Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Stetson University and the Ginsburg Family Foundation announced the establishment of the Jeffrey and Diane Ginsburg Hillel House and a $2 million gift to renovate, update and furnish an existing university property. In 2017 Stetson University made a commitment to become a school of choice for Jewish families and the announcement today of the Jeffrey and Diane Ginsburg Hillel House is a significant step forward. When open, "the house will become the hub for Jewish life on campus and will serve...
As the inaugural event for this year's visiting author series and Central Florida Jewish Book Festival, New York Times bestselling author Brian Kilmeade will be at The Roth Family Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando on Sunday, Nov. 25 at 5:30 p.m. He will be signing his latest book, "Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans." Kilmeade is a Fox News television personality. Weekdays, he co-hosts Fox's morning show, Fox & Friends, along with Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt. He has...
(Los Angeles, CA)—StandWithUs has launched a wide-scale campaign to hold National Students for Justice in Palestine accountable for spreading anti-Semitism, supporting violence, and violating free speech. The campaign features a petition to the U.S. Department of Education and higher education governing bodies in Canada, letter from StandWithUs and Alums for Campus Fairness to every university with a registered SJP affiliate, social media content educating the public about SJP’s extremism, op-eds, and more. “We are putting all relevant gover...
(JNS)—The second round of American sanctions on Iran will took effect on Nov. 5. That’s been the plan since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in May from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which lifted those sanctions. The upcoming round will include targeting Iran’s “energy, shipping and the ship-building sectors, as well as the provision of insurance and transactions involving the Central Bank of Iran and designated Iranian financial institutions,” said State Dep...
Imagine a fun date for lunch and shopping with 120 friends-that's the essence of JP Connections. The annual luncheon and holiday bazaar hosted by the Jewish Pavilion will be held on Dec. 6 at 11 a.m. at Hilton Orlando North. Longtime volunteers Judy Suberman and Susan Bernstein will be honored at this volunteer appreciation and paid-up membership event. For the Jewish Pavilion, volunteers are lifeblood-it would be impossible to touch the lives of 500 Jewish seniors in more than 70 living facilit...
(Israel Hayom via JNS)-Until a few weeks ago, Jair Bolsonaro, now the president-elect of Brazil, was a little-known legislator. No one thought he would go on to become the leader of the country. But on Wednesday, a week after he astonished everyone by winning the presidential election in Brazil-the largest democracy in Latin America-Bolsonaro chose Israel Hayom for what appears to be his first interview with the foreign media, and made it clear that his support for Israel and promises about...
Jewish Academy of Orlando has partnered with Jewish Family Services to deliver whole-child education and parent enrichment. The arrangement includes a guidance counselor, Danielle Glover, to work with families and to provide in-class guidance lessons on a bi-weekly basis. With curriculum designed to address the needs of the whole child, topics range from conflict resolution to developing a growth mindset. Glover tailors her sessions to address issues unique to a particular class or grade level....
Nation of Islam leader and prominent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan chanted "Death to America" and claimed that "America has never been a democracy" on Sunday during a solidarity trip to Iran, ahead of the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on the country this week. According to Iran's semi-official state news agency Mehr, Farrakhan said at a meeting with the Secretary of Iran's Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei that America is conspiring against Iran. He also compared President Donald Trump to Satan....
(MEMRI via JNS)—Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan visited Iran as the Islamic Republic celebrated the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran in 1979. During a speech at Tehran University, Farrakhan said that the United States is “gloating” over new economic sanctions. He said that nothing happens without the will of Allah, and added: “Is it not true that you have called America the Great Satan? If you believe that, then wouldn’t Satan be actively involved in trying to destroy a nation that is set up on... submissio...
(JTA)—More than 75 percent of Jews voted for Democrats on an Election Day that was also good to Jewish congressional candidates. A poll conducted by GBA Strategies, a Democrat-aligned pollster, and commissioned by the liberal Israel lobby J Street, found that 76 percent of Jewish voters voted for Democrats, while 19 percent voted for Republicans. A CNN exit poll found that the Jewish split was 79 percent to 17 percent. According to The New York Times, 51 percent of American voters overall cast ballots for House Democrats, versus 47 percent for...
(JTA)—Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held Nov. 6, with Jewish Congress members poised to take key leadership roles. Republicans looked to increase their majority in the Senate. Five Jewish Democrats are set to chair key House committees, including three representatives from New York: Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee; Eliot Engel, Foreign Affairs; and Nita Lowey, Appropriations Adam Schiff of California will head the Intelligence Committee and John Yarmuth of Kentucky (brother of O...
For months now, through the course of the recently completed elections, I have been asking myself one basic question. Not who’s right or wrong. Not who’s better or worse. Not who will I support or fight. We all have our personal, predetermined answers to those. My question is this: what is a good word? I’ve written column after column calling attention to that very phrase. I’ve tried to use “good words,” and sometimes the words I’ve chosen have been what people might consider “bad words”—c...
I know a thing or two about underdogs, having lived for some time in an underdog town in an underdog country. The town: Kiryat Shmona. The country: Israel. To the north and to the west, beyond a ridge of high hills, lay Lebanon. To the east, beyond majestic Mount Hermon, stretched Syria. I was hired for the crew of an American television broadcasting and news gathering operation headquartered in Marjayoun, southern Lebanon. This was a good three decades ago, and in those days, the south of Lebanon amounted to Israel’s “security belt.” The Leban...
The Bill of Rights, one of the most important underpinnings of our American experiment in free self-government, is in realty a “Bill of Obligations,” instructing our government not to unreasonably intrude into the private lives and freedom of the American people. The very first words of the 1st Amendment are, “Congress shall make no law ...” The rest of the text details in what areas Congress is restrained or prohibited from acting. The language does not define what the people can do but rather, what the government is prohibited from doing....
erally pulled my car to the curb, listening to determine the city in which it occurred, and sat until I could gain my composure. A lone gunman attack on a synagogue at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. A baby naming in progress? Children in school? Worshipers in the sanctuary? Total disbelief. This is America, not Argentina; not France; not Turkey or Africa. We don’t live within the vestiges of this level of brutality. A heinous act encompassing the most blatant anti-Semitism in the purest of senseless evil. An evil that is not comprehendible b...
Just hours after the largest massacre of Jews in America in U.S. history, the Atlantic Monthly posted a piece by Franklin Foer. In his “Prayer for Squirrel Hill, and for American Jewry,” Foer wrote, “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning [President Donald] Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed our community in danger.” That is, in the shadow of the blood-drenched synagogue, Foer declared war on his fellow Jews. Between a quar...
Last week marked the 80th anniversary of one of the single most infamous anti-Semitic days in history. Observing and understanding this anniversary is all the more critical in the wake of the anti-Semitic Pittsburgh massacre. While hatred of Jews is sadly not new, one thing new today is the solidarity among Jews and Christians standing united against anti-Semitism. By contrast, in the 1930s, many church leaders openly supported the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism. Known as Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—on the night of November 9, 193...
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...
(Kveller via JTA)—“I’m so scared for your synagogue,” my (non-Jewish) mother said to me as we were driving the other day. We were talking about my daughter’s schedule—religious school was on the agenda for that afternoon—and she had asked me about our synagogue’s security following the terrible attack in Pittsburgh. I was silent for a minute, and then told her that I’m scared all the time now. I’m scared when I go to the library; I’m scared when I go to the mall. I hesitate before I get into an elevator with strangers, and I think about bombing...
(JNS) Saudi Arabia's King Salman and his powerful son Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (known for short as "MBS") continue to project stability despite the jitters that the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi sent through the American and European capitals. MBS appears confident, no matter the widely reported claims that he was responsible for Khashoggi's killing. On Monday, the prince launched the building of the country's first nuclear reactor. Meanwhile, the king started a weeklong domestic...
(JNS)-Dubbed the "tropical Trump," Jair Bolsonaro's victory on Sunday appears to have imbued much of Brazil's population with renewed hope for a better economy and less corruption. The win by the right-wing, anti-establishment figure may also upend the country's foreign policy, which has brought renewed hope for better relations between the Latin American country and Israel. Indeed, during his campaign, Bolsonaro said he would make Israel the first country he visits as president and would move...
"Tears come from the heart and not from the brain." -Leonardo da Vinci When I was 21 years old, I had a very personal spiritual experience. While contemplating a greatest power and imagining it above, I felt a divine spark deep inside of me; that is, inside of my heart. Since then, my belief in God has never wavered. Some 45 years later, I had another experience of the heart. This time I had a heart attack and open-heart bypass surgery. After the surgery, when I left the hospital, I had an unsig...
A frequently asked question... "How could God have allowed the Holocaust?" A good answer according to Rabbi ALAN LURIE, "We can be mad at God for the Holocaust or for other human tragedies, but this is like a teenager who begs you to let him drive a car, promising to be responsible, gets drunk, crashes into a telephone pole, and then blames you for giving him the keys. If we agree that humanity must have free will, we must accept the consequences of its decisions. As Elie Wiesel wrote, 'After th...
(JNS)—In the wake of the synagogue shooting last week in Pittsburgh, activists from several mainline Protestant churches came under fire for promoting a culture of anti-Semitism in their churches, especially the United Methodist Church. The worst offenders are usually activists affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and the United Church of Christ (UCC). But this year, the activists and officials from the United Methodist Church took on a leading role by hosting the controversial “Christ at the Checkpoint Conference” in Oklah...
(JNS)-The controversial Canary Mission-an anonymous campus watchdog group that exposes organizations, academics and activists that demonize Israel on college campuses-recently came under fire when the San Francisco Jewish Federation indicated that it would no longer facilitate private-donor funding of the group. Articles in The Forward blasted the organization as "shadowy" for refusing to identify its leadership and sources of funding. Yet for pro-Israel student activists who are actively...
