Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israeli civilian communities in Judea and Samaria serve as the Jewish state’s “defensive wall in every sense of the word,” President Isaac Herzog said in remarks to the Makor Rishon Settlement Conference, held in the southern Samaria town of Ofra. “During my many visits across the country—and certainly in Judea and Samaria—and especially when I fly over the land by helicopter, I become increasingly convinced of how vital, impressive, and thriving the settlement enterprise is,” Herzog said in a pre-recorded statement. He described Judea...
(JNS) — “It’s not like Elkana to break down,” said Ruhama Bohbot, the mother of Hamas captive Elkana Bohbot, who appeared in a Hamas propaganda video released on Saturday alongside fellow hostage Yosef Haim Ohana. In the video, Ohana claims that Elkana attempted to harm himself. Since the video aired, Ruhama told JNS that the family has been overwhelmed with anxiety and fear, unable to eat or sleep. They don’t know if what’s shown in the video is real and are desperately awaiting updates fro...
Even a rainy forecast couldn't wash out the generosity and good cheer at this year's Jewish Pavilion Senior Services Golf Tournament, held on May 12 at the Heathrow Country Club. While the weather cut the day short - forcing play to end early after 128 enthusiastic golfers hit the course - the event still delivered a memorable experience for all involved and raised over $25,000 to benefit the Orlando Senior Help Desk, a vital free information and referral service for local seniors and their...
(JTA) - If she found it unnerving to see someone make a throat-slitting gesture at her as she walked the carpet at the first event in the Eurovision song contest, Yuval Raphael wasn't letting on. "It was a stressful situation, scary at times," Raphael, Israel's competitor in this year's song contest, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview Monday. She was speaking a day after the competition's "turquoise carpet" kickoff, when Israel filed a police report accusing a pro-Palestinian...
Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, the Jewish National Fund, will be allocating $100,000 to support New York City's Israel parade for the first time. The annual parade, known as Israel Day on Fifth, took place on Sunday, May 18, with the theme "Hatikvah," the name of Israel's national anthem, which means "the hope." KKL-JNF billed it as the "largest global gathering in support of Israel." The allocation by KKL-JNF underscores an effort to strengthen bonds between Israeli and American Jews, the group...
(JNS) — After a seven-year hiatus, Israel’s Consulate General in New York revived its official Israeli Independence Day celebration with an event in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday night that blended solemn speeches with Israeli folk dancing, themed cocktails and reflections on the country’s resilience in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. As many as 800 guests attended, including the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams; Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.); and Ofir Akunis, the Israeli consul general in New York,...
(JNS) — Where can rabbis gather to hear from the Speaker of the House and a progressive Democratic senator about their support for the State of Israel? Where can they join Christian ministers to advocate for Israel, participate in a respectful discussion about the administration’s efforts against antisemitism, study biblical texts, learn about troubling antisemitism trends, and hear from influential authors and student leaders confronting anti-Israel activity on campus? If you said the Annual Conference of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, you...
(JNS) — Five tiny figurines — including black wood-carved heads depicting African figures — have been uncovered in Israel’s Negev Desert, offering rare insight into unexpected cultural connections in the region some 1,500 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced. The statuettes were discovered in 2017 during an excavation at Tel Malhata in the Arad Valley, in graves belonging to women and children. The findings date to the Byzantine period and suggest trade or cultural ties that extended far beyond the immediate region. The res...
Argentine Supreme Court discovers over 80 boxes of forgotten Nazi documents By Grace Gilson (JTA) — The Supreme Court of Argentina discovered over 80 boxes of material from the Nazis in its basement last Friday, prompting court officials to work with local Jewish organizations to review their contents. The boxes were sent in 1941 from the embassy of Nazi Germany in Tokyo to German diplomats in Argentina. Their contents include Nazi postcards, photographs and propaganda material, which, the court said in a statement Monday, were “intended to...
(JNS) — Israelis are increasingly concerned about the possibility of a large-scale terrorist invasion led by Palestinian terrorist organizations from Judea and Samaria, according to a new survey made public on Thursday. The poll, published by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and conducted by the Lazar Research Institute, surveyed a representative sample of approximately 700 Jewish and Arab Israelis. Eighty-one percent of the Jewish Israeli respondents have concerns about a large-scale terror attack emanating from Judea a...
(JNS) — Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza issued an urgent demand for clarification from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on May 7, following a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump that only 21 captives remain alive—contradicting Jerusalem’s official figure of 24. In a statement issued by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, relatives called on the government to disclose any updated intelligence. “Following the U.S. president’s statement last night regarding the number of living hostages st...
(JNS)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone conversation on Tuesday with Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israel Defense Forces soldier and dual U.S-Israeli citizen released from captivity in Gaza the previous day. Alexander, who had been held by the Hamas terrorist organization for over 580 days, is currently receiving medical care in an Israeli hospital, as confirmed by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. According to Israeli media reports, Alexander's medical condition has rul...
(JTA) — Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was just elected as Pope Leo XIV, studied under a pioneer in Jewish-Catholic relations when he attended seminary in Chicago. The Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, who taught for nearly half a century at the Catholic Theological Union until his retirement in 2017, served as co-founder and director of the school’s Catholic-Jewish Studies Program and also served four terms on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. More than 40 years after Leo’s ordination as a priest, Pawlikowski remembers the new pope as a...
(JNS) - Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, a Chicago native, was elected as the new pope of the Catholic Church on May 8. He will be called Leo XIV. The first U.S.-born pope is also a Peruvian citizen and was previously archbishop of Peru, the Associated Press reported. Most recently, the new pope was prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, "one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church," the AP reported, as "the powerful head...
Crown Heights, Brooklyn. That was the destination for a recent memorable, uplifting Shabbaton sponsored by JLI, the educational arm of Chabad Lubavitch. More than 25 people who represented the Chabad of North Orlando thought they were leaving home in Orlando for a weekend away. What most people said after the weekend was that they felt like they had arrived at home in Crown Heights. Here's how some of the participants described their two-and-a-half days in one of the world's premier bastions of...
By (JNS) — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) urged Israel to destroy Iran’s oil facilities and continue to hit the Houthi rebels in Yemen. On May 5, Israeli fighter jets conducted a wave of airstrikes on Yemen’s Hudaydah Port, a day after the Houthis, an Iran-backed group, launched a ballistic missile that struck near Israel’s main international airport, wounding six. “To my friends in Israel, do what you have to do to protect your airspace and your people. It is long past time to consider hitting Iran hard. It wouldn’t take much to put Iran out of...
(JNS) — As Israel geared up to celebrate its 77th Independence Day, data released by the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday revealed that the country’s population has reached 10.094 million. This marks a growth of 135,000 people (1.4 percent) since last year’s holiday. Of the total population, 7.73 million (77.6 percent) are Jews or classified as “others,” including non-Arab Christians and individuals without religious classification. Arab citizens account for 2.11 million (20.9 percent), while foreign workers make up 248,000 (2....
(JTA) — Only 38 percent of American Jews believe in an afterlife, far fewer than in Israel, according to a new study of spiritual practices around the world. That share was lower than the 83 percent of U.S. Christians who believe in life after death, as well as the 58 percent of Israeli Jews who say there is an afterlife. The finding dovetailed with other results in the survey published May 6 by the Pew Research Center, which found that Jews were among the least likely in the United States to say animals or objects can have spirits, or that fea...
(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee affixed a mezuzah on the entrance of his office in Jerusalem on Sunday, during his first official meeting with Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. A mezuzah (“doorpost” in Hebrew) is a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, held in a case that is attached to the right doorframe of an entrance and in all of the rooms of a residence. The mezuzah gifted to Huckabee by Dagan, a longtime friend of the new ambassador, was made by an artist from the Samaria town of Itamar and cra...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, for being elected pope of the Catholic Church. “Congratulations to Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic community worldwide. I wish the first Pope from the United States success in fostering hope and reconciliation among all faiths,” wrote Netanyahu on X. The new pope is also a Peruvian citizen and was previously archbishop of Peru. Most recently, he was prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America,...
(JNS) — “Territory.” It’s a magical word in the lexicon of anti-Israeli sentiment, always tied to terms like “occupation” and “colonialism.” Yet the international public lashing out about “territory” fails to understand what is truly unfolding in the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved an expanded military plan in Gaza. The guiding principle? Wherever the Israel Defense Forces capture territory, they will stay. This marks a return to a classic strategic doctrine: Territory must be held if a war is to be won. It also...
This year, more than ever, it's impossible not to think about the execution of my best friend, Shirin Alamhooli, on May 9, 2010. I met Shirin in Iran's notorious Evin Prison where I had been arrested and sentenced to death by hanging because of converting to Christianity, a "crime" the Islamic regime calls "apostasy" and which carries a death penalty. I was arrested in March 2009. Shirin had already been in prison for some time as a political Kurdish prisoner. As a Christian, I had many people...
(JTA) — A Palestinian poet and essayist who evacuated Gaza with his family and chronicled the experience of dislocation for the New Yorker has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Mosab Abu Toha left Gaza in December 2023 — after being detained by Israeli soldiers, in an experience he chronicled in his writing — and moved in 2024 to Syracuse, New York, after receiving a visa permitting him to teach at Syracuse University. The Pulitzer committee recognized four essays by Abu Toha: one exploring his memories of a now-destroyed landscape; o...
(JNS) - Since Gadi Moses's release at the end of January 2025, after 482 days in captivity in Gaza at the hands of Islamic Jihad, his daughter Moran has been struggling to keep up with him. The 81-year-old hostage returned with an energy that defies both his age and his ordeal, driven by a renewed determination to help rebuild his beloved Kibbutz Nir Oz. "He has no brakes," Moran said wryly, told interviewer Racheli Avidov and an intimate audience at the Valley Train Heritage Site in Kfar...
(JNS) — Just after he completed his first 100 days in office, I had the privilege of hearing President Donald Trump speak in the White House Rose Garden during America’s National Day of Prayer. I was amazed by all that had been accomplished. I sat behind Adi and Yael Alexander — their son, Edan Alexander, is the last remaining American citizen held hostage by Hamas believed to be alive. The president spoke about them at length and talked about his efforts to free the hostages still in Gaza. He described in brutal detail the cruelty of Hamas...
