Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Often synonymous with Jewish life on campus, Hillel has been a gathering point for Jewish students across hundreds of campuses in the United States for decades. While being a “big tent” organization that seeks to accommodate a wide range of Jewish religious beliefs and political affiliations has long posed certain challenges, the coronavirus pandemic over the past year has likely been Hillel’s biggest test in recent memory. JNS had the opportunity to speak with both the new CEO of Hillel International—Adam Lehman, who took on his role...
International March of the Living will hold a Virtual March on Holocaust Remembrance Day led by Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, Holocaust survivors, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, Jewish Agency Chair Isaac Herzog, KKL Chair Avraham Duvdevani and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau. Among the Holocaust survivors participating are those who survived due to the selfless acts of medical professionals. Participants in the Virtual March from across the globe were filmed using innovative 3D technology so they appear...
On Feb. 23, the Zionist Organization of America sent a letter to Penguin Random House to complain about the anti-Israel bias in former President Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land.” The organization has yet to hear back, says ZOA National President Morton Klein. “Having received complaints from our supporters and conducting our own review, we are deeply concerned about the factual inaccuracies, material omissions and outright falsehoods” contained in Obama’s book, the letter states, which was co-signed by Klein, ZOA Chairman Mark S. Lev...
Michigan imam calls to ‘join hands’ with Jews that wish Jerusalem to be retaken (MEMRI via JNS) — A Michigan imam said in a sermon earlier this month that Muslims should not be afraid to join hands with those who share the cause of recapturing Jerusalem, even if those individuals are Jews. Imam Mustapha Elturk, Ameer of the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA) Elturk, said that while most Jews are disobedient to Allah, some Jews and Christians were, in fact, “doing the work for us.” He made the remarks during a Friday sermon at the IO...
A new study by the Jerusalem-based watchdog group IMPACT-se shows that school textbooks in Turkey are becoming more Islamicized and now refer to Jews and Christians as “infidels,” JTA reported Thursday. Researchers at the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found a change in Turkish school textbooks that previously referred to Jews and Christians as “People of the Book.” New textbooks, however, such as “Fundamental Religious Knowledge,” a publication released after 2017 that is part of the mand...
Biden civil rights nominee, under fire from the right, gets some Jewish backing By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vanita Gupta, President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top civil rights enforcement job, has been targeted in recent weeks as an extremist by a number of conservative groups and the conservative media. A couple of Jewish groups, the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Jewish Women, are expressing their support. Gupta, who was tapped for the post of associate attorney general, the No. 3 job at the Justice Department, fac...
(JTA) — About 200 academics from the United Kingdom and the United States have signed a petition defending a British university lecturer who had called Jewish students on his campus “pawns” of Israel, “a violent, racist, foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing.” Jewish groups and organizations have protested the remarks by David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, made during an online videoconference Feb. 13. Some have called for his ouster. The signatories of the letter published Friday supporting Mille...
Rep. Lee Zeldin considering run for New York governor By Ron Kampeas (JTA) — Rep. Lee Zeldin, one of two Jewish Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, is considering a run for New York governor in light of scandals engulfing incumbent Andrew Cuomo. “After a lot of people reached out to me in recent days and weeks, and after discussing it at length with my wife and daughters, I am now actively exploring a run for governor of New York against Andrew Cuomo in 2022,” Zeldin told Newsday on Tuesday. The newspaper quoted a number of Repub...
(JTA) — To many in the Jewish world, the Ruderman Family Foundation is synonymous with efforts to increase inclusion for Jews with disabilities. Based in Boston, but active across the United States and in Israel, the foundation has doled out some $75 million over the past 18 years to support inclusion. Just this month — Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month — the foundation is credited with sponsoring a virtual reading of a children’s book with Chabad and collaborating with Boston’s Jewish federation to make synagogues mor...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House of Representatives speaker, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel’s COVID-19 response at a time that Israel is under pressure to extend its vaccination program to Palestinians in the West Bank. “Today, I spoke with [the Israeli prime minister] to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between our nations and Congress’s unwavering support for a safe and secure Israel,” Pelosi said Wednesday on Twitter. “We discussed COVID response and our shared hope for regional peace, incl...
(JTA) - The heartwarming story has been hard to miss: A law professor is shopping at his local grocery store when he sees an elderly woman struggling to get her favorite jam from a high shelf. Why is it her favorite? "I am a Holocaust survivor," she says. "During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris." Tens of thousands of people - at least - have shared the story since it began circulating on social media this weekend. It has prompted countless people to vow to buy...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Four weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the “scandal” over the new U.S. leader’s failure to pick up the phone came to a quick and cheerful close. The end of the “will he call?” controversy on Wednesday was evident in Netanyahu’s grin in the photo his office sent to the media to announce the phone call, which lasted an hour. But the scrutiny of the Biden-Israel relationship is just beginning. How the two sides summarized the call was evidence of where they stand on...
(JNS) - The U.S. Senate confirmed Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Tuesday as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The final vote was 78-20. The 35-year veteran diplomat and Louisiana native will arrive in the backdrop of U.S. President Joe Biden's stated pledge to re-engage with the world body amid the coronavirus pandemic and its global economic fallout. She will be sworn in on Wednesday by Vice President Kamala Harris and present her credentials to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on...
Suspected oil spill may be worst in Israel’s history By Ron Kampeas (JTA) — Israel closed its Mediterranean beaches to deal with what its officials say may be the worst oil spill in the country’s history. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority on Sunday called the suspected spill one of the “greatest ecological disasters to afflict Israel since the founding of the state.” It said that 170 out of 190 kilometers of coastline, or 105 out of 118 miles, have been affected by the spill. The consequences will be felt for years, its statement said. Thou...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly a month into his first term — a time frame that drew criticism from Republicans for its length. Biden appeared to make up for lost time, at least according to Netanyahu’s account on Twitter, and the two spoke for an hour. The conversation was “friendly and warm” Netanyahu said in Hebrew, addressing an Israeli electorate that places a high value on healthy relations with the United States. His tweet, accompanied by a photo of a grinning Netanyahu...
(JNS) - According to Gabi Harow, a resident of the Israeli settlement of Nokdim in Gush Etzion, there have been massive changes in the landscape since he moved to the community with his family in 2012. "The amount of illegal Arab building and the takeover of the land have grown tremendously," he told JNS. "You see structures going up all the time in our area and in the nature reserves between our community and the Judean Desert." Harow said that Nokdim has been "slowly, slowly" losing its 150...
Flagship New Jersey yeshiva cancels Purim celebrations By Andrew Silow-Carroll (JTA) — Haredi Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, New Jersey, are curtailing Purim festivities because of COVID-19. For the first time in 80 years, Beth Medrash Govoha, the yeshiva at the center of the township’s 70,000-strong Orthodox community, won’t host festivities surrounding the holiday, the Asbury Park Press reports. The community saw a surge in COVID-19 cases after last year’s celebrations, which came in the early days of the pandemic, before widespread school...
(JTA) - Authorities in Poland, Russia, Hungary and some lawmakers in Britain's Labour Party used anti-Semitism for political means, according to the Anti-Defamation League's anti-Semitism report on Europe published Thursday. In Poland, presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski was the target of "antisemitic rhetoric" this summer during an election in which he lost to the incumbent Andrzej Duda of the right-wing Law and Justice party, ADL wrote in the report titled "Choosing Antisemitism:...
Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, announces that Chief Executive Officer/Executive Director Janice Weinman will step down after nine years as the organization's leader, effective July 1. During her tenure at Hadassah, Weinman worked in partnership with the National Board of Hadassah to help the organization realize its mission to support Israel; facilitate the work of the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO), the organization's two hospitals in Jerusalem; fight...
(JNS) — A ruling issued by a court in Poland on Tuesday is meeting fierce criticism from Jewish groups and others who claim that the decision will silence further examination of the role of Polish citizens during the Holocaust. The criticism comes after a court found that the authors of “Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland” —Jan Grabowski, professor of history at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and Barbara Engelking, director of the Research Centre for the Extermination of Jews — must issue a retract...
Former President Donald Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on Feb. 1 by an Estonian member of the European Parliament, Jaak Madison. In a post on social media, Madison said: “In the last 30 years, Donald Trump is the first president of the United States, who during his tenure, has not started a war. Additionally, he signed several peace agreements in the Middle East which have helped provide stability in the region and peace.” Madison was referring to the Abraham Accords, a joint statement between Israel, the United Arab Emi...
(JNS) — Contrary to U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s assessment that Iran could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in “a matter of weeks,” Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Tuesday that it would take closer to six months. Speaking to NBC News on Sunday, Blinken said the time frame would apply if Iran continued its current violations of the nuclear deal the regime made with the world powers in 2015. Steinitz, in a radio interview with KAN news, as reported by Reuters, disagreed, saying that the steps were tak...
(JNS) — Officials in the Biden administration and the Palestinian Authority held a discussion on Monday in what appears to be the first formal contact between the United States and Palestinians in several years. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr spoke with Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Commission chairman Hussein al-Sheikh on Monday with the two men agreeing to future dialogue. “Bilateral relations were discussed, and the political situation and the latest current developments. It was...
(JNS) — The Biden administration has said it will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism, a key tool in fighting anti-Semitism at home and abroad. While addressing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kara McDonald stated: “We must educate ourselves and our communities to recognize anti-Semitism in its many forms, so that we can call hate by its proper name and take effective action. That is why the International Holocaust Rem...
(JNS) — Israel and America must have a comprehensive, cooperative strategy for protection against Chinese economic exploitation and intellectual property theft, concludes a report released on Monday by the Gemunder Center of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “Chinese economic activity in Israel is greater than any individual investment, such as Chinese construction of a terminal at Haifa Port that U.S. policymakers focus on,” said Blaise Misztal, JINSA vice president for policy. “As a startup nation at a global crossro...
