Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The 22-nation Arab League has signed onto a declaration that condemns Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and calls on Hamas to disarm. The league includes Qatar and Egypt, which have served as mediators in talks between Israel and Hamas during the subsequent war in Gaza. It also includes Turkey, which has adopted a stance of overt hostility toward Israel during the war. The league joined the entire European Union and 17 other countries in backing the declaration at a United Nations meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia and France. The m...
ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Torah Center, located in Southwest Orlando, filed a federal lawsuit July 31 against Orange County and its Board of County Commissioners after they unfairly denied the synagogue’s application to expand. Early in July, Rabbi Menachem Zev Kramer of OTC addressed the Orange County commissioners asking for special consideration and a waiver of zoning rules to build a 9,300-square-foot expansion plan for its worship center. “This is not just a request about bricks and mortar, this is about space,” Kramer said during the 2...
(JNS) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday evening accused Palestinian terrorists of starving the hostages they have held in the Gaza Strip for 668 days "like the Nazis starved the Jews. "I too was horrified yesterday," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office. "I saw the horrific videos of Rom and Evyatar, our dear sons. I called their families and embraced them on behalf of me and my wife, but also on your behalf. You see them languishing in a dungeon." Lat week, Hamas...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared on Tuesday evening that Israel is “at the closest point to achieving the war’s objectives,” emphasizing the need for victory in both Gaza and Yemen. Katz made the statement during a high-level security assessment with top defense officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and intelligence representatives. The meeting addressed evolving threats across the Middle East, with Katz stressing the importance of continuing operations to return all hostages and defeat Hamas. He also...
Caregiving is a demanding role, often requiring juggling multiple responsibilities, like ensuring that loved ones are transported to critical medical appointments or social engagements. For caregivers of seniors, transportation can become a significant challenge, particularly when the person they care for is unable to drive. Fortunately, ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft have stepped in to make this task easier, offering solutions designed to alleviate some of the stresses caregivers face. These services now allow caregivers to arrange...
Ingredients 2 cups heavy whipping cream 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk 2 tsp. instant expresso coffee or other flavor like strawberry jam or chocolate syrup 1 T. hot water 1 tsp. vanilla Extra chocolate chips and or nuts (optional) Directions In a small dish, dissolve expresso in hot water. Mix it into condensed milk with vanilla. Whip cream 2-3 minutes to stiff peaks. Fold condensed milk into whipping cream trying not to deflate mixture. Add optional chocolate chips and or nuts. Pour into 9x4” bread pan lined with plastic wrap, p...
(JNS) — One of the last Jews in Yemen immigrated to Israel after her husband died a little over a year ago, Hebrew media reported on Wednesday. Badra Yousef lived in Yemen for years with her partner, Yahya, in the Arhab District north of the capital of Sanaa. “Badra and her husband were Yemeni Jews who loved their homeland and lived there through both good times and bitter ones,” independent Yemeni journalist Ali Ibrahim Al Moshki wrote on his Facebook page, according to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan News. In June, Al Moshki said that th...
\(JTA) — Canada, too, will recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September as long as certain conditions are met, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday. “The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delaying coordinated international action to support peace, security and the dignity of human life,” Carney, a liberal elected in April, said at a press conference, referring to a hunger crisis in Gaza that has grown acute. The move adds Canada to the United Kingdom and France as major world power...
(JNS) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday alongside her father, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, at the start of her working tour of the Jewish state. The Huckabees’ visit to the Western Wall, Judaism’s second-holiest site after the Temple Mount, fell on Tisha b’Av, the Jewish national day of mourning for the destruction of both Temples and other tragedies. They were welcomed by Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Western Wall’s rabbi, who shared with them “an overview of the site’s spiritual and...
(JNS) — A group of 60 French Jewish immigrants arrived in Israel on Tuesday on a flight sponsored by a Jerusalem-based evangelical Christian organization. The move, which comes amid a rise in global antisemitism triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel, highlights the burgeoning ties between the evangelical Christian community around the world and the Jewish state. “This is more than just a flight, it’s prophecy in motion,” said Peter Fast, International CEO of Bridges for Peace. “When Christians from around th...
Until a few years ago Princeton, N.J. was the place I spent the longest part of my life. Since 2004, I have lived in Israel, but Princeton is my legal U.S. address from which I and my family file taxes, vote, and to which we get notices for jury duty. Princeton is in the New Jersey 12th district, represented by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman. I receive her monthly updates about issues that she cares about, and how she’s allocating federal dollars to projects in the district. I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know a lot...
(JNS) — A father and his six-year-old son were recently assaulted at a rest stop near Milan for the crime of wearing kippot. In today’s Europe, sadly, there’s little shocking about such incidents anymore. Nor is it surprising to see French President Emmanuel Macron leading a diplomatic charge to recognize a Palestinian state, rallying the usual bloc of Norway, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and lobbying Saudi Arabia to add gravitas. What’s more, 34 former Italian ambassadors — some still holding influential posts — have urged Italy’s Prime Minister G...
This past Monday and Tuesday, July 28-29, 2025 a large number of United Nations member-states met in New York at the invitation of France and Saudi Arabia to try to revive the now discredited and diplomatically dead ”Two-State Solution.” The “Two-State Solution” has been the diplomatic mantra of world diplomacy, for many decades since the founding of the State of Israel, and was taken seriously by a large majority of the international community including some Israelis and misguided Jews in the Diaspora. In light of the continuing terrori...
(JNS) — In the first century, the Roman poet Juvenal disliked Jews. Besides circumcising themselves, he wrote, in the 14th chapter of his Satires, that they “revere the Sabbath … treating every seventh day as a day of idleness, separate from the rest of daily life.” They were, well, lazy. Marx, in his 1843 critique of Bernard Bauer, suggested that “the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. … Money is the jealous god of Israel. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew.” Hating Jews for economic reasons seeks to tarnis...
(JNS) — The global information that we have today is overwhelming, but unfortunately, too many people in the free world and elsewhere are living in a fantasy of wishful thinking, not realizing that their own future is in danger. Let us look at a few critical points to help us identify some current trends and address them: 1. Turkey, led by the Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is working hard on expanding its control over the Middle East and beyond, by killing Kurds, infiltrating Syria, trying to build strongholds in Jerusale...
(JNS) — In the midst of one of the most painful and complex military operations that Israel has ever known, while the families of the hostages wait in anguish for the return of their loved ones being tortured in Hamas’s tunnels and as a humanitarian tragedy unfolds in the Gaza Strip, it is vital to look reality in the eye and ask honestly: Who is responsible for what is happening? This conflict was not sought by Israel. On the contrary, just as regional initiatives of hope and reconciliation were beginning to take shape, including serious pro...
MORNING 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 of Orlando — Monday – Friday, 7:45 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Temple Israel — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3...
(JNS) — Hundreds of pro-Israel students met in Washington last week for the Israel Campus Coalition’s national summit. Jacob Baime, the group’s CEO, told JNS that the 21 months since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and subsequent rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on campus marked a “new moment” for students who support the Jewish state. “As horrible as everything has been, as horrific as it’s all been since Oct. 7, there’s the silver lining of a huge surge in Jewish pride and interest in the issue,” Baime said. “This is a...
In recognition of 20 years since the Gaza pullout, JNS is featuring a five-part series of articles reflecting Israel's disengagement, speaking with an array of former Gush Katif residents to find out how they perceive the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Trump plan for the Gaza Strip and the prospect of returning. "The idea is not to go back to Gush Katif but to go back to a type of social, historical, Zionist, Jewish awareness that it's a part of the State of...
(JNS) - A 5,500-year old workshop for the production of stone blades has been unearthed in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday. Evidence of an advanced industry was found, including long flint blades and the stone cores from which the blades were made, according to the IAA statement. The findings were uncovered in a large IAA salvage excavation at the Naẖal Qomem site (also known as Gat-Govrin, Zeita), funded by the Israel Lands A...
By Maayan Hoffman (JNS) - On Oct. 7, 2023, everything changed for David Pinto. The co-founder and CEO of Pinto Winery was vacationing in northern Israel, far from his home in Yerucham in the country's south. But when Hamas brutally infiltrated Israel that morning, Pinto, an IDF officer with the rank of major, was immediately called up to serve in the reserves. It took him a whole day to reach his home, with roads shut down across the country. He gathered his belongings, left his wife and...
As images of starving children in Gaza continue to circulate and the international outcry grows louder, a number of American rabbis used their pulpits this past Shabbat to speak up about the humanitarian crisis, some with sorrow, others with moral urgency, and many with a sense that silence was no longer tenable. The sermons came amid growing pressure on Jewish institutions to reckon with the consequences for Palestinian civilians of Israel’s war against Hamas as it nears the end of its second year. In recent days, more than a thousand r...
Submitted by the family Paul David Friedman passed peacefully the morning of July 29, 2025, one week shy of his 75th birthday. Born Aug. 6, 1950, in Dayton, Ohio to Joe and Clara Friedman (née Toothman), Paul grew up surrounded by a large family, his older sister Sue and many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins. As a young man, Paul joined the family photography business in Dayton before getting married, moving to Pompano Beach, Fla., and having his first son. The family of three soon relocated to the Tampa area and added three more sons, who...
Submitted by the family Arlene Jacobson Tetenbaum passed away peacefully at her home in Eagle’s Trace Senior Living, Houston, Texas, shortly after celebrating her 92nd birthday, surrounded by family. Born in Sanford, Florida, Arlene was the cherished daughter of Manuel and Hannah Jacobson and the beloved sister of Sherwood Jacobson. She was married to CharlesTetenbaum, with whom she shared great love and commitment, from the age of 22 until his passing in 2020. They would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary this year. Arlene is s...
