Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — The suspect in the stabbing of a Boston Chabad rabbi has been charged with committing a hate crime and civil rights offense. Khaled Awad, 24, was arrested Thursday after allegedly stabbing Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky outside of his school and synagogue in the Brighton neighborhood. Noginsky survived the stabbing and has been released from the hospital, which he called a “miracle.” Awad was charged initially with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a police officer. Prosecutors now have added the h...
(JNS) — During a symposium about online anti-Semitism sponsored by the U.S. State Department last year, a representative from the social-media platform TikTok assured that his company was working to combat hate. Speaking in October 2020, Jeff Collins said TikTok’s mission is “to inspire and bring joy. … There’s no place for hate on TikTok, and we are investing a lot in people and tech to really get this right.” The goal, stated Collins, was to “disrupt the ecosystem of hate” by limiting the “discoverability” of such content. His comments coinci...
(JTA) - Rabbi Anna Levin Rosen has counseled Jewish students at the University of Chicago through crises before. But she says the last two weeks have been "devastating." First, Ilan Naibryf, 21, disappeared in last month's Surfside, Florida, building collapse. He had been visiting with his girlfriend, Deborah Berezdivin, whose family owned two units in the building; neither of them has been found yet. Then, last week, Max Lewis, 20, was struck by a stray bullet while riding the train back from...
BOSTON (JTA) - Days after a series of violent acts stunned Greater Boston and threatened its Jewish community, residents are jolted but resolute, vowing to continue taking pride in their Jewish identity. The latest incident occurred on Thursday, when Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed eight times outside of Shaloh House, a Jewish school and synagogue in Brighton, where he teaches. Less than a week prior, on June 26, in Winthrop, a seaside town just north of Boston, a white supremacist who...
(JNS) — At the end of June, the new Israeli government led by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett approved 31 new building projects throughout Judea and Samaria. The projects were green-lighted by the subcommittee on Jewish “settlements” within the Civil Administration. A Civil Administration spokesperson shared the list of approvals with JNS, which include the construction or enlargement of public buildings within various communities, such as a new shopping mall in Mishor Adumim just outside of Jerusalem, and a school for students with...
(JNS) - A bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Israeli officials celebrated Independence Day on Tuesday at a small event hosted by the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was on hand to welcome the visitors-the first official congressional delegation to travel to a foreign country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Since COVID required the number of attendees to remain low, the program was also livestreamed by the embassy....
(JTA) - At first, Danny Mintz was excited to learn that lawmakers in his state, Louisiana, were considering mandating Holocaust education in public schools. A director at a good-government group called the Louisiana Budget Project, Mintz knew that the local Jewish federation was encouraging his synagogue's board to back the bill. In a state where a notorious Holocaust denier, David Duke, had been the Republican candidate for governor in 1991, clearly there was a need for more Holocaust...
England’s Chelsea soccer club joins Anti-Defamation League in partnership to fight bigotry By Ron Kampeas (JTA) — The famed London-based Chelsea Football Club and the Anti-Defamation League have joined in a partnership to combat bigotry. For the next three years, Chelsea’s foundation will fund the expansion of the ADL’s Center on Extremism — which feeds information on extremist activity to law enforcement — and the ADL’s work with a British group tracking extremism, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Also funded will be BINAH Europe, a res...
This article will be updated as more names are identified by authorities in Florida. (JTA) - The Champlain Towers South building collapse is a national tragedy, one that has claimed nearly 20 lives so far and left over 140 still missing in the rubble as of Thursday. Among other groups, it struck a unique nexus of the American Jewish community in South Florida, home to a mix of Latin American immigrants, Israelis and retirees from the Northeast. The town of Surfside, the site of the collapse, is...
SURFSIDE, Fla. (JTA) - Nachman Shai's first visit to the United States as Israel's new minister for Diaspora affairs was not under normal circumstances. "In hard times, in times of disaster, we have to stand shoulder to shoulder with Americans," he said in an interview on Sunday in The Shul, the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue located about a mile from the remains of the collapsed Champlain Towers building here that has left over 150 people unaccounted for. Shai, 74, was previously best known as the...
Hunter Gold was selected to be the next executive director of Central Florida Hillel and will be starting on July 28. Originally from Long Island, he moved to Florida for college, and has maintained a love of Florida ever since. He received his MBA from UCF after obtaining his BS in accounting at the University of Florida, where he was a member of AEPi and active in Hillel. Gold is excited about meeting UCF Hillel students and helping prepare them to become the next generation of leaders in the...
By (JNS) — Days before the start of the annual Tour de France, cycling’s most prestigious race, the Israeli national team’s star rider and four-time winner of the event, Chris Froome, was enthusiastic and optimistic. Froome has been working hard to return to his previous level of performance following the severe injuries he sustained in a 2019 crash that occurred while he was previewing the time trial course at the 2019 Critérium du Dauphiné. He suffered a double femur fracture to his right leg, multiple additional fractures and a collaps...
(JNS) Passersby were treated to a striking sight outside Jerusalem's City Hall on Tuesday. One-hundred and fifty bright orange "ambucycles" – motorcycles and scooters equipped with lifesaving medical equipment – were lined in neat rows at Safra Square to celebrate the dedication of the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon G. Adelson Ambucycle Unit of United Hatzalah. Hundreds of United Hatzalah volunteers attended the event, and Channel 12 news anchor Ofer Hadad served as master of ceremonies. The 150 amb...
Who thought the topic of the Dead Sea Scrolls could be so entertaining? Natural story-teller Kenneth Hanson, Ph.D., as done just that. In addition to being an associate professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Central Florida, he is a brilliant actor who brings to life academic topics such as archeology finds in Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls through his characters known as Jerusalem Jones and Menachem the Essene, also known as the 2,001-year-old man. He shares insights, mixed with a lo...
The Rosen JCC is known for their Early Childhood Learning Center program. For years their mission has been to guide children in their development of social, emotional, academic, creative, cultural and physical skills so that they embrace a love of learning. They now offer kindergarten classes. This accredited kindergarten offers a low student to teacher ratio to allow for small groups and to tailor instruction to individual needs. This helps to build a solid foundation for reading, writing and...
JFS Orlando is pleased to announce its first-ever Summer Recipe Raffle! Starting July 7 through Aug. 18, JFS will be raffling out a different prize every week with a final Grand Prize at the end of the summer. There are two ways to enter the raffle: submit your own recipe or donate $36 (each $36 donation counts as an entry, i.e. $360:10 entries). Whichever way you choose, you will automatically be entered for that week's prize, future weekly prizes, and the final Grand Prize. So, now is the...
(JNS) - Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid flew to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday in a historic first official visit by an Israeli minister to the Gulf State. "What we are doing here today isn't the end of the road, it's the beginning. From here, from this place, we are setting out on the road," Lapid said at a ceremony inaugurating Israel's Embassy in Abu Dhabi. "Israel wants peace with its neighbors. With all its neighbors," the foreign minister said. "We aren't going anywhere. The...
(JNS) — “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.” At least this is what U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli President Reuven Rivlin during his visit to the White House on Monday. Biden also reportedly said Israel has the right to decide how to proceed with Iran. This message was meant to assuage Israel’s fears over the U.S. approach to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But Iran’s recent announcement that it has started enriching uranium at 60 percent, and Tehran’s continued use of proxies to spread terror and instabi...
(JTA) — Vladimir Putin clearly likes to talk about Jews and Israel. This time he suggested that Israel offered a good model for his designs on Ukraine. The Russian president’s previous remarks about Jews include the joke he told at a panel on energy in 2017, about a smartass Israeli soldier who was quizzed by his commander on how to engage multiple enemies. The soldier’s advice: Send more troops. In 2019, hearing about the financial challenges of a rabbi in Crimea, Putin joked: “So the Jews have problems with finances!” Then he told the rabbi...
(JNS) - Controlled explosives on Sunday brought down the rest of the condominium in Surfside, Fla., that collapsed on June 24, leaving more than 140 people dead or missing. The confirmed death toll rose to 24 on Saturday with 121 still missing at the site in the heavily Jewish area. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava signed an emergency order to bring down the building due to the approach of Tropical Storm Elsa, which is expected to hit the Florida coast on Tuesday. Officials feared...
(Israel21C via JNS) - "I saw in the news that you were coming from Israel for us, and I was waiting for you," said a tearful young woman in Surfside, Florida, to members of the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit from United Hatzalah of Israel. "People kept coming up to us and saying how happy they were that we arrived," said Batya Jaffe, who was on the scene with her therapy dog, Lucy. They were part of the six-person PCRU team that landed in Miami Sunday morning, along with a search-and-resc...
(JTA) - As he ends his tenure as the director of the largest Hillel in the country after 20 years in the post, Andrew Getraer says Jews at Rutgers University face a reality out of Dickens: the best of times and the worst of times. Jewish life at the school, New Jersey's flagship university, is thriving. There are 6,000 Jews on campus, and it's known as a destination for students seeking a vibrant Jewish community with a range of services, religious communities and clubs. But it's also been a...
(Jewish News of Greater Phoenix via JTA) - When Michael Beller set out three years ago to get a law passed in Arizona requiring Holocaust education in public schools, the response he got was clear. "People told me this would never happen. They were like, 'Not now, not ever. It will never happen in Arizona.' And that was inside the Jewish community and out," he said. But on Wednesday, it happened. After a rollercoaster ride in the State Legislature - including a debate over a controversial defini...
Phoenix Children’s Hospital fires doctor after she accused Israel of ‘cannibalism’ on social media By Ben Sales (JTA) — A Palestinian-American pediatric radiologist has been fired from her position at Phoenix Children’s Hospital after her social media post accusing Israel of “cannibalism” was called out by an antisemitism watchdog. On Monday, the Twitter account @StopAntisemites shared a screenshot of a May 26 Facebook post by Dr. Fidaa Wishah, in which Wishah wrote “We will expose the #massacre and #genocide you Zionists are proud of.” “We...
(JNS) - A rescue delegation from the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command is using visual intelligence techniques and information received from families of the victims to precisely map out the wreckage of a condo that crashed in a Miami suburb last week. This mapping-out method is enabling rescue teams to more quickly reach the remains of victims and identify them accurately, military representatives said on Wednesday. In recent days, additional members of the Home Front Command joined the...
