Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 277 - 301 of 1941
When actor and director David Schwimmer stood up last November to talk about his experience with hate and the importance of building alliances to combat racism and antisemitism, the “Friends” star emphasized the importance of speaking up. “One of the biggest problems is silence. As I’ve said, silence is complicity, and so I try to urge people to speak out,” Schwimmer said at the annual ADL summit on antisemitism and hate, called Never Is Now. “I think it’s my responsibility. I don’t do enou...
(JTA) — A middle school teacher in a district outside Houston, Texas, has been fired reportedly for reading a sexual passage from Anne Frank’s diary out loud to eighth-grade students, the district told local news. The passage came from a 2018 graphic version of the diary by the world-famous Jewish Holocaust victim that restored some portions of the initial book that had been cut from the most well-known editions. “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has also been at the center of several other recent book-related controver...
(JNS) — Nearly every notable U.S. State Department official is on pilgrimage to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual general debate. Barbara Leaf, the Biden administration’s top diplomat for the Middle East, and Dan Shapiro, senior adviser for regional integration and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, have been spotted in the Big Apple, as has Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-American U.S. energy envoy, who brokered an Israeli-Lebanese maritime border agreement. Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy for monit...
(J. Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Two months after proclaiming that July would henceforth be known locally as “American Christian Heritage Month,” the board of supervisors in El Dorado County, California has reversed course. The county’s elected governing body unanimously rescinded the proclamation Tuesday following backlash from local Jews, the American Civil Liberties Union and others who said it inappropriately advanced the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. “I commend the board for reflecting on and revis...
(JNS) — Two congressmen put forward a bipartisan bill proposing a new annual holiday on Sept. 11. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) have introduced the Patriot Day Act. “By formally recognizing 9/11 as Patriot Day, we will make sure that we always honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day—and never give up our fight against terror,” Gottheimer said. “I am proud to lead bipartisan legislation to recognize those who lost their lives on that day. We must never forget those who made the ultimate...
(JNS) — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is defending the co-chair of his campaign in New Hampshire, who posted that “Israel is an apartheid state.” “This is such a dumb game the media and shallow career politicians play,” Ramaswamy, a technology entrepreneur, wrote. “Guess what? I have volunteers on my campaign whom I don’t agree with on everything. Bruce Fenton is right on fed policy, bitcoin, individual liberty and dismantling the administrative state. Turns out he’s dead wrong on calling Israel an ‘apartheid stat...
(JTA) — Several Jewish groups are suing a large school district in Orange County over an ethnic studies curriculum they allege is antisemitic and was approved covertly in violation of California law requiring public participation in decision making. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the American Jewish Committee and Potomac Law Group, with support from StandWithUs, seeks to bar the Santa Ana Unified School District from implementing the recently approved c...
(JTA) – At least two more synagogues in the United States evacuated their congregants over the weekend following bomb threats, the latest in a series of such calls that have put dozens of congregations on high alert heading into the High Holidays. One of the synagogues was threatened during the pre-Rosh Hashanah Selichot services on Saturday night, in a sign that the perpetrators of the wave of attacks are paying careful attention to when synagogues are holding events before calling in their threats. Since mid-July, at least 49 synagogues in 1...
(JTA) – Nearly one in three current Jewish college students has witnessed or experienced some form of antisemitism on campus, according to a new survey. The survey was released by Jewish on Campus, a student-founded antisemitism watchdog group. It was conducted by the polling firm Ipsos and surveyed more than 1,000 college students nationwide who identify as Jewish, as well as approximately 2,000 who reflect the general population of students and are largely not Jewish. The survey was conducted between March and May and has a credibility i...
(New York Jewish Week) — A kosher ice cream chain in Brooklyn is voluntarily recalling all of its ice cream and pareve frozen desserts after it was linked to a recent listeria outbreak from another kosher ice cream manufacturer. The recall was announced by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday and lists more than 90 frozen treats sold by the Ice Cream House, a chain of kosher dairy eateries in Brooklyn that was recently featured in an episode of the Netflix reality show “Jewish Matchmaking.” The chain has salads, sandwiches and pizza...
(JNS) - About 80 minutes into the two-hour Fox News Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, the State of Israel came up. Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, was going after entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who had an early target on his back after denouncing several of the other seven candidates on the stage. (Former President Donald Trump did not participate.) Several candidates cited Ramaswamy's lack of political...
(JNS) - Her iconic white lace collar translated in carved stone, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now memorialized in the New York State Capitol in Albany, N.Y. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted photos on Monday of the relief sculpture portrait created by artist Meredith Bergman, which now emanates from a wall near the capitol's Great Western staircase. It was the first time in 125 years, she wrote, that a new portrait carving was added to the historic capitol building. "Thr...
(JTA) — A Jewish couple has grounds to sue the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded adoption and foster care agency denied them services because they are Jewish, a Tennessee appeals court ruled Thursday. The decision is the latest development in a long-running battle that began in 2021, when Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram turned to the Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greenville, Tennessee for foster parent training. The couple hoped to foster, and later adopt, a child. According to a lawsuit the couple...
(JNS) — Trisol Medical Ltd., an Israeli medical device company, has successfully implanted its Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve in two patients in the United States. The procedure involved the replacement of the tricuspid valve through a minimally invasive approach, avoiding the need for cardiopulmonary bypass. Both patients were suffering from symptomatic tricuspid regurgitation, a disorder in which the heart’s tricuspid valve does not close tightly enough, causing blood to flow backward into the right upper heart chamber every time the rig...
(JTA) — Six decades ago, shortly before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Rabbi Joachim Prinz called for racial equality in an address that began with the words, “I speak to you as an American Jew.” Last Saturday, about a dozen Jews were in the lineup of more than 100 speakers who returned to the memorial’s marble steps for what was billed as a continuation of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on its 60th anniversary. Alongside the anniversary march, whic...
(JTA) - Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate, the candidate with the least political experience is making some of the biggest headlines - in part due to his views on Israel. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur who has never held elected office, is seeing growing support for his long-shot candidacy. A recent poll placed him neck-and-neck in second place with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the crowded GOP field, and the RealClearPolitics polling average places him in...
(JTA) – Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement that it would consider a major case on Second Amendment rights, Jewish groups are joining an effort led by a Jewish organization for survivors of domestic abuse to back gun-rights restrictions for people convicted of domestic violence. Jewish Women International is leading an amicus brief that also includes the organizations representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, along with several interfaith organizations, in the case United States v. Rahimi. The case, which the court anno...
(JNS) — Vivek Ramaswamy may not be heading to the White House, but his candidacy did serve a useful purpose in the week leading up to the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle. Ramaswamy’s comments about foreign policy drew fire from his opponents while also giving him some attention in a race where all of the focus is on the man who isn’t deigning to show up at the debate: former President Donald Trump. Ramaswamy drew the scorn of the mainstream media by saying that he would seek to divide Russia from China. His realp...
(JNS) — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker drew criticism from Jewish groups recently when he vetoed a bill that would have required the state’s public schools and hospitals to offer upon request kosher, halal and other religion-based dietary options. State and federal prisons are required, per the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, to offer such dietary accommodations to inmates. But no such federal law applies to state schools and hospitals. The bill, IL HB3643, which the billionaire Jewish democrat vetoed on Aug. 11, was...
(JNS) — As of Aug. 17, the Jewish Federations of North America has allocated $249,000 that it raised from 120 Jewish communities nationwide as part of its emergency Hawaii Wildfire Fund. The funds will go to Maui Kosher Farm, Jewish Congregation of Maui, Maui Jewish Ohana, Chabad of Maui and Jewish Community Services of Hawaii, JFNA stated in a release. “The devastation in Maui is immeasurable, but we continue to be inspired by our partners on the ground that have responded with so much care, compassion and professionalism to the needs of the...
(JTA) – At least two synagogues in California evacuated during Shabbat services over the weekend as online trolls targeted Jewish congregations for the fourth straight week with fake bomb and other security threats. At least 26 congregations in 12 states have received the threats, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which is raising alarm about the barrage. The organization believes the instigators are selecting their targets based on the availability of livestreamed services and other events, motivated by their desire to watch the c...
(JTA) - Jewish groups in the United States and in Hawaii are launching relief efforts following the devastation caused by wildfires that have killed more than 50 people so far. The wildfires have all but destroyed the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, which Hawaii's Jewish governor, Josh Green, toured on Thursday with Brian Schatz, the state's Jewish senator. "What we saw today was likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history," Green said in a statement. The fires have had...
(JNS) — Sarah Miller’s biggest takeaway from her first day at the Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., was that there are stronger forces that unite rather than divide. “We have more in common than we have apart,” Miller, a junior studying web design, education and French at Butler University in Indianapolis, told JNS. She cited three speakers who shared “their belief in the power of building connections.” “They proved that not only on the international level but also on the personal level, the way to solve conflic...
(JTA) — Federal agents arrested a West Virginia man on Thursday for allegedly threatening jurors and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, which culminated last week in a death sentence. The man who was arrested, Hardy Lloyd, 45, is “a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district of West Virginia. The statement said Lloyd “made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses dur...
(JTA) — For its latest effort to combat antisemitism on college campuses, the Anti-Defamation League is turning to a particular brand of college student: frat boys. The Jewish civil rights group is partnering with Alpha Epsilon Pi, the historically Jewish fraternity, on an initiative to engage members of AEPi’s 150 local chapters starting this fall, the two groups announced Monday. They revealed the new initiative — which will include the creation of something called the Antisemitism Response Center — during AEPi’s international conventio...
