud Aish Memorial Museum in New York, which was founded by the Jewish philanthropists and businessman Elly Kleinman, and works to present the experiences of Holocaust victims and survivors, and how faith helped them persevere. World...
Museum of Jewish Heritage... This museum is a living memorial to the Holocaust. It is located at 36 Battery Place in lower Manhattan, New York City, N.Y. "Not long ago. Not far away" is the theme of this exhibit. The most significant site of the Holocaust, Auschwitz, was not a single entity but a complex of 48 concentration and extermination camps, at which 1 million Jews and tens of thousands of others, were murdered. The exhibition brings together more than 700 original objects and 400...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Turning Point USA, a conservative student group that is most notable for its vocal advocacy for President Donald Trump, is hosting a conference here for young Jewish leaders that includes an address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair. Netanyahu, 27, is one of the more youthful speakers at the three-day Young Jewish Leadership Summit taking place through Wednesday. He's known as a strident defender of his father, who is mired in corruption scandals. The son's...
