Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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DUBAI — As dozens of Jewish organizations plan delegations to the United Arab Emirates following the signing of the Abraham Accords, Visions of Abraham, a nonprofit working to create and promote educational initiatives relating to interfaith programming between Muslims and Jews, has launched. The group aims to provide an in-depth look at the impact of the Abraham Accords. The organization specializes in creating bespoke and immersive tours of the UAE and its Jewish community. UJA-Federation of New York and the Joint Distribution Committee r...
BERLIN (JTA) - A German Protestant minister has handed over segments of a long lost Torah scroll to the city of Görlitz in southeast Germany, 83 years after his father, a town policeman, came into possession of them. While it is not unheard of for German non-Jews to turn over religious objects that have been lost or hidden since the Nazi period, the Torah scroll fragments took an unusually circuitous journey before coming to light last week. The Torah had not been seen since Kristallnacht, the...
( JTA ) - Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old left-wing lawmaker who has been sharply critical of Israel and Chilean Jews who support it, was elected president of Chile in a landslide victory this weekend. Boric, who came to fame as a student leader, won with 56 percent of the vote, 12 points over his conservative rival, José Antonio Kast, a right-wing pro-Israel politician. The election left many Chilean Jews feeling uneasy because they had to choose between Boric, who has encouraged Chilean Jews to l...
Israel’s controversial Oscar submission gets snubbed on the 2022 Academy shortlist By Tom Tugend LOS ANGELES (JTA) — There was no holiday cheer for Israel’s filmmakers in the shortlists for the 2022 Academy Awards. The country’s official submission for this year’s Best International Feature Oscar, “Let It Be Morning,” was not among the 15 entries that made the cut in the category, despite being helmed by a pedigreed director (Eran Kolirin, of “The Band’s Visit” fame) and attracting global attention for its all-Palestinian cast. The movie, wh...
(JTA) - A Swiss-Jewish artist has asked the Zurich Art Museum to return her paintings due to concerns that the museum features works bought for below-market prices from Jewish refugees in dire circumstances in the years leading up to and during the Holocaust. Miriam Cahn, 72, made her wishes known publicly this week, the Tachles Swiss-Jewish newspaper reported. "I no longer want to be represented at the Zurich Art Museum and would like to withdraw all of my work from it. I will buy them back at...
(JNS) — As many as 250 Britons stood outside of the headquarters of the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation in London on Monday night to demand that it take accountability for anti-Jewish coverage on the network. There, they chanted “BBC, where the proof? BBC, tell the truth” in response to an on-air report during Chanukah about an attack on a bus full of Jewish teens in Central London. In its coverage of the event, according to Campaign Against Antisemitism, the BCC reported that...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed at his private palace in Abu Dhabi on Monday in the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the United Arab Emirates. The growing economic ties between their two countries were on the official agenda, though analysts tell JNS that behind the scenes the key topic of Iran was likely front and center. The optics couldn’t have been better for Bennett. Upon arrival on Sunday, he was greeted by an honor guard and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zay...
UK lawmaker apologizes for evoking Nazi Germany in debate over COVID measures By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — A lawmaker from the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party apologized for evoking Nazi Germany while criticizing restrictive measures meant to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Marcus Fysh, a former business executive who entered parliament in 2015 as a representative of the Yeovil constituency in western Britain, made the apology in an op-ed published Monday in the Jewish Chronicle. “I am sorry that during debate about the curre...
German broadcaster will probe antisemitism allegations against Arabic-language staff By Asaf Shalev (JTA) — A German government-owned news broadcaster has launched an investigation into a report that four of its employees and one freelancer made social media comments that downplay the Holocaust and promote antisemitism. The five individuals, members of Deutsche Welle’s Arabic service, are being suspended from work until the investigation is concluded, the news service announced on Friday. Leading the investigation will be two independent exp...
The Netherlands’ far-Left BIJ1 party has called for the cancelation of the country’s annual Holocaust commemoration ceremony, calling the event “inherently racist,” according to a Dutch report picked up by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The BIJ1 party, which defines itself as devoted to ‘antiracism and decolonialization’ and advocates for ‘official apologies for slavery and colonial occupation and bearing of the legal consequences,’ made the call in a draft of its program in the March 2022 municipal elections in Amsterdam, the news site Jonet....
(JNS) — European diplomats said on Tuesday that if Iran does not demonstrate seriousness in nuclear negotiations with world powers this week, there will be a problem. Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on the Iran nuclear program, told JNS that “if Iran comes to talks with maximalist demands for sanctions relief and refuses to resume discussing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the P5+1 will quickly realize that Tehran’s game is one of extortion, and they could pivot to a unite...
(JTA) — After an outcry and a rebuke from the University of Toronto president, the student union at a satellite campus modified a proposed ban on kosher foods in any way affiliated with Israel, but a campus Jewish campus group said the change made matters worse. The board of directors of the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Student Union convened for an emergency meeting Dec. 1 to address the outcry after a Nov. 24 resolution affirming the union’s boycott, divestment and sanctions policy regarding Israel placed restrictions on kos...
MUNICH (JTA) — Three political parties in Germany presented a coalition agreement which reiterated commitments to ensure Israel’s security and fight antisemitism and, for the first time, also pledged to promote Jewish life. The agreement, whose main focus is addressing climate change, was presented Wednesday by the coalition parties, which include the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens, in Berlin. The coalition agreement determines the division of ministerial positions and major policy themes and mar...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Sunday that his government’s goal is to “utilize the window of opportunity” between rounds of the nuclear talks in Vienna to tell Washington that the time has come for a “different toolkit” against Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment. The Islamic Republic “must start paying for its violations,” said Bennett at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, according to a statement released by his office. “The goal of the Iranian regime is the lifting of sanctions,” he said, adding, “For th...
(JNS) — United Kingdom’s Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that she is seeking to declare the entire Hamas organization as a terrorist group. While the military wing of Hamas, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is currently declared a terror group by the United Kingdom, its political wing is not. Patel said that parliament will add the designation next week, which Jewish groups have long called for. Under U.K. law, it is a criminal offense to belong to or invite support for a proscribed organization or wear clothing which could be...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Speaking to a group of college students, Rep. Jamaal Bowman expressed no regret about taking a recent trip to Israel and the West Bank with the liberal pro-Israel group J Street, despite intense backlash from his socialist allies. He did, however, have harsh words for Israel’s government. “I left less optimistic about a two-state solution because of the reality on the ground,” he said in the question-and-answer session Monday. “Of course, I still believe in it and working toward making it happen but I think the...
Z3 Presents: Who Can Predict the Future? Future Workshopping as a Tool for Jewish Peoplehood By The Z3 Project War games, also known as simulations, are often used by policy planners to come up with new ways of thinking about longstanding threats and challenges. This year’s Z3 2021 Futures Workshop uses a simulation to game out the year 2025, in Israel and the Diaspora. For approximately 200 individuals, this exercise will happen in person, at the Palo Alto JCC. For others this will happen virtually. In this fully participative experience, spea...
(JTA) — Polish nationalists shouted “death to Jews” as they burned a book representing a historic pact protecting the rights of Poland’s Jews. The book burning Thursday at a rally in Kalisz, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants situated 120 miles southwest of Warsaw, was part of a series of nationalist events on Nov. 11, National Independence Day, which is the anniversary of when Poland regained its sovereignty in 1918. Videos and eyewitness accounts on social media show that Wojciech Olszański, a far-right activist, lit a red-covered book tha...
(JNS) - Lebanon, the least stable country in Israel's environment at this time, is home to Iran's strongest proxy, Hezbollah, which continues to get stronger despite the many crises plaguing its host country. Lebanon's multi-faceted dysfunction at the political, economic and social levels has seen its citizens plunged into misery with many of them staring into the abyss of a humanitarian crisis (the country has recently declined Israeli offers for humanitarian assistance). At the same time,...
Sally Rooney’s boycott of Israel publishers gets backing of 70 writers By Asaf Shalev (JTA) — Seventy notable writers and publishers including Rachel Kushner, Francisco Goldman and Eileen Myles have signed a letter supporting Irish novelist Sally Rooney in her refusal to have her third novel translated into Hebrew by an Israeli publisher. The letter calls Rooney’s boycott of Israeli publishers “an exemplary response to the mounting injustices inflicted on Palestinians.” Rooney published her newest novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” in Se...
(JNS) — The United States voted last week to abstain on a resolution concerning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the U.N.’s agency that handles Palestinian refugees — part of several resolutions put forth in the U.N. General Assembly concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that largely targeted Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. The text, called “Assistance to Palestinian Refugees,” demands “compensation” for descendants of Palestinian refugees who lost property when they fled their homes, as wel...
(JTA) — Danny Fenster, a Jewish American journalist who has been imprisoned in Myanmar since May and was sentenced to 11 years in prison Friday, has been released just days later, according to reports. Former New Mexico governor and former diplomat Bill Richardson, who was in the country on a humanitarian visit, told reporters Monday that Fenster would travel back to the United States “through Qatar, over the next day and a half,” CNN reported. Fenster’s brother Bryan celebrated the news in a tweet Monday morning. “We are overjoyed that Danny h...
(JTA) - An impression of Adolf Hitler at Cambridge University has touched off a fight over the limits of free speech and has drawn Monty Python comedian John Cleese into the fray. The impersonation was delivered at a debate last week on whether there's such a thing as "good taste." Andrew Graham-Dixon, an art historian, impersonated Hitler as an example of bad taste, in order to argue that good and bad taste do exist. At the time, Keir Bradwell, the president of the Cambridge Union, a debating...
Is US Men’s National Team soccer player Brenden Aaronson Jewish? By Emily Burack (JTA) — The men’s World Cup soccer qualifier games are underway, and the U.S. team has a shot at making the tournament that will take place next fall in Qatar. For those fans who have suppressed the memories — the U.S. men’s team failed to qualify last time around. One of the team’s six forwards is Brenden Aaronson, a 21-year-old from Medford, New Jersey, who has gone from playing in the American Major League Soccer league to the Austrian Bundesliga, where he su...
(JTA) - A prominent rabbi in the Netherlands compared her country's COVID-19 safety measures to the policies of Nazi Germany, drawing harsh rebuke from Jewish groups. Tamarah Benima, an outspoken 71-year-old Reform rabbi from Amsterdam, made the comparison on Nov. 4 in a speech in the northern Dutch city of Leeuwarden. She left the Dutch Union for Progressive Judaism on Nov. 9, the rabbinical council of the umbrella group wrote in a statement. "Scientists worldwide apparently allowed themselves...
