Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(Israel21C via JNS) - If there's proof that you can't go anywhere in Israel without stumbling on some kind of ancient artifact, it's got to be the news this morning that a scuba diver has discovered an ancient Crusader sword on the sea bed off the Carmel coast in the north of the country. Atlit resident Shlomi Katzin was diving off the coast at the beach in Carmel on Saturday when he spotted ancient artifacts lying on the sea bed, uncovered apparently by shifting sands. Katzin saw ancient stone...
During her remarks at the United Nations Security Council on Oct. 19, 2021, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the UNSC to reduce its criticism of Israel and adopt "a more balanced approach." But then Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield engaged in the same type of unbalanced criticism of Israel that she complained about. The U.S. Ambassador exaggerated and condemned "violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians and their property,"...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Colin Powell will be remembered in history as the first Black U.S. national security adviser, the first Black military chief of staff and the first Black secretary of state. He was also the first military chief to speak Yiddish as a second language, and he loved surprising Jews with his skill. Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state who brokered the "road map" to a two-state peace deal that still informs much of U.S. policy in the region, died Monday aged 84. He died of...
(JTA) — An 700-year-old Jewish prayerbook from Germany, offered for sale by a French Jewish organization to shore up its finances, sold at auction on Tuesday for $8.3 million. Known as the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor, the prayerbook easily beat the $4-6 million pre-sale estimate by Sotheby’s New York auction house as four bidders battled one another for five dramatic minutes. The item, which was sold to an unnamed private buyer, comes out of the collection of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a 160-year-old French Jewish organization that...
Part II Sandi Solomon, three-term Casselberry city commissioner has found relatives who were thought to have perished in the Holocaust. Through a genealogy search that her daughter-in-law Sharon Fleitman of Atlanta had conducted while searching on the Facebook group's Jewish Genealogy portal, Fleitman discovered 31 pages of testimony that Henryk (Henry) Zyngier had given about his experience in the Holocaust when he lived in Tel Aviv in 1957. Solomon discovered her mother's first cousin, Henryk...
Over 140 people, including the vendors, delighted in a wonderful Jewish Pavilion breakfast networking event at Dillard's on Oct. 14, titled "Meet, Greet and Eat" (and Shop!). They enjoyed delicious food and drinks like mimosas, lox and bagels, yogurt parfait, scrambled eggs with onions and nova, fruit, muffins, cookies and more. There were wonderful raffle bas-kets provided by Dillard's along with goody bags for all participants. Special thanks to Jewish Pavilion sponsors and supporters for...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Washington D.C. branch of a national climate action group turned down a role at a voting rights rally because a “number of Zionist organizations” will be taking part. “Given our commitment to racial justice, self-governance and indigenous sovereignty, we oppose Zionism and any state that enforces its ideology,” Sunrise DC said in a statement it posted Tuesday on Twitter. The group named the National Council of Jewish Women, the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs as...
(JNS) — The pro-Israel student group Maccabee Task Force organized its first three-day conference to help strengthen the relationship between Black and Jewish communities. Roughly 100 people from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) attended the Black Student Leaders Summit, which was held from Oct. 1-3 in Atlanta, where many of the student leaders were based. The goal of the summit was to help re-establish an alliance that has increasingly split in the last decade as a result of politics and various social movements in the U...
(JTA) — After more than a year and a half of largely closed doors, Israel just moved one step closer to allowing tourists back into the country — as long as they are vaccinated. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and the country’s health minister Nitzan Horowitz approved a plan Thursday that would allow foreign tourists back into the country beginning Nov. 1. The plan still has to be formally approved by the government. Since the beginning of the pandemic, tourists have only been allowed to enter the country with special approval and have be...
Michael A. Igel, chair of the Florida Commissioner's Task Force on Holocaust Education and Board Chair of The Florida Holocaust Museum, strongly denounces educators who claim there are two sides to the Holocaust. This comes on the heels of a Florida principal being reinstated despite refusing to acknowledge the Holocaust as a historical fact, and a Texas school administrator instructing teachers to balance Holocaust education with books denying the atrocities. Igel issued the following statement...
(JNS) — Some Jewish liberals say that they saw this coming. There were those who believed that the movement to stop the teaching of critical race theory in the schools was bound to negatively impact teaching about the Holocaust. They claim that those fears were vindicated by the comments of a Texas educator in Southlake, Texas, who was taped telling teachers in a training session that “make sure that if … you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has opposing, that has other perspectives.” The context for this absurd suggest...
Domestic antisemitism has a new tactic. The present wave of antisemitic drivel comes not from the Right (“Jews will not replace us”) but from the Left. Now, in clearing up who and what is the Right and the Left, we have to shift our ideas from just a few short years ago. We knew that the Far Right was antisemitic, yet seemed to favor Israel. Confusing? Of course. The Left for the most part in its early configuration was Liberal, in favor of most minorities, fought for voting rights, etc. Today however, in the Democratic party, there is a “Far L...
(JNS) — I am the child of Holocaust survivors, who lost their homes and families because a Nazi regime implemented the “Final Solution” to eradicate the Jewish people. There are no gravestones to mark the place where all my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were murdered and buried. This week, I spoke to Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian Muslim woman whose brother Bijan was murdered in another more recent attempt at a Final Solution, and who does not know where her brother or the thousands of others who were massacred with him rest today...
(JNS) — A state-by-state survey of young Americans last year showed that more than half in Texas could not name a concentration camp or ghetto where Jews were imprisoned and tortured during the Holocaust, despite there being more than 40,000 sites in Europe. The Claims Conference survey of 18- to 39-year-olds discovered that more than 60 percent did not know that 6 million Jews were brutally murdered, and almost a third of those students believed that the number was less than half that. Some believed that Jews caused the Holocaust and nearly h...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) —The greatest threat to the survival of the Jewish community is neither Iran nor intermarriage. Rather, it is our increasing political and cultural isolation, and the resulting hostility that we face from both ends of the ideological spectrum. The fringes of the nationalist hard right continue to traffic in Charlottesville-style blood-and-soil anti-Semitism, and such ugly racism will always constitute an intolerable threat to Jews around the world. But the growing anti-Zionism of the far-left fringe represents a less o...
(JNS) — Each day, it becomes clearer that the Israeli Civil Administration is one of the greatest dangers to the Jewish people’s realization of the goal to resettle the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. Since the signing of the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, the Civil Administration has lost its way. Despite being a branch of the Israeli Defense Ministry/Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration is more concerned with facilitating the creation of the “State of Palestine” than it is with ensuring the rights of the Jewish people in its anc...
MORNING MINYANS (Please note, because of the coronavirus, some minyans have been canceled or held virtually.) 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. Congr...
(JTA) — The statue of Thomas Jefferson that will be removed from the chambers of the New York City Council at the urging of Black lawmakers was a gift in 1834 from one of the first Jewish officers in the U.S. military. The city’s Public Design Commission decided to remove the statue following complaints from Assemblymen Charles Barron, Councilwoman Inez Barron and others that Jefferson was a slaveholder. The statue, which has stood in the city council’s chambers for over a century, was commissioned by Uriah Phillips Levy, a lifelong fan of Je...
(JNS) - Israel's Upper Galilee region is positioning itself to become a global leader in foodtech. Several food-tech and agritech accelerators and companies have established themselves in Israel's northern "periphery," where the Israeli government provides incentives for individuals and businesses to establish themselves there. The region boasts open and fertile land that brings forth some of Israel's top produce, as well as an ecosystem of budding infrastructure - public bodies and...
There have been several films surrounding the historical moment when Israel was established, most taking a nationalist stance, such as “Exodus” starring Paul Newman. As joyful of a moment as this was for many, even for the characters in the film we are about to look at, there was an underlying melancholy that crept its way into their subconscious. As bombs started to fall and wars were triggered, many realized that this was not the romantic dream that so many Jews had. For Israeli born actress Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, she decid...
Surprise! Surprise!... I never knew that GERALDO RIVERA was raised Jewish. Did you? This is a complete surprise to me! He is a well-known American journalist, attorney, author, political commentator and former television host. But a Jew???? Geraldo, was born at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City to Lillian Friedman and Cruz Allen Rivera. (His dad was Puerto Rican). Geraldo's mom's family was of Russian Jewish descent. Geraldo also had a bar mitzvah! He did some growing up in Brooklyn,...
(JTA) — Some of Netflix’s biggest international hits of the last few years — from “Fauda” to “Shtisel” — have been Israeli imports. Now, the streaming giant is spotlighting Palestinian entertainment, as well. Last week, Netflix released a “Palestinian Stories” collection consisting of what it said was 32 films, although only 27 films were listed under the category in the U.S. as of Monday. Of the available selections, which span the last couple of decades, 12 of them are short films. A mix...
(JNS) — Nearly 90 percent of the Palestinian films in a collection launched last week by Netflix are directed by BDS supporters, Israeli NGO Im Tirtzu reported on Monday. The collection, titled “Palestinian Stories,” is made of up 32 films, most of which had been uploaded to the streaming service by Monday. Of the 28 movies by and about Palestinians that are so far available on the Israeli version of Netflix, 25 (89 percent) are directed by BDS supporters, Im Tirtzu research revealed. According to the NGO’s findings, 12 of the directo...
(JTA) — In a recent opinion piece for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rich Brownstein argued that “The Grey Zone” is the greatest Holocaust film ever made. Brownstein is no amateur critic. He is a lecturer for Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies and the author of “Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide.” After publishing these two stories, it quickly became clear that the topic of Holocaust films struck a chord with our readers. So, we asked: What is the one Holocaust film you th...
Rita Cassel Coenson, 89, beloved wife, grandmother and great-grandmother, died Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. She was born Oct. 5, 1932. Rita was a gifted artist, interior designer and business owner. She was married to the late Martin Coenson for 54 years. She is survived by her children — Steven, Barbara, Craig and Douglas; her grandchildren — Chad, Julie, Melissa, Caleb, Elijah and Andrew; great-grandchildren — Asher, Raleigh and Annabelle; and sister, Joyce Kitey and her family. She was beautiful woman who loved life, loved to laugh, and most...
