Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA) – The Reform movement posted a prayer. Chabad asked followers to pledge to do a mitzvah. The Jewish Federations of North America set up a Web page to express solidarity. The disappearance of three Israeli teens in Judea and Samaria last week is being taken as a call to action uniting many disparate elements of the American Jewish community. At synagogues across America spanning the major denominations, Jews recited psalms or offered special prayers for the safe return of the t...
The President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, arrived last Tuesday June 24, on a diplomatic visit to the United States of America for what was his final foreign trip as the president of the State of Israel after a 7-year term in office and over 65 years of public service. During the visit President Peres met with President Obama at the White House and received the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony attended by House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate...
(JTA) – When Argentina plays its opening-round matches in the World Cup, Mariano Schlez of Buenos Aires will be screaming his support from the stands. But taking in his home country's matches in Brazil isn't all that will be occupying Schlez for the first fortnight of the monthlong soccer spectacle. Also filling his calendar are 14 "Jewish" events that he and his wife have organized in seven of the host cities. They include Shabbat evening prayers, beach soccer games leading into Saturday n...
Somali militants who murdered 48 people in a Kenyan village as they watched the World Cup went door to door asking residents if they were Muslim or spoke Somali — and shot them dead if either answer was ‘no,’ witnesses revealed. “They came to our house at around 8 p.m. and asked us in Swahili whether we were Muslims,” Anne Gathigi told the Daily Mail. “My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest.” In a joint statement, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and the Chief Rabbi o...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)—A Dutch Jewish television channel won the first prize for original production at a festival for religious broadcasters from across Europe. The Hilversum-based Joodse Omroep television station plucked the prize for best television production with its nine-part series “Zoek de verschillen” (“Look for the differences”) at the four-day European Festival of Religious Programmes, which ended last week and was held for the 18th time in Holland’s studio city, Hilversum. The program, which examines Jewish communities...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Palestinian village of Battir was named a World Heritage site by UNESCO and put on the List of World Heritage in Danger. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee on Friday approved the West Bank village, about six miles west of Jerusalem, for inclusion on the lists. Battir is known for its ancient stone farming terraces and an irrigation system established in Roman times that remains in use. It was put on the danger list due to the start of construction of Israel’s security fence. According to the committee, Battir was added “afte...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - An Arab-Israeli Knesset member said the kidnappers of three Israeli teenagers are not terrorists. "They are people that cannot see any way to change their reality, and they are forced to use these means until Israeli society wises up a bit and sees and feels the suffering of the other," Hanin Zoabi of the Balad party said Tuesday in an interview with Tel Aviv Radio. Zoabi participated in the May 2010 flotilla to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and was punished...
NEW YORK (JTA) - A special panel tasked with examining the governance and strategic vision of the Claims Conference is recommending that the organization shift its long-term focus to Holocaust education and remembrance, JTA has learned. The panel was appointed last year following a scandal involving the Claims Conference's failure to detect a $57 million fraud scheme there that persisted until 2009. It also recommended cutting in half the size of the board's executive committee and the number...
TEL AVIV (JTA) - Since the three teenagers were abducted last week, Israel's goals have been simple: Find them and punish their kidnappers. Realizing those goals, though, is far from a simple task. The international community has condemned the kidnappings, and Israel has spread its forces across Judea and Samaria to search for the teens. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to stop at nothing to find Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach. But the effort is taking place...
Netanyahu: Israel will air proof that Hamas kidnapped teens JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel has “unequivocal proof” that Hamas is responsible for the kidnapping of three Israeli teens more than a week ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Netanyahu, speaking Sunday at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, said Israel would share the proof and information with several countries and soon will make it public. Airing the information, the Israeli leader said, will put remarks by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Saudi Arabia “to t...
By Linda Gradstein The Media Line Almost a week after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped, presumably by the Islamist Hamas movement, Israel has expanded its crackdown to include “anything green” as one Israeli army officer referred to the traditional Hamas color. Some 300 Palestinians affiliated with Hamas have been arrested in the past week, including several Palestinian parliamentarians and more than 50 prisoners who had been released in a prisoner exchange for a captured Israeli soldier in 2011. Israeli officials say that their main goa...
Israeli students Gilad Sha'ar,16, Eyal Yifrach, 19, and Naftali Frankel, 16 were kidnapped late Thursday night (June 12) from a hitchhiking point in Gush Etzion. The Jewish Federations of North America sent the following letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "We are writing to you at this difficult hour to declare the complete solidarity of the Jewish community of North America with you, with the families of the abducted students and indeed with the entire people of Israel. At...
[AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY]-The Palestinian professor who touched off a maelstrom of controversy by taking a group of students to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland is now at odds with his former employer after the school accepted his resignation. Dr. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, who headed the American studies department and served as chief librarian at Al-Quds University, stirred-up a hornets' nest among Palestinians who felt the visit was not appropriate when he led the March trip. Dao...
(PaulieGroup) With the first chord of one of the most famous guitar riffs reverberating through the amplifiers June 4, 50,000 music fans were greeted with the 1981 classic Start Me Up, as the Rolling Stones made their Israeli debut in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park. As promised, the band took the stage at 9:15 p.m., pushing back their original start time to enable observant Jews to attend the entire concert after sundown marking the end of Shavuot, a holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah at...
A Facebook page created Friday following the kidnapping had garnered close to 80,000 “likes” by Monday. The “Bring Back Our Boys” Facebook page, which aims to raise international awareness of the kidnapping, acquired more than 7,000 “likes” in its first four hours, and numerous viewers uploaded pictures of themselves holding signs reading “Bring Back Our Boys.” The page is predicated on the international protest formula initiated by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, who created a page called “Bring Back Our Girls” to campaign for the release of...
(JNS.org) Israel must be prepared to act alone in the face of the Iranian nuclear threat, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former head of the Israeli National Security Council, said Sunday at the annual Herzliya Conference. "While the U.S. is an irreplaceable strategic ally, we need to be ready to do things on our own," Amidror said, according to Israel Hayom. In response, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said the U.S. "will use...
GIVAT SHMUEL, Israel (JTA)—On the rolling green fields of a suburban Tel Aviv park, hundreds gathered to pray for the imminent rescue of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers. Rabbis delivered speeches, singer Yonatan Razel performed two pieces based on liturgical invocations of God’s mercy, and a prayer was recited for the safe return of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach, who were kidnapped last week while hitchhiking from the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion. Nearby, the calm warmth of summer in Israel seemed to take the edge off...
Washington Jewish Week A prominent Republican senator considered by many to be a contender in the 2016 presidential election has embarked on a foreign policy push of late, with a strong focus on Israel and the Jewish community. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a Tea Party favorite, recently returned to the Capitol after a tour of Europe and the Middle East with Secure America Now, including a two-day stop in Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, members of the Knesset, and Isr...
HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA)—Naftali Bennett and Tzipi Livni don’t agree on much. Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, sees the West Bank as an inseparable part of the Jewish state and wants Israel to annex its settlements there. Livni, the justice minister, says Israel can remain a Jewish democracy only by evacuating settlements. But on one thing they agree: Israel must break its status quo with the Palestinians. Bennett and Livni were two of the five politicians who presented a range of responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last Sunda...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Is the new Palestinian government kosher under U.S. law? A range of American Middle East policy analysts and current and former U.S. officials say that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threaded the needle last week and created a government of technocrats untainted by Hamas and not subject to its influence, although Hamas has declared its backing of the government. That could all change, however, if elections to replace the interim government are held in about six...
Kerry calls for release of kidnapped Israelis, cites likely Hamas involvement (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for the immediate release of three kidnapped Israeli teens and noted the “many indications” pointing to Hamas’ involvement. In a statement released Sunday afternoon, more than 48 hours after the teens’ abduction, Kerry said he “strongly condemns” the kidnapping and reiterated that Hamas is a “terrorist organization.” Kerry said Washington officials “continue to offer our full support for Israel in its search for the miss...
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA)—It isn’t every day that Jewish organizations reject funding for Holocaust commemorations. But that’s what happened in Hungary this spring when Jewish groups refused nearly $1 million in special state grants to protest what they see as the government’s whitewashing of Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. “We wanted to send a very strong message to the government that we are interested in truthful, not symbolic, remembrance, and this is something money cannot buy,” sai...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Blocks away from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the headquarters of two major banks, in the corner of the lobby of a boutique hotel, Nimrod Gruber sticks his hand into an ATM. A few seconds later, a QR code prints out. Gruber takes the slip of paper and walks away, no cash in hand. He’s not worried. He owns the ATM, and there’s nothing like it in the Middle East. It identifies users by scanning their palms, and instead of dispensing dollars, euros or shekels, it dispenses Bitcoin. “It shows up in your account in 30 seconds...
Israel's 120-seat parliament today chose long-time Likud member Reuven Rivlin as the country's next president who will succeed the popular Shimon Peres, who retires next month at the age of 90. Rivlin, who served two terms as speaker of the Knesset, has been a member of parliament for almost 20 years. He won on the second round of voting after none of the original five candidates, including Nobel chemistry laureate Dan Schectman, failed to achieve an overall majority. Rivlin beat out rival...
Elie Wiesel, humanitarian, Nobel Prize laureate and chairman of The Algemeiner’s Advisory Board, said he turned down an offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to succeed Shimon Peres as president of the State of Israel, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported. In an interview, Wiesel said he was flattered, but didn’t think the job was for him: “Why should I be president? Leave me alone. I write books. I wasn’t meant to do that.” Wiesel said Netanyahu had telephoned him in New York three times: “You will be the president of the Sta...
