Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2032 - 2056 of 10919
(JNS) - Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock are spearheading a 670 million shekel ($180 million) initiative with the stated goal of strengthening "civilian resilience" in Jewish communities across Judea and Samaria, local media reported on Wednesday. The "unprecedented" addition to the 2023-2024 budget, parts of which were already agreed upon in the coalition agreement with Smotrich's the Religious Zionism Party, will be formally discussed at the...
(JTA) – At least two synagogues in California evacuated during Shabbat services over the weekend as online trolls targeted Jewish congregations for the fourth straight week with fake bomb and other security threats. At least 26 congregations in 12 states have received the threats, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which is raising alarm about the barrage. The organization believes the instigators are selecting their targets based on the availability of livestreamed services and other events, motivated by their desire to watch the c...
(JTA) — An Israeli reporter is claiming that she was the victim of discrimination by haredi Orthodox men on a recent United Airlines flight to Newark — and that the Israeli flight attendant had sided with the men over her. Neria Kraus’ account ricocheted across the internet while her plane was in the air. Competing accounts of what transpired and soon emerged, with other passengers claiming the reporter’s gender was never an issue and arguing that she had jumped to a conclusion based on a man’s religious head covering. What’s clear is that Krau...
Jerusalem merchant arrested after charging US tourist $1,900 for ashtray (JNS) — Police detained a merchant in Jerusalem’s Old City this week after he allegedly scammed an American tourist by charging her almost $1,900 for an ashtray using her credit card. Earlier this month, the man approached a woman, who is in her 60s, after seeing her smoking near his shop. He proceeded to give her an ashtray. Eventually, after thanking him for the gesture, she asked to buy it, to which he responded that it would cost 30,000 shekels (about $8,000), but she...
(JNS) — The Biden administration pressed forward with plans to allocate hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians despite concerns within the administration that those funds could end up supporting the Iran-backed terror group Hamas. According to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, U.S. State Department officials expressed those concerns privately, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws barring the United States from sending funds into areas run by Palestinian terror groups. The a...
(JTA) - Jewish groups in the United States and in Hawaii are launching relief efforts following the devastation caused by wildfires that have killed more than 50 people so far. The wildfires have all but destroyed the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, which Hawaii's Jewish governor, Josh Green, toured on Thursday with Brian Schatz, the state's Jewish senator. "What we saw today was likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history," Green said in a statement. The fires have had...
Following the historic JCC Maccabi Games in Israel, the world's largest Jewish youth sports event continued with JCC Association of North America's 41st JCC Maccabi Games® and Access events in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, August 7-11, hosted by the David Posnack JCC. The opening ceremony was held at the FLA Live Arena, with more than three dozen state, county, and local officials as well as prominent Jewish leaders attending. The Games are a dynamic experience of Olympic-style sports and volunt...
The Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando has recently welcomed Rabbi Rachael Jackson, her husband, Danyul and 9-year-old son, Adrian. Rabbi Jackson is the first female rabbi to serve in the Orlando community. She is not the only female rabbi now here. Rabbi Melissa Crespy accepted the position of full-time rabbi at Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation shortly after Rabbi Jackson. Jackson has been selected by congregation CRJ to replace Rabbi Steven Engle who served the congregation for over 27 years and has now retired. Hailing from...
A new student rabbi is coming to Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation. Rabbi Michael Fraade is a fifth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew College, a pluralistic, nondenominational institution in Newton, Mass. He brings with him a rich variety of experiences, serving as a hospital chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital; studying Torah at several progressive yeshivas, including Hadar in New York and Pardes in Jerusalem; working as a farmer and Jewish outdoor educator; and volunteering with non...
It’s heartwarming to learn about the Shabbat Service organized by the Jewish Pavilion in collaboration with the staff, volunteers, and residents of Cascade Heights in Longwood. Sharing challah and wine as part of the service is a cherished tradition in Jewish culture, symbolizing unity and spiritual connection. The Jewish Pavilion’s dedication to enhancing the lives of elder care community residents is truly inspiring. Elderly individuals often face challenges such as loneliness and a sense of...
Film Screening: Liga Terezin On Aug. 24, the Holocaust Center will host a film screening of “Liga Terezin” (2013), a documentary inspired by Oded Breda’s quest to document the story of a soccer league in the Ghetto Theresienstadt, after he recognized his uncle in a Nazi propaganda film about the team. This discovery started him on a journey to understand the roll that sports can play in helping to combat discrimination and antisemitism today, especially soccer, the most watched sport in the world. A panel led by Breda and Joanie Holzer Schir...
On Aug. 23, at noon, TOP Jewish Foundation will host a webinar on Estate Planning & Charitable Giving — Leaving Your Legacy. In the webinar, attendees will learn how to include charitable giving in your estate plan and tax-advantaged estate planning strategies. This is a zoom meeting. Register at www.topjewishfoundation.org/webinars. For more information, call 813-961-9090....
(JNS) — Sarah Miller’s biggest takeaway from her first day at the Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., was that there are stronger forces that unite rather than divide. “We have more in common than we have apart,” Miller, a junior studying web design, education and French at Butler University in Indianapolis, told JNS. She cited three speakers who shared “their belief in the power of building connections.” “They proved that not only on the international level but also on the personal level, the way to solve conflic...
(JTA) — Federal agents arrested a West Virginia man on Thursday for allegedly threatening jurors and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, which culminated last week in a death sentence. The man who was arrested, Hardy Lloyd, 45, is “a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district of West Virginia. The statement said Lloyd “made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses dur...
(JTA) — For its latest effort to combat antisemitism on college campuses, the Anti-Defamation League is turning to a particular brand of college student: frat boys. The Jewish civil rights group is partnering with Alpha Epsilon Pi, the historically Jewish fraternity, on an initiative to engage members of AEPi’s 150 local chapters starting this fall, the two groups announced Monday. They revealed the new initiative — which will include the creation of something called the Antisemitism Response Center — during AEPi’s international conventio...
(JNS) - The JCC Association of North America's 41st JCC Maccabi Games and Access events, which took place Aug. 6 through Aug. 11, opened at a ceremony on Monday at the FLA Live Arena in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was hosted by the David Posnack JCC. Nearly 2,000 Jewish teens comprising 64 delegations from the United States, Canada and six other nations around the world have gathered for the week-long events. For the first time, delegations from Argentina, South Africa and Ukraine are...
(JNS) - A state senator in Michigan has apologized to her Arab and Muslim constituents for a recent visit to Israel with her fellow lawmakers. Sylvia Santana, whose district includes part of Detroit. as well as Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, with a high concentration of Arab Muslims, posted the apology on social media. "I recognize my presence on this trip has sparked anger and disappointment by many in the Arab/Muslim community," she wrote. "For this, I truly apologize, seek your forgiveness...
(JTA) - For the first time in 800 years, the British city of York, whose Jewish population was decimated in a medieval pogrom, will be home to a rabbi. Rabbi Elisheva Salamo arrived in York from California last week after decades of pulpit work in the United States, Switzerland and South Africa. She will take a part-time pulpit at the York Liberal Jewish Community, which is affiliated with a denomination akin to the American Reform movement. The congregation was founded in 2014 and now has...
(JNS) - Reports have circulated that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) spoke at an art exhibit in Detroit held from May 26 to June 17, though the featured works didn't represent any classic school or style. Instead, a black-and-white drawing showed a teenage girl with a half-smile and the eliminationist protest chant "From the river to the sea" on top with "Palestine will be free" at the bottom. A photo showed a young woman in a black hijab holding a glue gun like a weapon as she stood in front of a...
(JNS) — In back-to-back social-media posts on Aug. 5, the U.S. State Department stated that it “strongly” condemned two attacks—one of which it blamed on “Israeli extremist settlers” and a second incident that “killed one and wounded two others.” It did not note that the latter attacker was a Palestinian terrorist, nor that the person killed was Israeli. The first post from the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs on X (formerly Twitter) condemned “strongly” an Aug. 4 “terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers that killed a 19-year o...
(JNS) — U.S. House of Representatives Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday in Jerusalem that judicial reform should have no bearing on American military support for Israel. Speaking to Israeli journalists about the divisive domestic debate regarding the ruling coalition’s legislative initiative, the New York lawmaker expressed the importance of maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge “regardless of where Israel lands in terms of the judicial reform effort.” Jeffries, who is leading a delegation of 24 House Democrats...
US tops list of tourists to Israel (JNS) — Some 2.25 million foreign tourists entered Israel in the first seven months of the year, with the largest group coming from the United States, figures the Central Bureau of Statistics released on Sunday show. The total was nearly double that from the same period last year as the world was recovering from the coronavirus pandemic but still lower than in 2019. The statistics also showed that 5.75 million Israelis went abroad in the first seven months of the year. Of course, this includes many citizens w...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS) — When Ido Sarfati moved to the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui a decade ago, he thought he had the perfect place to build a business. And he did; it grew to include seven retail shops that sold skincare products and other offerings to tourists. Last week, all of his stores burned to the ground in the historic wildfiresthat have claimed the lives of at least 93 people and destroyed more than 2,700 structures valued at more than $5 billion. But Sarfati’s greatest feeling is not of loss, he tells Cha...
(JNS) — U.S. defense guarantees under an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement would make Gulf states’ nuclear ambitions “unnecessary,” according to Jerusalem’s top diplomat. The Americans would be able to provide protection against Iranian aggression in the region, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen argued in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “[A] defense pledge could reassure Middle Eastern nations, primarily Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,” he wrote. “This approach would make individual nuclear ambitio...
(JNS) - The Philippine government is expanding its partnership with Israel to strengthen the archipelagic country's agricultural sector. The move follows a meeting between Philippine Senior Undersecretary for Agriculture Domingo Panganiban and Israeli Ambassador to Manila Ilan Fluss on July 31, during which they discussed collaborative projects to enhance bilateral training, internships and other professional exchanges. The meeting also focused on enhancing market access of Philippine fresh...
