Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — After last year’s public service was canceled over fear of altercations, gender-separated Yom Kippur prayers will be held in a Tel Aviv public space in October. The Tel Aviv Municipality on Thursday issued the Rosh Yehudi NGO a permit to hold prayers in Meir Park, located in the center of the metropolis, Ynet reported on Thursday. Rosh Yehudi (“Jewish Head” in Hebrew) tries to spread Orthodox Judaism in Tel Aviv, an attempt that has been met in the past with antagonism in the predominantly secular city. Prayers in Meir Park will be...
(JNS)- Six Israelis were murdered and a dozen more wounded in a mass-shooting attack by Palestinian terrorists in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot on Monday morning. The slain victims were identified as Yosef David, 43, from Jerusalem; Sarah Mendelson, 60, from Jerusalem; Israel Mentzer, 28, from Jerusalem; Levi Yitzhak Pash, 57, from Tel Zion; Yaakov Pinto, 25, from Jerusalem; and Mordechai Steintzeg, 79, from Jerusalem. The Magen David Adom emergency medical response group...
At this very moment, young Jews from around the world are making aliyah for a year of service and enlistment in the IDF: On Sept. 9, 2025, a dedication ceremony was held for the new home for lone soldiers at the Hannaton Educational Center in the Galilee. Present were the approximately 30 young men and women from North America, who have made the bold decision to move to Israel via the Garin Tzabar program of the Israeli Scouts Movement and become the first cohort to move into the home. Here lone soldiers will share a campus with their Israeli p...
By (JNS) — Israel is fighting a “fierce war against terrorism on several fronts,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday during a visit to the site of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem that claimed the lives of six people earlier in the day. “I want to extend condolences to the families of the victims and to the wounded,” said Netanyahu. Six people were murdered and a dozen more wounded in a shooting in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot on Monday morning. Two terrorists were killed at the scene by an Israel Defense Forces so...
(JNS)- It wasn't lost on Ofir Sofer, the Israeli aliyah and integration minister, how unusual it was for someone of his prominence to fly to another country solely to board a charter return flight full of new immigrants. "Flights like this-a big group of olim that come in one day to Israel is a strong message that is conveyed to our people that is not just happening today. It's happened since Oct. 7," Sofer told JNS aboard the first Nefesh B'Nefesh charter flight since the terrorist attacks in...
(JNS) - The largest dam in ancient Israel, uncovered just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem, has been dated back to the time of the biblical kings, some 2,800 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday. The monumental dam, which runs about 12 meters high, more than 8 meters wide and 21 meters long, was excavated over the last two years in the history-rich ancient City of David. A new study carried out jointly with the Weizmann Institute of Science concludes that the...
(JNS) - The train from Jerusalem to Herzliya hums steadily along the tracks. It's full, as usual, for this time of day in the middle of the week. Voices mingle with the whir of the wheels. A mixture of languages - Hebrew, English, Russian - meld with universal sighs of weary commuters wishing to reach their destination before sundown. Suddenly, a minyan (public prayer quorum) of 10 men rises, almost simultaneously. One stands, calling out the afternoon prayer, his Yemenite accent ringing clear...
(JNS) — Former Hamas hostage Keith Siegel told the Haredi radio station Kol Barama on Wednesday that his faith was strengthened during the almost 500 days he spent in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. “As a boy, Judaism did not speak to me, but in captivity, I reconnected,” Siegel said in the interview, two days after he joined a special prayer service at the Western Wall late on Monday night for the release of the remaining 50 hostages still in Gaza after 690 days. “Every day, I said ‘Shema Yisrael’ and I recited a blessing over the food. S...
(JNS) — Israel is set to carry out the world’s first ever implant of a lab-grown spinal cord using a patient’s own cells, in a medical breakthrough offering a potential cure for paralysis, Tel Aviv University announced on Wednesday. The groundbreaking surgery, which is expected to be carried out in the coming months, marks a milestone in regenerative science, with the goal of enabling the patient to walk again within a year. The university said that the Israeli Ministry of Health has given...
(JNS) - A gold coin dating back about 2,200 years has been uncovered just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem, shedding new light on the development of the city after the destruction of the first ancient Jewish Temple, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The small denomination quarter-drachma, made of pure gold (99.3 percent), and dated to 246–241 BCE, was minted for Queen Berenice II during the reign of her husband, Ptolemy III, the state-run archaeological body s...
Israel has approved a long-delayed settlement project that would build 3,400 housing units for Jews in Judea and Samaria, in a move that both its backers and its many critics say would undercut Palestinian ambitions to control the region. The E1 project would expand Jewish settlements on a stretch of land east of Jerusalem, effectively bisecting Judea and Samaria and limiting Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem from growing, Proposed decades ago, but never finalized, the plan was abruptly moved forward this month by Israel’s far-right f...
(JNS) — A significant drop in the level of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) was recorded on Sunday following an extreme heatwave that swept through Israel last week, bringing it closer to the lower red line, Hebrew media reported. “The Sea of Galilee has lost several centimeters since the start of the severe heatwave last week,” Kinneret Department Manager at the Water Authority Firas Telhami said, according to Ynet. “The evaporation rate, especially in the last two days of the peak of the heatwav...
(JNS) — Students from 24 U.S. universities toured Israel last week as part of a program which according to its organizers would use firsthand testimonies to help counter misinformation about Israel. The students attend universities including UCLA, Duke, UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. On their 10-day visit, the participants of the Hasbara Fellowships and IsraelAmbassadors.com delegation met politicians, visited the grounds of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, met with a former h...
(JNS) — One morning in July, on a pathway atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, eight barefoot men lay spread-eagled, faces pressed to the ground, as four police officers stood by and watched. Just two years ago, this act — part of a mitzvah, a religious commandment known as Hishtachavaya — would have led to immediate ejection. For decades, authorities restricted Jewish prayer at the site, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the remains of the last Jewish Temple, making it one of the most sensitive and contested religious spaces on earth. Often d...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized nationwide anti-government demonstrations on Sunday, saying at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting that the results are the opposite of what they claim to want. “Those who today call for ending the war without defeating Hamas are not only hardening Hamas’s position and distancing the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of Oct. 7 will repeat themselves, and that we will be forced to fight a never-ending war,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, to advance the r...
(JNS) — More than 85,000 passengers were traveling through Ben-Gurion International Airport on 500 international flights on Thursday, the highest single-day figure since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Israel Airports Authority. The numbers highlight both the resurgence of the Israeli aviation sector and the reemergence of Tel Aviv as a travel hub, even before all leading international carriers have resumed flights to Israel. Some 43,700 travelers were departing Israel on Thursday, while o...
(JNS) — In video footage screened for the first time at a rally in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, Hamas hostage Matan Zangauker appealed to family and friends to increase their efforts to secure his release. “To all my acquaintances, all my friends, go out and make noise as only you know how, and with God’s help we will see each other soon,” he said. Zangauker, who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, said that he missed his mother, sister and girlfriend, adding that “God willing” they would be re...
(JNS) — In a quiet room at Israel’s soon-to-be inaugurated October 7 Museum, Mosab Hassan Yousef—the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef who is known as “The Green Prince”—looked at the evidence of Hamas’s atrocities and spoke the truth that too many still refuse to hear: “Hamas is not just at war with Israel. It is at war with Jews, Christians and the very foundations of civilization itself.” Yousef knows this from the inside. Raised in a home steeped in Hamas ideology, he was taught from childhood that Jews must be killed, Christians...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Millions of Israelis were expected to participate in a nationwide strike on Sunday for the return of the remaining 50 hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, who have endured 681 days in appalling conditions. Major corporations, institutions, businesses and government authorities have confirmed they will permit employees to participate. During a 7:10 a.m. press conference, hostages' families issued urgent appeals for public participation in street demonstrations and work...
Israel’s security cabinet has endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand fighting in Gaza, despite warnings from military leaders and others that doing so would put soldiers and hostages at risk. The plan approved early Friday morning does not specify that Israel will “occupy” Gaza, as Netanyahu said shortly before entering the marathon meeting that he intended to do. Instead, it focuses on Gaza City, the largest area within Gaza where the Israeli army does not already operate on the ground. The IDF says it has conquer...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that Israel does not seek to stay in Gaza, but to replace the Hamas regime with an expanded mialitary operation, and insisted that was the best way to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. “Our goal is not to occupy Gaza but to free Gaza,” Netanyahu said at a press conference for foreign media. “But no one is going to go in there unless we finish the job and finish Hamas.” He noted that Hamas still has thousands of armed terrorists after nearly two years of war in about a q...
(JNS) — In a world first, Israeli researchers have grown human kidney organoids — a synthetic 3D organ culture — from tissue stem cells in the laboratory mirroring human fetal kidney development, Tel Aviv University announced on Wednesday. The breakthrough allowing researchers to see the development of the organ in real time, isolate genes that lead to birth defects, develop new treatments in the field of regenerative medicine, and test the toxicity of drugs during pregnancy on fetal kidneys. The synthetic kidney grew and developed over six m...
(JNS) — Jewish sages in Late Antiquity were actively involved in the robust wine culture of the Roman-Byzantine world, according to an Israeli study released on Wednesday. The University of Haifa research reveals rabbinic familiarity with vine cultivation, and the integration of Jewish law into the broader agricultural traditions of the time. “The sages’ rulings were not detached from the realities in which they lived,” said Haifa University’s Shulamit Miller, a co-author of the study. “On the contrary, they reflect an intimate familiarity...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want Israel to govern Gaza permanently, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told JNS, amid reports that Netanyahu is considering a wider military operation in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave. Gottheimer, who was part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to the Jewish state that met with Netanyahu on Wednesday, said that Israel is focused on defeating the terrorist group. “We talked about it as the ultimate goal of ensuring that we crush Hamas, and we can’t have leadership and governa...
(JNS) — Israel’s Security Cabinet was slated to meet Thursday night to decide on the continuation of the war on Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, with one option being a full-fledged occupation of the enclave. The ministers were set to gather at 6 p.m. at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem for the pivotal meeting and a subsequent vote. The session is scheduled to last until 11 p.m. but expected to last longer. A senior official told Ynet on Wednesday afternoon that while the Cabinet was expected to support the proposal to occupy Gaza...
