Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2 - 26 of 1974
(JTA) — The first athlete to notch a Manischewitz endorsement is transferring from a university with just a handful of Jewish students to a school with one of the highest proportions of Jewish students in the United States. Jake Retzlaff will play for Tulane University, according to reports in sports media. Neither Retzlaff nor Tulane has confirmed the move, but Retzlaff retweeted an article about it. Retzlaff announced earlier this month that he would leave Brigham Young University, the M...
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it is investigating Harvard University’s participation in the exchange visitor visa program. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Harvard’s continued use of the program might undermine U.S. national security. “To maintain their privilege to sponsor exchange visitors, sponsors must comply with all regulations, including conducting their programs in a manner that does not undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United...
While the majority of Americans oppose antisemitism, a quarter believe that the recent string of attacks on Jews in the United States were “understandable,” according to a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League on Friday. The report comes in the wake of three recent attacks on Jewish targets by people claiming to act on behalf of the Palestinians: the arson attack on Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house in April, the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington D.C. in May and the firebombing attack on a gro...
The number of antisemitic assaults and acts of vandalism on college campuses fell sharply in the last school year, according to Hillel International. And the pro-Palestinian encampments that ignited fear among many Jewish college students in early 2024 effectively disappeared in the year since, with just nine encampments taking place in the last school year, the Jewish campus group said in its annual tally of antisemitic incidents, released Thursday, July 17. But Hillel International said antisemitic incidents were still on the rise on college...
(JNS) — The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, a 135-year-old federal body, voted on Thursday to change the names of two entities in Alaska, one with Nazi ties and the other a derogatory term for Japanese people. The board’s domestic names committee approved changing Nazi Creek, a mile-long stretch on the state’s Aleutian Islands, to a phrase that means “gizzard creek” in the Unangam Tunuu indigenous language. It also opted to change nearby Nip Hill, an anti-Japanese reference, to a phrase that means “gizzard hill.” Michael Livingston, a...
(JNS) — A final-hour revision to the Trump administration’s reconciliation package, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed on July 1, preserved the Educational Choice for Children Act, a provision that will direct new funding to Jewish schools, Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudath Israel of America’s national director of government affairs, told JNS. Motzen told JNS that the school choice provision in the bill, which creates a pool of federal tax credits to fund scholarships for private schools, including yeshivot and Jewish day schools, was initially...
Rabbis and other clergy members in the United States may endorse candidates from the pulpit without jeopardizing their house of worship’s tax-exempt status, the Internal Revenue Service has decreed. The policy change reverses a ban on endorsing or opposing candidates by religious organizations known as the Johnson Amendment, enacted in the 1950s. The IRS made the change in the course of settling a lawsuit brought by two churches and a Christian broadcasting network in Texas that sought to undo the ban for all nonprofit entities. The IRS said e...
By Aaron Bandler (JNS) — The Nysmith School, a private institution in Herndon, Va., discriminated against a Jewish family, which complained about “persistent and severe” antisemitism, by expelling its three children, according to a complaint that the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed with the office of the Virginia attorney general. The 40-year-old Northern Virginia school, where tuition runs from about $31,500 to $46,600 and which has an enrollment of about 500, refused to act to curb Jew-hatred on its campus and even...
(JNS) — Elon Musk’s X took its Grok artificial-intelligence offline on Tuesday after the program began branding itself “MechaHitler” and spreading antisemitic conspiracies. Users on the social-media platform noted that the newly updated large language model program had begun posting bigoted, pro-Nazi content when prompted. “These dudes on the pic, from Marx to Soros crew, beards n’ schemes, all part of the Jew,” the AI wrote in one post replying to a photo of eight Jewish men, including media host Ben Shapiro and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y...
(JNS) — Multiple Jewish organizations offered condolences after Karen Diamond, 82, a victim of the antisemitic firebombing in Boulder, Colo., on June 1, died from her injuries. “This horrific act is part of a broader and deeply troubling rise in antisemitic violence across the United States,” the Jewish Federations of North America stated. “It is no longer possible to separate online hate, city hall rhetoric and campus incitement from real-world consequences. Our communities are being targeted—for being Jewish, for speaking out, for simply sh...
(JNS) - Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish sentiments have been on public display in university classrooms and campuses around the world, especially since Israel responded militarily to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre. According to the CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis) watchdog group, that hatred has also seeped into the classrooms of children from kindergarten to 12th grade. On Sunday night, CAMERA, in partnership with the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, held...
(JNS) - They remembered Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday evening, as lawmakers of both political parties vowed to continue the fight against the Jew-hatred that has led to violence and the deaths of two young, Israeli embassy employees on a Washington street earlier this month. "It's a dangerous time to be a Jewish American," House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said at the beginning of a 30-minute vigil, which drew more than 100 people, on the House steps. "Where is...
(JNS) — A 72-year-old Jewish man in New York City hanging posters of hostages being held in Gaza was punched in the face last week by thugs shouting, “Free Palestine.” Since the Oct. 7 massacre, the campaign to “Globalize the intifada” has exploded with a vengeance, threatening the safety of American Jews as never before on U.S. streets. A couple was shot and killed last month in Washington, D.C., by a radical leftist gunman outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Jews in Boulder, Colo., who were marching for the release of hostages in Gaza befo...
(JNS) - The nearly 100-year-old Boulder County Historic Courthouse, adjacent to the site of June 1's antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., was lit up with bluish-purple lights from 6 to 9 p.m. on June 4 in solidarity with the victims and to call attention to Jew-hatred. "With support from the City of Boulder and the Boulder community at large, we know as a Jewish community that there are those who will stand up and walk beside us," stated Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Tel Aviv-born Colorado state...
(JNS) — Federal agents, who executed a search warrant in Lacey, Wash., found 35 guns, including an MG42 machine gun and short barrel rifles, grenade launchers, explosives, body armor and ballistic helmets “surrounded by Nazi paraphernalia,” Derek Sanders, the sheriff of Thurston County, Wash., stated on Tuesday. Sanders wrote that the U.S. Army’s criminal investigation division contacted the sheriff’s office for help executing the warrant, which he stated was “a result of a violent robbery and theft of military weaponry-armor” and which inv...
(JNS) — A federal judge in Boulder, Colo., blocked the deportation of the family of the suspect involved in Sunday’s attack on pro-Israel demonstrators. Mohamed Sabry Soliman was arrested for allegedly firebombing protesters who were marching peacefully in Boulder in support of the hostages in Gaza. The defendant shouted “Free Palestine” while attacking Jewish pedestrians with what the FBI described as a “makeshift flamethrower” and an incendiary device. In custody, he told authorities that he wanted to kill all Zionists, according to the Just...
(JNS) — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called for tougher immigration and border enforcement on Wednesday in response to the firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo. on Sunday. Johnson noted that the alleged perpetrator, Mohamed Soliman, 45, had been in the country illegally since his visa expired in 2023. “We need to go find the other Solimans and get them out of America,” Johnson told reporters at the weekly House Republican leadership press conference. According to prosecutors, Soliman shouted “free Palestine” as he threw molotov c...
Eight people were burned in Boulder, Colorado, in a firebombing attack on a demonstration to draw attention to the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. At least one of the victims, who ranged from 55 to 88, was critically injured, according to authorities. Police arrested one man at the scene. The FBI identified him as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, and said he had used a “makeshift flamethrower” in the attack, which the agency said it was investigating as an act of terrorism. Soliman yelle...
(JNS) — The alleged attacker in Sunday’s firebombing of a pro-Israel vigil in Boulder, Colo., overstayed his visa and was subsequently granted a work permit by the Biden administration, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said on Monday. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, is accused of setting elderly demonstrators on fire during a peaceful “Run for Their Lives” walk calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Eight people were wounded in the attack, which Colorado officia...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — On Sunday afternoon, what began as a peaceful rally in downtown Boulder, Colorado, part of the global “Run for Their Lives” campaign calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas, descended into violence. A terrorist armed with fire bombs had been waiting for the marchers, and hurled a flaming bottle that hit one of the participants directly and wounded several others. “I had just gathered the group and started speaking when the terrorist threw the Molotov cocktail,” said Shahar, who resides in Boulder and has b...
After a gunman murdered two people outside a Jewish museum, a wide range of major Jewish groups has asked the federal government to sharply increase its funding for religious institutions’ security to $1 billion. The request is one of several made by the coalition in the wake of the attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, when a shooter killed two employees of the Israeli embassy. In the wake of the shooting, Jewish security analysts are assessing what went wrong, and how such attacks can be prevented in the future. One piece o...
(JNS) — Auburn University men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl didn’t mince words talking about his Jewish identity and love for the United States and Israel during a Jewish American Heritage Month breakfast in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. “I’m a Jewish-American basketball coach, who coaches basketball in Auburn, Ala.,” he told attendees. “Don’t tell me this isn’t the greatest country in the world.” About 100 people attended the event, which included speeches from more than half a dozen members of Congress, including Sens. Jim Banks (R-Ind.)...
Elias Rodriguez, the Chicago man charged with killing two Israeli embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, shot his victims multiple times, including firing at one repeatedly as she attempted to crawl away, according to an FBI agent’s account of the incident. The account was filed as the Justice Department charged Rodriguez with multiple crimes on Thursday, some that carry a potential death sentence if convicted. He is being charged with the murder of foreign officials, first-degree murder and o...
WASHINGTON — Following Wednesday, May 21, evening’s horrific terror attack on an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum, the leadership of Christians United for Israel expressed their heartbreak and outrage over the cold-blooded murders of Yaron Lischinsky, Sarah Milgrim and the wounding of four others: “May the God of all hope comfort those who mourn as we weep for Yaron and Sarah. We pray for their loved ones and continue to stand resolutely with Israel and the Jewish people against this unmitigated evil....
(JNS) — In a speech to Congress on Tuesday, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objected to a proposal by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) seeking to end the war against Hamas and the blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying the resolution doesn’t focus on who is to blame for the conflict in the first place. “We have no disagreement about the suffering that’s going on in Gaza,” he said, regarding the Palestinian population there. “The problem we have here is, as we heard from both of these speakers, not one word was sa...
