Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1934 - 1958 of 10919
In recognition of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, Jewish National Fund-USA partnered with the Jewish Academy of Orlando to honor first responders and security personnel who keep the communities safe. In a moving ceremony, the school community gathered to honor Chief Security Officer Jake Silverman and Mr. Mike, school security. Head of School Chana Ben- Abraham said "For those of you that were in this room, you know there aren't words to describe the feeling surging through the seats as we paid...
Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation is taking a stand on protecting the Jewish community from rising antisemitism. While this commitment to our community and to Jews around the world is not new, members of the congregation and its board were recently inspired by the "Stand Up to Jewish Hate" campaign, launched by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. "I first saw commercials for Stand up to Jewish Hate on television," said Jeff Fischer, a founding member of SOJC. "I was amazed at the...
When actor and director David Schwimmer stood up last November to talk about his experience with hate and the importance of building alliances to combat racism and antisemitism, the “Friends” star emphasized the importance of speaking up. “One of the biggest problems is silence. As I’ve said, silence is complicity, and so I try to urge people to speak out,” Schwimmer said at the annual ADL summit on antisemitism and hate, called Never Is Now. “I think it’s my responsibility. I don’t do enou...
The Rosen JCC is offering the opportunity to get certified in First Aid and CPR. Classes will be offered Oct. 19 and 24 at the Rosen JCC from 6 p.m. — 8 p.m. The training includes adult and child CPR. It includes First Aid and AED Training. For personalized training the classes are limited to 20 people. The cost is $50 per person. Register at www.rosenjcc.org/cpr....
(JTA) — After months of icy relations, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met face to face for the first time since Netanyahu’s return to office late last year — with both appearing eager to convey that the U.S.-Israel alliance remains on solid footing despite their disagreements. The two leaders have been at odds for the better part of a year over a range of issues, from Netanyahu’s effort to weaken the Israeli court system to his far-right governing partners to the Biden administration’s attempts to reenter a...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his country’s leading nuclear and security specialists to work with U.S. negotiators to find a compromise that lets Saudi Arabia enrich uranium, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Israeli officials are “quietly working” with the White House to develop a “U.S.-run, uranium-enrichment operation” in Saudi Arabia for a civilian nuclear program, a key condition of the kingdom for accepting a normalization agreement with Israel, officials from both countries told the Journal. Ma...
(JTA) — A middle school teacher in a district outside Houston, Texas, has been fired reportedly for reading a sexual passage from Anne Frank’s diary out loud to eighth-grade students, the district told local news. The passage came from a 2018 graphic version of the diary by the world-famous Jewish Holocaust victim that restored some portions of the initial book that had been cut from the most well-known editions. “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has also been at the center of several other recent book-related controver...
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed Saudi-Israeli relations with George Stephanopoulos in New York on Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “When it comes to possible normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, this would be a transformative event,” Blinken said. “We’ve had decades of turmoil, decades of conflict in the Middle East. To bring these two countries together in particular would have a powerful effect in stabilizing the region, in integrating the region, in bringing people together, not having them at...
(JTA) – Days after a synagogue in St. Petersburg, Florida, was forced to evacuate services following a bomb threat, the local city council met to discuss a resolution about antisemitism. The resolution was about whether to endorse a definition of antisemitism that its authors and local advocates both say can be a useful first step in fighting hatred of Jews. Notably refusing to cast a vote: A controversial council member and member of the Nation of Islam who voiced multiple objections to the definition, questioned Jewish community leaders a...
(JNS) — Nearly every notable U.S. State Department official is on pilgrimage to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual general debate. Barbara Leaf, the Biden administration’s top diplomat for the Middle East, and Dan Shapiro, senior adviser for regional integration and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, have been spotted in the Big Apple, as has Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-American U.S. energy envoy, who brokered an Israeli-Lebanese maritime border agreement. Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy for monit...
GPS interference leads to change in landing route for Tel Aviv-bound planes (JNS) — Passenger planes headed to Ben-Gurion Airport have recently had to take alternative routes due to a severe attack on Israel that prevents it from navigating aircraft using GPS. The alternate route—over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria—is longer than the one that allows for landing over Tel Aviv directly at Ben-Gurion Airport. In recent months, Israel has been the target of incessant attacks by unknown elements, apparently from abroad, that inter...
(J. Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Two months after proclaiming that July would henceforth be known locally as “American Christian Heritage Month,” the board of supervisors in El Dorado County, California has reversed course. The county’s elected governing body unanimously rescinded the proclamation Tuesday following backlash from local Jews, the American Civil Liberties Union and others who said it inappropriately advanced the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. “I commend the board for reflecting on and revis...
(JTA) – Stan Polovets, an oil industry executive who used his wealth and connections to help establish one of the most prestigious awards in the Jewish world, has been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman he took out on a date. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe 1, made the allegations in a civil lawsuit filed against Polovets, the CEO of the Genesis Prize Foundation, in Manhattan last week. She is demanding financial compensation whose amount would be determined in court. S...
(JTA) - The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City's former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc. The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country's first Jewish president, too. Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the l...
StandWithUs, a 22-year-old international non-partisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism is pleased to announce that Mikayla Rosenwasser of Boone High School and Allie Bielski of UCF are participating in the 2023-24 Kenneth Leventhal High School Internship and the Emerson Fellowship. Mikayla Rosenwasser of Boone High School is the StandWithUs High School Kenneth Leventhal High School Intern. Recognizing that education needs to begin before students enter...
JFS Orlando’s annual Hope Challenge is underway. Running Sept. 12 through Oct. 15, every dollar donated to Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando will be generously matched by Lauren and Scott Zimmerman and the Zimmerman Foundation, with a total match of up to $25,000. With your help, JFS Orlando’s FAMILY of services can continue to bring hope to those in need during the High Holidays and beyond. For the cost of just eight cups of coffee, you feed a family for a week through their Pearlman Food Pantry; two theme park passes you support a f...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, according to Axios. It will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two men since Netanyahu returned to power nearly nine months ago. Three U.S. officials confirmed to the news site that the two leaders will not meet at the White House and that an internal debate occurred in Biden’s political circle regarding whether they should meet at the Oval Office or at U.N. headquarters, wit...
On Wednesday, Sept. 6, 40 Jewish Pavilion sponsors attended a special breakfast at Allegro Winter Park hosted by the Jewish Pavilion. Courtesy of Allegro's catering team, the breakfast included raisin challah, apples and honey, lox, fresh fruits, eggs with a medley of vegetables, and an assortment of desserts, including black and white cookies. One of the highlights of the morning was the opportunity for sponsors to introduce themselves and share their personal connections to the Jewish...
(JNS) — Two congressmen put forward a bipartisan bill proposing a new annual holiday on Sept. 11. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) have introduced the Patriot Day Act. “By formally recognizing 9/11 as Patriot Day, we will make sure that we always honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day—and never give up our fight against terror,” Gottheimer said. “I am proud to lead bipartisan legislation to recognize those who lost their lives on that day. We must never forget those who made the ultimate...
(JTA) – A prominent member of an American neo-Nazi group has been extradited to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Robert Wilson is accused of being behind a February incident in which a message was laser-projected onto the house where Anne Frank hid during the Holocaust. The message read “inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to a widely-debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Frank’s famous diary is a forgery because it was origina...
(JNS) — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is defending the co-chair of his campaign in New Hampshire, who posted that “Israel is an apartheid state.” “This is such a dumb game the media and shallow career politicians play,” Ramaswamy, a technology entrepreneur, wrote. “Guess what? I have volunteers on my campaign whom I don’t agree with on everything. Bruce Fenton is right on fed policy, bitcoin, individual liberty and dismantling the administrative state. Turns out he’s dead wrong on calling Israel an ‘apartheid stat...
(JTA) — In a blistering letter, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he no longer deserves a medal she gave him eight years ago — her city’s top honor — because of what she called his willful Holocaust denial. Hidalgo’s letter to Abbas, delivered on Thursday, comes after U.S., German and Israeli diplomats as well as U.S. Jewish groups across the political spectrum condemned a speech Abbas delivered in which he peddled falsehoods about the Holocaust and distortions about Judaism and the Jews. Abb...
Earlier this week, a recent speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas came to light in which he characterized the Holocaust as Hitler “fighting” the Jews because of “their social role, and not their religion.” He also denied Jews’ well-documented geographical origins and accused Israel›s founding prime minister of perpetrating false flag attacks on Jewish communities in the Middle East to encourage immigration to Israel. The following is a statement from Mike Igel, chairman of The Florida Holocaust Museum: Mahmoud Abbas’s rem...
(JNS) — Former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney accused Israelis and Jews of suppressing free speech after an event titled “Can Black People and White People Work Together to Defeat Our Common Enemy,” namely the Jews, was canceled on X, formerly known as Twitter. The poster for the event, which McKinney shared to social media, features a Star of David under the word “Enemy” in the title and a picture of a book titled “Jews Are the Problem.” The event, which the former Georgia congresswoman said she would be watching, was set to feature forme...
(JTA) — Several Jewish groups are suing a large school district in Orange County over an ethnic studies curriculum they allege is antisemitic and was approved covertly in violation of California law requiring public participation in decision making. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the American Jewish Committee and Potomac Law Group, with support from StandWithUs, seeks to bar the Santa Ana Unified School District from implementing the recently approved c...
