Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) voiced support for extending Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria during a meeting with Samaria Regional Council leader Yossi Dagan in Washington. “Sovereignty is so important to the world. It’s so important to all of us,” Scalise said. The congressman spoke alongside Dagan after taking part in a summit on the issue organized by the council on Capitol Hill. “We always pray for Israel and especially the people of Samaria,” Scalise said. “We know how difficult the times are but keep mora...
(JNS) — An Israeli musician says he and two colleagues were kicked out of a restaurant in Vienna for speaking Hebrew, while elsewhere in Austria, a couple from Israel reported being denied service at a trailer park because of their nationality. The musicians — Hagai Shaham, Julia Gurvitch and Amit Peled — were waiting for the server at an eatery called “Pizzeria Ristorante Ramazzotti” on Meiselstrasse, a quiet street in Vienna’s 2nd district, or Leopoldstadt, which is the city’s most heavily Jewish quarter. The server heard them speaking Hebr...
An Orthodox Jewish music festival will take place in Bethel, New York on Aug. 7 - at the very same location where the iconic Woodstock Music & Art Fair took place in August 1969. Called Yamim Ba'im, or "The Coming Days," the four-act, family-friendly outdoor concert will occur at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Thursday, August 7. The venue, whose Pavilion Amphitheater and lawn seats 16,000, will host some of the biggest names in Jewish music, with Orthodox Israeli superstar Ishay Ribo...
Philanthropist Andy Pargh, known to many as The Gadget Guru, has donated a $1 million gift to the Jack & Lee Rosen JCC's event center. Previously known as the Rosen Event Center, it is now the Pargh Event Center. "This gift is more than generous. It is deeply meaningful. It reflects Mr. Pargh's enduring commitment to Jewish values, his family's legacy of giving and his belief in the power of shared experiences to bring people together," Rosen JCC CEO Ofira Bondorowsky stated in a press release...
The University of Central Florida Hillel has welcomed Rabbi Jordan Gerson as its new executive director. He joined the staff in June, leaving his position as the Silk Foundation campus rabbi – chief experience officer of Hillel at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served approximately 1700 Jewish students for 11 years. Before arriving at UCF, Gerson was selected to the eighth cohort of the Debra S. and Joseph S. Weinberg Accelerate Executive Advancement Program, Hillel's premier e...
(JNS) - History was made overnight at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, as Israeli-American Michael Mizrachi, 44, clinched the world championship title and walked away with a $10 million prize. Mizrachi, a Florida native and son of an Israeli father, proudly displayed a tattoo of the Israeli flag on his arm. In a recent major tournament victory, he requested that Israel's national anthem be played instead of the U.S. anthem. This time, he competed wearing a tag around his neck symbolizing...
(JNS) — Israel has called on the United Nations Security Council to act against the Damascus regime for its role in atrocities being committed against Druze civilians in Syria’s Suweida province. In a letter dated July 17, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar expressed “deep concern” over reports of brutal violence targeting the Druze community in southern Syria. Sa’ar described acts of “killings and executions, defacement of bodies, public humiliation of captured civilians,” alongside widespread looting and desecration of religious sites....
(JNS) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified Israel’s two-pronged strategic goal in Syria on Thursday — ensuring southern Syria is demilitarized and protecting the Druze of that region. Netanyahu defined southern Syria as an area running from the Golan Heights to Jabal al-Druze, a region encompassing nearly all of the as-Sweida Governorate, recently the site of massacres perpetrated by regime-linked Syrian forces against the Druze community. The Syrian regime violated both red lines, Netanyahu said. “It sent troops south of Damascu...
(JNS) — Two of the three Iranian nuclear facilities that the United States struck in June could potentially resume nuclear enrichment over the next several months, according to NBC News. NBC cited five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the most recent assessment — which has been briefed to some U.S. lawmakers, U.S. Defense Department officials and allied countries — who said that one of the sites was “mostly destroyed,” while the other two “were not as badly damaged.” According to NBC, discussions have been held within the U....
While the majority of Americans oppose antisemitism, a quarter believe that the recent string of attacks on Jews in the United States were “understandable,” according to a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League on Friday. The report comes in the wake of three recent attacks on Jewish targets by people claiming to act on behalf of the Palestinians: the arson attack on Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house in April, the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington D.C. in May and the firebombing attack on a gro...
The number of antisemitic assaults and acts of vandalism on college campuses fell sharply in the last school year, according to Hillel International. And the pro-Palestinian encampments that ignited fear among many Jewish college students in early 2024 effectively disappeared in the year since, with just nine encampments taking place in the last school year, the Jewish campus group said in its annual tally of antisemitic incidents, released Thursday, July 17. But Hillel International said antisemitic incidents were still on the rise on college...
(JNS) - Redeemed Hamas hostage Liri Albag will return to her Israel Defense Forces service this week, in a "significant" capacity, her father said on Monday. Albag was abducted by Hamas from the military's Nahal Oz outpost during the terrorist group's Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack, and was kept in captivity in Gaza for 477 days. She was released as part of a ceasefire deal in January. "She's not scared of anything," her father, Eli Albag, told Israel's Reshet Bet radio station, according to...
By Edwin Black It took more than 20 years of meticulous planning and practice for Israel to launch Operation Rising Lion. The Jewish State used every tool it could muster, from the clandestine forces of Mossad to its mighty air arsenal. It took almost two decades for America to develop the munitions and delivery system to finish the job. But more than mere munitions, it was the mental trigger that made the Twelve-Day War an explosive reality. The turning point for Israel was Oct. 7 followed by the frightening certitude that Iran was just two we...
(JNS) — Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has accused the United Nations of being “transparently antisemitic.” The claim, made in an internal employee forum, was first reported by The Washington Post and followed a published report by a controversial U.N. official accusing a selection of businesses, including technology firms, of profiting from the “genocide carried out by Israel” in Gaza. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, were among those listed in the U.N. report as a result of their provision of cloud and AI tech for the Israeli g...
(JNS) — The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, a 135-year-old federal body, voted on Thursday to change the names of two entities in Alaska, one with Nazi ties and the other a derogatory term for Japanese people. The board’s domestic names committee approved changing Nazi Creek, a mile-long stretch on the state’s Aleutian Islands, to a phrase that means “gizzard creek” in the Unangam Tunuu indigenous language. It also opted to change nearby Nip Hill, an anti-Japanese reference, to a phrase that means “gizzard hill.” Michael Livingston, a...
SpaceX launches ‘Dror-1’ Israeli communications satellite By JNS Staff (JNS) — Israel’s new national communications satellite, “Dror-1,” was launched into space on Sunday morning, Israel Aerospace Industries announced. Designed to meet Israel’s national communication needs, the Israeli-made satellite lifted off at 8 a.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Weighing 4.5 tons and with an 18-meter wingspan, Dror-1 separated from its launcher approximately 40 minutes after liftoff and began independently...
(JNS) — A majority of Israelis want the Gaza Strip to remain under Israeli military rule after the current war ends, according to a survey published by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs last week. The poll, conducted by Menachem Lazar of Lazar Research at the beginning of July, found that 52 percent support an Israeli takeover of Gaza with a temporary military administration — if all hostages are first released. Only 4 percent believe Hamas should remain in power, whether politically or militarily. The survey sampled mor...
(JNS) — Or Levy, who spent 491 days as a Hamas hostage, spoke out this week about his ordeal and the pain of knowing others remain captive in Gaza. Levy, 34, was freed in February, his pale, frail frame shocking the world. Nearly all his captivity was spent underground, shackled and starving. “It’s hard to understand how difficult it is to live on one pita a day for 491 days …, no human should live like that,” he told CNN this week. Levy was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. His wife, Einav, was killed in the attack, t...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces failed to protect Ofakim, a city of some 40,000 residents located 12.5 miles west of Beersheva, during the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre led by Hamas, an internal investigation report released by the military on Monday concludes. The investigation further found that the bravery and quick battle engagements of police officers, civilians and soldiers on the scene were the primary reasons the killing spree was halted at a relatively early stage. Fifteen Palestinian terrorists from Gaza invaded Ofakim a l...
The third summit between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu this year has ended, but there are still more questions than concrete answers about the nature of their meetings and the outcome. To help understand the significance of their meetings, what took place, and what to look for in the coming weeks and months, in the recent episode of the “Inspiration from Zion” podcast, military and political analyst Elliot Chodoff and journalist Jonathan Tobin provided a deep dive into the high-level meetings. The conversation was ric...
(JNS) - Israeli player Guy Sasson and his Dutch partner, Niels Vink, delivered a commanding performance to capture the quad doubles wheelchair tennis crown at the 2025 Wimbledon Championships in London on Saturday. The duo overpowered South African Donald Ramphadi and Briton Gregory Slade in the final, securing a decisive 6–0, 6–2 victory. Sasson, 45, declared "Am Yisrael Chai" live on the BBC following his win. Born and raised in Ramat Gan, Sasson was an avid tennis player in his youth and ser...
(JNS) — A final-hour revision to the Trump administration’s reconciliation package, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed on July 1, preserved the Educational Choice for Children Act, a provision that will direct new funding to Jewish schools, Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudath Israel of America’s national director of government affairs, told JNS. Motzen told JNS that the school choice provision in the bill, which creates a pool of federal tax credits to fund scholarships for private schools, including yeshivot and Jewish day schools, was initially...
Rabbis and other clergy members in the United States may endorse candidates from the pulpit without jeopardizing their house of worship’s tax-exempt status, the Internal Revenue Service has decreed. The policy change reverses a ban on endorsing or opposing candidates by religious organizations known as the Johnson Amendment, enacted in the 1950s. The IRS made the change in the course of settling a lawsuit brought by two churches and a Christian broadcasting network in Texas that sought to undo the ban for all nonprofit entities. The IRS said e...
Ofira Bondorowsky, CEO of the Rosen JCC, announced that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state budget, which includes a generous appropriation of over half a million dollars for the Jack & Lee Rosen Jewish Community Center. These funds will help expand senior programs and services and enhance security measures across the campus. “When the late Harris Rosen opened the campus in 2009, his vision was clear: to create a welcoming space where individuals of all ages, backgrounds and faiths could come together, grow and thrive. Today that vision is n...
By Aaron Bandler (JNS) — The Nysmith School, a private institution in Herndon, Va., discriminated against a Jewish family, which complained about “persistent and severe” antisemitism, by expelling its three children, according to a complaint that the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed with the office of the Virginia attorney general. The 40-year-old Northern Virginia school, where tuition runs from about $31,500 to $46,600 and which has an enrollment of about 500, refused to act to curb Jew-hatred on its campus and even...
