Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS)-The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull back troops from northern Syria in the face of a likely Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces is a blow to American deterrent power in the Middle East. It is also a move that looks set to hasten the creation of a power vacuum, which a variety of Islamists will look forward to filling. While it's too soon to know the full impact the move will have, it raises several potential scenarios, some of which would be deeply destructive for...
(Israel Hayom via JNS)-Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has ordered his office to draw up plans to stop the Turkish government's efforts to undermine Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and protect Jordan's special status as guardian of Muslim holy sites in the city. Katz intends to present the plan to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon. Due to the sensitivity of the plan, the implementation of which will almost certainly lead to a direct confrontation with Ankara, it is also...
(JTA)—At least two gunmen opened fire on a synagogue during Yom Kippur services and a kebab shop in Halle, a town in eastern Germany. The shooters reportedly were from the far right. The masked gunmen reportedly were repelled by the synagogue’s doors, secured shut during the services Wednesday on the most solemn day of the Jewish year. There were 70 to 80 people in the synagogue at the time of the attack. One of the gunmen shot a woman dead at a nearby Jewish cemetery and a gunman threw a grenade at the kebab shop, and then fired at it, kil...
Life is all about family for Maitland's Sharon Littman, Jewish Pavilion Friends Board member since 2014 and this year's 'Gems and Jeans' gala honoree, to be held on Sunday, Nov. 3 at 5 p.m. at the Westin, Lake Mary. This familial affection is the twinkle in her eyes when any of her three teen-aged children 'bing' her cell-phone. A knowing smile accompanies a 'ring' from Adam, husband of 21 years, or a Facetime call with her parents, still living near her hometown of Edison, New Jersey. This year...
From bowling to Harry Potter studies, golf to wine tasting, UCF offers classes for all interests. Theatre students now get the chance to create stories using odd objects and puppets. Students taking Introduction to Puppetry and Object Theatre this fall with Ayelet Golan, a visiting professor with the Israel Institute's Visiting Artists Program, are doing just that. Central Florida Hillel and Judaic Studies worked together to obtain the grant. Only a few weeks into the semester, these students...
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, The Roth Family JCC will host Adeena Sussman at its Visiting Authors Series. The event will take place from 7 p.m.-8:30 p.m. at the JCC. Sussman is the co-author of 11 cookbooks, including New York Times No. 1 Bestseller "Cravings: Hungry for More" with celebrity Chrissy Tiegen. In her eagerly-anticipated, debut solo cookbook, "Sababa," Sussman, now a permanent resident of Tel Aviv, offers an intimate and transporting work, borne out of a deep love, natural curiosity and...
Jewish Academy of Orlando Mac the Bee returned to the Roth Family Jewish Community Center with much fanfare. Students and faculty of Jewish Academy of Orlando and the Early Childhood Learning Center at the JCC danced, sang, and welcomed Shabbat with Mac the Bee at a campus-wide Shabbat. "We always enjoy our campus-wide Shabbats, and this time, we loved building community with the entire JFGO/JCC/JAO campus by celebrating Shabbat with our beloved mascot," added Alan Rusonik, Jewish Academy head...
(JTA)-The identity of the German synagogue attacker may have sounded familiar to American Jews, who have endured multiple attacks by far-right extremists over the past year. But the suspect's identity was more surprising for Jews in Western Europe. The murder of two people in Halle on Yom Kippur was the first lethal anti-Semitic assault in decades in that region by a far-right extremist. Most of the terrorist attacks against Jews there over the past 30 years have been carried out by radical...
(JNS)—Jewish and pro-Israel groups reacted unfavorably to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision on Sunday evening to withdraw U.S. forces from northeast Syria, ahead of an expected invasion by Turkey against Kurdish forces. The White House announced the withdrawal on Sunday, following a call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, eliciting alarm from the Syrian Kurds, whom Erdogan considers to be terrorists. Trump’s decision was also met with bipartisan condemnation, including from U.S. House Speak...
(JNS)—Eagles’ Wings, a nonprofit New York-based evangelical movement, hosted a “Global Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem” on Sunday, bringing together 70 millennial pastors from the United States, Canada and Brazil to Israel, many for the first time, along with their followers. Additionally, more than 500,000 evangelical Christian churches worldwide tuned in as GOD TV broadcasted the event to more than 260 million homes globally. Government, religious and business leaders, including other major Jewish and Christian global leaders...
TORONTO (JTA)—There’s a reason our moment demands a book called “How To Fight Anti-Semitism,” and it’s not just anti-Semitism’s violent global resurgence. American Jews—at least the liberal, pro-Israel majority—are at risk of becoming, as New York Times columnist Bari Weiss puts it, “politically homeless.” Right-wing anti-Semitism is, Weiss grants, the more in-your-face threat to American Jews. The left poses a danger less due to overt anti-Semitism than from its refusal to take anti-Semitism seriously on account of Jews’ (presumed) privilege,...
(JNS)—What would a Jewish holiday be, without an op-ed in The New York Times demanding that Israel make more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs? On Rosh Hashanah, the Times published “Shrinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” by the Israeli journalist Micah Goodman. In it, he called for five new concessions by Israel: “paving a network of roads connecting all the Palestinian autonomous areas”; turning over control of the roads to the Palestinian Authority; “eliminating Israeli checkpoints”; giving the P.A. “more land for development”; a...
(JNS)—As visitors to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem wind their way through the main exhibition, they are confronted by a series of unsettling photographs from the first decade of Nazi power: Jews forced onto their hands and knees to clean the sidewalks; a young Jewish woman fleeing from a crowd in a blind panic, her dress ripped open; Jewish schoolchildren compelled to wear a yellow Star of David as a badge of shame. What these images convey is a powerful sense of how anti-Semitism can progress from being a mere ideology to e...
(JNS)—As Israeli frustration mounts about violence coming out of Gaza, the idea of a ground invasion, and once and for all to finish with Hamas aggression, becomes more appealing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed this approach, saying, “There probably won’t be a choice but to topple the Hamas regime.” While sympathetic to this impulse, I worry that too much attention is paid to tactics and not enough to goals. The result could be harmful to Israel. Attitudes toward Gaza are in flux. Efraim Inbar, the strategist who hea...
(JNS)—This July, Aaron Boone, the manager of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees, created an Internet meme when he launched into an epic and profane rant in taking issue with a call that went against his team. His abuse of an inexperienced umpire was recorded on a field microphone and then spread across the Internet to the amusement of players and fans, but to the consternation of the sport’s overlords. His repeated description of his players as “f****** savages” being mistreated by incompetent officials led to a one-game suspensio...
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. Tem...
(JNS)—A major Swedish political party has voted to change its official stance in favor of banning circumcision. The Swedish Centre Party tally at its annual meeting was 314-166, overturning the 18-member party board’s unanimous rejection of the proposal. The vote was criticized by party chief Annie Loof. The party has 31 of the 349 seats in the parliament. It currently backs the left-wing bloc, though it’s not officially part of the coalition. Both the Jewish and Muslim communities expressed outrage over the vote. “The Swedish Centre Party’s de...
(Israel Hayom via JNS)-A 5,000-year-old metropolis, the largest uncovered in Israel to date, has been excavated near Ein Iron, northeast of Hadera. The city, which dates back to the Early Bronze Age (the end of the fourth century BCE), was surrounded by walls and included residential and public areas, streets and alleyways. It had an area of 161 acres and was home to an estimated 6,000 residents. The Bronze Age metropolis was constructed on the remains of an even earlier city that dates back 7,0...
B’nai B’rith International President Charles O. Kaufman has issued the following statement: The heavenly gates are closed; the book of life is inscribed. Another judgment day has passed. And Jonathan Pollard, a convict who spent 30 years in prison for spying on behalf of Israel, remains prohibited from returning to his adopted country—the Jewish state. Sure, he’s been released from prison since 2015. His parole requires him to stay in his New York home from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., to submit any computer he uses for inspection, and to wear a GPS dev...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Here's the sad paradox of the shooting nearly one year ago at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue: The killing of 11 worshippers, the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history, hit a community that was one of the best prepared to handle such an assault. In the year or so prior to the attack, Jewish community security officials had run dozens of training sessions that reached as many as 5,000 Pittsburgh Jewish residents. Many of the Tree of Life congregants knew not to stay in place...
(JTA)-Jewish summer camp is such a crucial part of the American Jewish experience that many Jewish adults, even in their older age, likely remember the names of many of the kids in their cabins from when they were 11 years old. One of those cabins more than 60 years ago contained a couple of interesting young Jewish boys. Louie Kemp would go on to head his family's seafood company and played a key role in introducing imitation king crab to the United States. Robert "Bobby" Zimmerman, went on to...
Anti-Semitism in the halls of power... From "Inmotion" magazine (Simon Wiesenthal Center): "With religious, racial and ethnic hatred seeping into the halls of the United States Congress, the Center urged condemnation, clearly and loudly, by Republicans and Democrats alike. A national petition was launched by the Center urging House Foreign Affairs Chairman ELIOT ENGEL (D-NY) and Ranking Minority Member MIKE McCAUL (R-TX) to have the full committee censure Congresswoman IHAN OMAR (D-MIN) for her...
(JNS)—Members of Congress spoke on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives last week to recount their experiences of an “untold story of hope and opportunity” they encountered in Israel in August as part of a congressional tour sponsored by the U.S.-Israel Education Association. “We saw firsthand Israelis and Palestinians working together to promote peace and harmony... Many of the Palestinians were making between three and four times what they would otherwise earn if they did not have this opportunity to have this integrated busines...
Hundreds of etrogs held up at airport in England over new import regulations By Marcy Oster (JTA)—Hundreds of etrogs, the citron fruit used for the holiday of Sukkot, were seized at an airport in England. The Animal and Plant Health Agency held up the shipment at the Manchester Airport under new and stricter regulations on the import of citrus fruit. Etrog importers were unaware of the new rules, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported. The Board of Deputies of British Jews worked with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affai...
(JNS)—U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic members of Congress and elected officials plan to address the annual J Street National Conference later this month, also featuring speakers from anti-Israel organizations including IfNotNow, the New Israel Fund, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) national and central councils. Schumer and Pelosi are frequent speakers at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, o...
