Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2027 - 2051 of 11000
(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...
By (JTA) - Israel won its first-ever gold medals at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Valencia, Spain, over the weekend, improving on last year's silver medal and solidifying its place as a global powerhouse in the sport. On Friday, Israel's team topped China and Spain to take gold in the all-around group category. On Sunday, Israel won gold in the combined exercise, beating out China and Ukraine. The team also finished fifth in the hoop final. Linoy Ashram, who became the first...
(JNS) — The Samaria Regional Council, which administers communities in the northern part of Samaria, has unveiled a plan that seeks to increase the number of Jewish residents living in the area from barely 50,000 to over one million, claiming the initiative would “strengthen Zionism” and solve Israel’s housing crisis. The “Samaria to a Million” proposal, which was first shared on Wednesday in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been in the making for over a year with t...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday set the boundaries of three new communities in Judea, marking the first step in the legalization under Israeli law of nine outposts that received official government approval earlier this year. Two of the new towns, Avigayil and Asael, are located in the South Hebron Hills, while the third, Beit Hogla, is part of the Megilot Regional Council near the Dead Sea. IDF Ground Forces Commander Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai on Wednesday night signed the order...
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says it is in the country’s national security interest “to waive the imposition of sanctions” on Iran and transfer $6 billion to the Iranian Republic in exchange for five detained Americans. Candidates vying to be the next U.S. president, as well as other politicians and activists, disagree vehemently and say they didn’t appreciate the Biden administration’s announcement of the decision on Sept. 11 of all days. “While Americans mourn 9/11, [President Joe] Biden lines the pockets of the Iranian a...
(JTA) — For almost nine months, Israelis have been fighting over the future of their Supreme Court. Today, that battle has moved into the Supreme Court itself. In July, Israel’s hardline right-wing governing coalition passed a law to weaken the court. Opponents of the law then filed legal challenges against it. That put the court in the uncomfortable, and unprecedented, position of ruling on itself: It can decide to uphold the law, strike it down, or send it back to parliament to be amended. When Israelis on both sides of the debate warned tha...
(JTA) – At least two more synagogues in the United States evacuated their congregants over the weekend following bomb threats, the latest in a series of such calls that have put dozens of congregations on high alert heading into the High Holidays. One of the synagogues was threatened during the pre-Rosh Hashanah Selichot services on Saturday night, in a sign that the perpetrators of the wave of attacks are paying careful attention to when synagogues are holding events before calling in their threats. Since mid-July, at least 49 synagogues in 1...
List names 3,000-plus Jews protected by Catholics in Rome during World War II (JNS) — From September 1943 through June 1944 during the Second World War, more than 150 women’s and men’s religious orders, as well as other Catholic groups, protected 4,300 people. Information has now revealed the names of those offered shelter, with the majority of them identified as Jews. Compiled by Italian Jesuit Gozzolino Birolo, the list uncovered in the archives of the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Rome names 3,600 people. Through comparing the names...
(JTA) — Before the Holocaust, the population of the town of Chmielnik, Poland, was around 80 percent Jewish. Sephardic Jews, having been expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, settled in Chmielnik and eventually built a synagogue in 1638. After the war, only four Jews remained. Today, the building houses a museum of the town’s Jewish life and history. Now another Jewish heritage site has been discovered, in an unlikely place. A few years ago, Marian Zwolski, a businessman from Chmielnik, purchased a former nightclub that has been clo...
By Rolene Marks (JNS) - September 16th marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Iran. The Iranian "morality police" arrested Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Kurdistan, for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly. Iranian police said that Amini died after falling ill in custody and slipping into a coma. Her death resulted in mass protests across Iran, with many women refusing to wear the hijab. These protests were supported by many around the world; and th...
Two Neo-Nazi groups marched in Altamonte Springs and outside the entrance to Disney Springs shopping center on Saturday, Sept. 2. Dressed in red shirts, black pants and black masks, 51 members of the Goyim Defense League and the Blood Tribe, who called the antisemitic demonstration "March of the Redshirts," walked from Sanlando Park to Cranes Roost Park, about a mile and a half away chanting "White power," "Jews will not replace us," and "We are everywhere." Blood Tribe, founded by former U.S....
Led by Rabbi Joshua Neely for 13 years, Temple Israel's growing congregation looks forward to the High Holiday season with guest cantor Teron Cohen. Cantor Cohen has worked in Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Israel, and the U.S. High Holiday tickets for live stream or in-person services are a $180 donation and free with reservations for those under 18, students, armed services personnel, and members in good standing of other synagogues. If you are under 35 and interested in becoming a member,...
(JNS) - A cache of weapons believed to have been hidden by Jews during their revolt against the Romans nearly two millennia ago has been uncovered in the Judean Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The cache, comprising four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords and a shafted weapon, were found in a crevice in a cave in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea about two months ago. They were apparently hidden by Judean rebels after being seized from the...
