Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Documents, photos and ancient manuscripts from a monastery in the Sinai Peninsula are now available for free on the National Library of Israel website. The collection from Saint Catherine’s Monastery includes items from the 12th century. The monastery’s library is considerably older as it was founded in the sixth century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian the first and is believed to be the oldest working library. It contains works in various languages including Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and more, which library offic...
(JNS) — Israel abandoned its “red list” of countries last week — those destinations with high COVID-19 infection rates, from which foreign travelers were banned from entering Israel. It’s welcome news to pro-Israel groups whose bread and butter is organizing trips to Israel. They say the travel bans have complicated their mission to connect people to the Jewish state, and no amount of speaker series and digital events can compare to “putting two feet on Israeli soil.” Izzy Tapoohi, president and CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, t...
(JNS) — Just outside the entrance to the United Nations, a famous Jewish prophecy is engraved into the plaza’s Isaiah Wall: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more.” Sadly, wars continue to be fought across the Middle East, and Israel still strives to maintain its Qualitative Military Edge over other nations in the region. Yet more and more, wars are changing form, and the effectiveness of conventional weapons...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — A record-breaking number of Israelis tested positive for the coronavirus in the current infection wave, according to Health Ministry data published on Tuesday morning. Of the 197,402 Israelis screened for the virus in the past 24 hours, 10,644 (5.39 percent) tested positive. It is the second-highest number of daily cases since Sept. 2, when 11,345 Israelis were reported to have been infected — the highest caseload since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The reproduction rate, which refers to the number of peo...
(JNS) — Last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned that Israel will face increasing allegations that it is an apartheid state in 2022, with the foreign minister saying that he fears that opponents of Israel will attempt to target Israel’s involvement in sporting and cultural events. “The concern from the foreign ministry is that you have three or four different legal proceedings in which allegations of apartheid have been made and that at least one of them may end up endorsing these allegations,” Yuval Shany, professor of interna...
This past Thursday, Jeremy Gimpel, one of the founders of the Arugot Farm near Tekoa in Judea, received notice from the IDF that the vineyard that he and his partners planted on state land five years ago is slated to be demolished beginning on Jan. 16, on the week of Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish holiday when it’s customary to plant trees, except during the Shmita (Sabbatical) year. “Nothing like this has happened in Judea in more than 10 years,” said Gimpel, who is completely baffled by this order. “T...
(JNS) — As details emerged from Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Dec. 28 meeting at his private residence in Rosh Ha’ayin with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, many Israelis were left in shock. According to various reports, Gantz had offered Abbas a series of “confidence-building measures” as described by the Israeli Defense Ministry, which included economic benefits to the P.A. with regard to VAT, import taxes and excise duties; a NIS 100 million ($32.2 million) loan; 1,100 entry permits for Palestinian businessmen; and dozens...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister on Monday called for a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestinians, citing concerns that otherwise international organizations may designate Israel and apartheid state. In a press briefing, Lapid said the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet would soon convene to discuss a scenario in which the Palestinian Authority announced it was willing to start talks with Israel. Citing an “intelligence-based assessment,” he said that Israel should expect to see a significant increase in allegations from the Pales...
A policeman forbade a Jewish man from lowering his head on the Temple Mount out of apparent concern that he was praying. In the short video clip shown on social media, an ultra-Orthodox man can be seen sitting on a fragment of a wall by himself, one arm on his knee and his head bent. An Israeli officer taps him on the shoulder and asks him politely to please raise his head. When the man asks him, "Is it forbidden to bend my head?" the policeman just repeats his request. When asked if this is pol...
(JNS) - Valerie Greenfeld, 58, immigrated to Israel just before Passover 2021 from Washington D.C., amid widespread travel restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. She began her quarantine immediately after arriving in Israel, which coincided with the first night of Passover. She had her own one-woman Passover seder and though it was a different way to celebrate the holiday than most years, she told JNS that she "felt very connected." Beginning the aliyah process in 2019,...
(JTA) — Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi called for victims of sexual abuse to bring complaints to the “relevant authorities,” saying “there is an obligation to complain to the authorities in charge of these issues, and not hide it,” according to the site Israel National News. The comments from Rabbi David Lau Wednesday came after Lau was criticized for visiting the family of Chaim Walder, the Israeli haredi Orthodox author of children’s books who was recently accused by dozens of young women of sexual abuse, as they sat shiva for Walder follow...
(JTA) - Chaim Walder, an Israeli haredi Orthodox children's book author who was accused last month of sexual abuse by several teenage girls, was found dead Monday in an apparent suicide. His body was found in a cemetery in Petah Tikva, in central Israel, after a passerby heard a gunshot and called police, according to Israeli news reports. Walder's death came a day after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a rabbinical court in Safed had heard testimony from 22 young women about alleged...
(JNS) — As U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan arrived in Israel on Tuesday to discuss Iran and other strategic issues, and as nuclear talks continue in Vienna, the Israeli leadership increasingly believes that applying heavy pressure on Tehran is the only way to stop the Iranian advance toward nuclear weapons. But where exactly do the U.S. and Israel go from here on the Iranian threat? Sima Shine — head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies think tank as well as former head of the research and eva...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Sunday the approval of a 1 billion shekel ($317.3 million) program to develop and settle the Golan Heights. Addressing the weekly Cabinet session, held in Kibbutz Mevo Hama in the southern Golan, Bennett said that the government’s goal was to double the Golan’s population, according to an official statement. The current population is approximately 50,000. To achieve this goal, the government plans to build two new neighborhoods in Katzrin, the unofficial capital of the Golan, and a...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - A synagogue dating back some 2,000 years has been excavated at Migdal in northern Israel, a modern town and the site of a significant Jewish community in the Second Temple era. This is the second synagogue excavated in Migdal and the first time archeologists have found evidence of two synagogues coexisting in a Jewish community at a time when the Second Temple was still in use. Like many archeological discoveries in Israel, the second synagogue at Migdal resurfaced due...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - "An intensification of Israeli military threats against Iran seems to suggest that the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere," began an article published Tuesday in the Tehran Times, a newspaper identified with the Iranian regime. The article ran under the headline "Just One Wrong Move!" and featured a "map of Israeli targets," which showed nearly every populated community in the country labeled with a red dot. The...
(Israel21C via JNS) — When it comes to the Miss Universe pageant, most people firmly belong in one of two categories: those who consider it to be a global celebration of women and beauty, and others who find it an old-fashioned, patriarchal event that belongs deep in the past. Whether you find it to be an incredible, sparkly international affair or not, there’s no disputing that this year, it’s one that’s (relatively) close to our hearts, being held as it is for the first time in Israel,...
(JTA) - Violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank are nothing new. But the phenomenon has reached alarming new level of frequency this year. Violent attacks perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank exceeding last year's attacks by nearly 50 percent, according to a report by The Times of Israel. In 2021, there have been 397 attacks so far, compared to 272 in 2020, The Times of Israel reported based on data from the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency....
(JTA) - Israeli officials are expected to attend the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing next year, unlike their American counterparts who will boycott the game to protest China's human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslim minority. Haaretz reported the news, citing an unnamed senior Israeli official who called the Americans' decision to boycott "bizarre." Earlier this week, the United States announced that no American officials would attend the games. The boycott only applies to diplomatic...
(JTA) - When she won the privilege of representing Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe contest, Michelle Marie Colon spoke of her pride in making history as the first Black woman from the territory to seize the honor. This week in Israel, where the contest is being held, she has been touting pride in another aspect of her heritage: her Jewish great-grandfather who escaped the Holocaust. Last week, Colon posted a photo of her holding hands with Noa Cochva, the Israeli entrant into the contest,...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Israel will set plans in motion to renovate the non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall, an Israeli official said Tuesday in New York. The current Israeli government is expected to implement an agreement, shelved under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that would expand an area of the holy site where men and women could pray as they please. But speaking to journalists at the Israeli consulate in New York City, Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai said that before it formally implements the 2...
(JNS) - A new autonomous unmanned ground vehicle introduced by Israeli companies Elbit Systems and Roboteam, called "Rook," can carry out a remarkable number of roles on the battlefield. Elad Levy, CEO of Roboteam, told JNS that the ground robot is tailor-made to client needs through its ability to be assembled in a system of "boxes," with each box allowing for clients to choose a different kind of capability - much like assembling Legos. While one box can act as an electrical engine, others...
(JTA) — American officials have warned Israeli officials that their country’s repeated attacks on Iran’s nuclear program have been counterproductive, arguing that Iran has continually rebuilt the destroyed facilities to be more effective, according to a report in The New York Times. Israeli officials have ignored the warnings, according to the report. The report comes ahead of a planned meeting in Vienna between Iranian officials and the countries still remaining in the 2015 Iran deal to discuss the country’s nuclear program. Despite Preside...
(JTA) - An 11-year-old girl found a rare silver coin dating from approximately 67-68 CE in dirt from excavations at the City of David park in Jerusalem. Liel Krutokop was visiting the site with her family recently to sift dirt from an archeological dig when she found the coin, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. "We poured the bucket with the dirt on the strainer, and as we filtered the stones that were inside, I saw something round," Krutokop said of the moment when she found the...
Two seemingly parallel and completely unrelated things happened this week with an astonishing response. Running a nonprofit, the end of the year is an opportunity to tie up loose ends and be sure that in the last weeks of the year, the level of financial support is at least maintained. While planning some traditional year-end appeals on behalf of the Genesis 123 Foundation, I realized that Israel was in a bit of a crisis, with my organization and many others facing a financial deficit. In...
