Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University has proven that antibodies isolated from the immune systems of recovered COVID-19 patients are effective in neutralizing known strains of the virus, including the Delta and the Omicron variants. Researchers have declared this a scientific breakthrough. The discovery could remove the need for frequent booster immunizations. Dr. Natalia Freund, along with doctoral students Michael Mor and Ruofan Lee from the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at the Sackler Faculty of M...
(JTA) — Israel’s government advanced a plan to build as many as 700 new apartment units in a suburb of Jerusalem that opponents say encroaches on a Palestinian village that straddles the country’s pre-1967 lines. The Jerusalem planning and building committee on Monday approved a plan for a new neighborhood called Givat Shaked, which would include high-rise buildings that come right up to the edge of Beit Safafa — a village that was split from 1948 until 1967, when Israel captured eastern...
(JNS) — Under pressure from Washington, Israel appears to be slowly withdrawing from its business relationship with China, while simultaneously building one with India. According to Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, over the last two years, the United States has been urging Israel to decouple from China. Sam Millner, a policy analyst for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, noted earlier this month that the U...
(JTA) — Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen, a symbol of the country’s left, announced during a recent concert in the West Bank that he regretted his past criticism of settlers living there — whom he had long denounced as obstacles to peace. “It’s very moving to be here. I went through a personal journey that was not simple and not short and I understand that me and my brothers — you — were made to separate for any number of reasons including my ignorance, which came from a desire to please part of my audience,” Geffen said during a concert Aug. 24...
(JNS) - A total of 225 new immigrants from North America landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday as part of the 63rd Nefesh B'Nefesh chartered aliyah flight through El Al Airlines. The flight was coordinated in partnership with Israel's Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, Jewish National Fund-USA and Tzofim-Garin Tzabar. Participants come from a variety of backgrounds, culturally and demographically - hailing from 19 U.S. sta...
(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing “Holocausts” at a press conference after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, and Scholz’s muted initial response is spurring criticism. Abbas used the term in response on Tuesday to a reporter who asked if the Palestinian leader would apologize for the murder 50 years ago of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. An arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization carried out the attack, and the PLO and the Palestinian Authori...
Eight people were injured, among them U.S. citizens after a Palestinian gunman open fired on civilians at a bus and a parking lot near Jerusalem's Old City. Following an intensive manhunt by Israel's security forces and several arrests, the suspected terrorist identified as east Jerusalem resident Amir Sidawi turned himself in to the Israeli police. "This was a lone assailant, a resident of the city with a criminal background," Prime Minister Yair Lapid stated. "Whoever harms Israeli citizens ha...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - A 16-dunam (four-acre) noncontiguous parcel of land on a green hilltop in eastern Jerusalem, which lies between the security barrier and the eastern border of the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood, could soon become the most volatile in the city. The Israeli Justice Ministry has completed the process, conducted secretly, of transferring ownership of the land to the state, on a temporary basis. Civil researchers hired by the ministry's Custodian of Absentee Properties...
(JNS) — Newfound technology enables the use of nanoparticles to assist the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. The technology, developed by a research team at Bar-Ilan University, uses nanoparticles to eliminate obstacles in the malignant tumor’s environment that impede the normal activity of natural killer cells (a special sub-type of white blood cells called lymphocytes). The research was published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. Natural killer cells are a potent defense weapon of the body that assists the immune system in it...
(JNS) - A total of 700 Jewish teens from 32 communities in seven countries completed a life-changing seminar in Israel as part of a year-long Diller Teen Fellowship, an immersive leadership program for teenagers from across the world. The three-week program included a Shabbaton retreat, a "Community Week" and a "Global Congress" with all 700 teens (including 350 international Fellows gathering with 350 Israeli Fellows) for a period of cultural exchange, exploration of Jewish peoplehood and...
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday was preparing for a "week of fighting" against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, as terrorists in the enclave fired over 1000 rockets at the Jewish state within 48 hours. The IDF said that the Iron Dome missile defense system had successfully intercepted 95 percent of the projectiles fired by PIJ that were headed for populated regions. One projectile struck a family home in Sderot, whose inhabitants had secured themselves in a shelter and were...
Terrorists in the Gaza Strip on Sunday night fired heavy barrages of rockets at southern and central Israel, including at Tel Aviv, ahead of an Egypt-mediated ceasefire between the sides that was slated to come into effect at 11:30 p.m. local time. Just eight minutes after the ceasefire took effect, Islamic Jihad terrorists fired more rockets at southern Israeli communities. Since then, the ceasefire seems to be holding as Israelis are experiencing much needed quiet. According to several media reports, the Israeli government had agreed to an...
(JNS) - "If you could change anything in this world, what would it be?" asked NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, while seated among 30 Jewish, Christian and Muslim, children during a break in the action at a youth basketball camp he was helping to run this week at the YMCA in Jerusalem. To Freedom's delight, the most popular answer given by the children was: "We would want peace!" The 11-year NBA veteran, who currently is a free agent and a well-known human rights activist, was in Israel to lead...
(JTA) – Israel’s top immigration official says the country will not award citizenship to Baruch Lanner, a rabbi and convicted sex offender from the United States. Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s announcement, made Tuesday to the Jerusalem Post, came a day after nearly 200 American rabbis and Jewish scholars sent a letter to Israel’s prime minister, Yair Lapid, urging him to reject Lanner’s citizenship application. Lanner, an American rabbi and former official of the Orthodox Union’s NCSY youth group, served a three-year prison sentence fo...
(Israel21c via JNS) — In the year 326, the Roman Emperor Constantine began construction of a church in Jerusalem on top of the remains of his predecessor Hadrian’s temple dedicated to the pagan god Jupiter. Constantine’s project became the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally identified as the place where Jesus was crucified and entombed. During repairs and restorations at the church, archeologists from the University of Rome La Sapienza discovered rock layers of the stone quarry used for its original construction. These layers, accor...
(JNS) — Bringing more than 10,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries to compete in 42 sporting events all around Israel for the Maccabiah games is an impressive feat. Returning these athletes to their home countries as ambassadors and spokespeople for the State of Israel is a process that takes planning, coordination and a person like Hillel Akotonas. The 21st Maccabiah — the biggest sporting event in Israel and reportedly the second-largest in the world (“The Jewish Olympics”) — opened on July 12 and will conclude on July 26. When the athle...
(JNS) — On Sunday afternoon, Ben Shapiro, the editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, ascended to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to pray with his parents and a group of followers. Shapiro’s first visit to the Temple Mount was during the holiday of Sukkot back in October 2019. That visit was cut short after someone in his group was found to be carrying a willow branch in his pocket as a mitzvah for the last day of Sukkot, leading to the group’s removal from the holy site. While waiting for security to clear the group to enter the complex this time...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to attend the Maccabiah Games on Thursday. The audience at the opening ceremony of the 21st Maccabiah games showered Biden with affection as thousands cheered "Joe" repeatedly and shouted things like "we love you Mr. President" at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem. Biden, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, waved a baseball cap emblazoned with the letters USA for several minutes as the crowd...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - After releasing a joint statement that demonstrates unity on the need to counter the Iranian nuclear threat, U.S. president Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid gave statements that demonstrate radical differences in their approach to doing so. The document released on Thursday, the second day of Biden's visit to Israel, is a 1,500-word statement titled "The Jerusalem Declaration on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership." It states that the United States is...
(JNS) - Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday evening welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden at the President's Residence in Jerusalem. Referring to Herzog by his nickname, Biden wrote in the President's Residence guestbook, "Bougie, my friend, thank you for all you and your family have done to deepen the ironclad bond between our two great countries." "From our shared Irish roots to our shared love of Israel, we are united in heart and spirit. May our friendship endure and continue to grow!...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - Joe Biden dispensed with both social distancing and the chair arranged for him Wednesday as he embraced two Holocaust survivors, then knelt to speak with them during his first trip to Israel as U.S. president. "I'm very excited about the meeting and also a little scared of it," Rene Quint, 86, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of the scheduled encounter - a brief conversation that she and another survivor, Giselle Cycowicz, 95, were scheduled to have with Biden at Yad...
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Joe Biden kicked off his 10th trip to Israel — and first as U.S. president — on Wednesday by declaring that the relationship between the two countries is “bone-deep.” Biden told Israeli President Isaac Herzog “I am home,” according to Herzog’s office, and he attempted to prove it right away. Speaking at Ben Gurion Airport, Biden recounted his extensive personal history with Israel, including a 1973 meeting with then-prime minister Golda Meir that is a favorite — if sometimes embroidered — anecdote. “Now as president, I’m pro...
A major American Jewish organization objected Monday to Israel presenting U.S. President Joe Biden its Presidential Medal of Honor during his visit to the country Wednesday, saying that he does not deserve it. The stated reason for giving the award is to thank Biden for being “a true friend of Israel,” his “decades-long commitment to Israel’s security,” deepening the U.S.-Israel alliance, and “his struggle against anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hatred around the world.” “This award makes no sense,” Zionist Organization of America National...
(JNS) - Thirty-five mothers of lone soldiers currently in Israel on a special trip with the Momentum organization thought they were attending an educational seminar at the new Nefesh B'Nefesh Campus in Jerusalem on June 8 when they were surprised by their children serving in the Israel Defense Forces. The mothers, many of whom hadn't seen their sons or daughters since last year, arrived in Israel on July 4 from all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia,...
(JNS) - Broadcasting the Summer Olympic Games is a massive operation, with more than 7,000 personnel covering 28 sports utilizing 1,000-plus cameras, taking the games global. For the first time, the so-called Jewish Olympics will be broadcast around the world from July 12-26 with slightly more humble resources, though still requiring a herculean effort. The legendary former TV broadcaster for the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, Marc Zumoff, is taking 14 hand-selected college and high school...
