Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—Alan Gross did not warn his family he was launching a hunger strike, but hearing the news, they understood why: The U.S. government subcontractor languishing in a Cuban prison feels forgotten. Gross, a 64-year-old Jewish father of two from Potomac, Md., is currently serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for “crimes against the state.” He was arrested in December 2009 while on a mission to hook up Cuba’s small Jewish community with the Internet. The company he was working for had a contract with the U.S. Agency for Interna...
In August 2012, a Christian and a Jew bumped into each other in Brighton, the languid seaside resort on Britain's south coast that has become the hub of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) protests at the local Ecostream store. The Israeli-owned shop has attracted weekly demonstrations from the BDS crowd, angry that products made over the Green Line should be sold in the United Kingdom. Simon Cobbs, a passionate Zionist who had lived in Israel for three years by the time he was 17, was...
(JTA) – The Jewish community in Milan is confronting an apparent case of embezzlement in which millions of dollars were removed from the community bank accounts. “Over the course of the past few months, all the accounts of the community have undergone a general audit, which is still going on,” Milan Jewish community president Walter Meghnagi told hundreds of community members at a special meeting this week. The audit, he said, had shown that “taking advantage of everyone’s good faith, over the course of the years millions of Euros have been...
Rather than feeling a sense of loss, leaving the second Passover seder behind in the U.S., or France, or Turkey, or any other country of origin is touted as a perk of living in Israel that new immigrants to the Jewish state (olim) mention in the same breath as the universal availability of fresh pita and falafel. But why do Diaspora Jews mutter to themselves while they're dragging out the matzo balls for their return engagement at seder No. 2? Why, since the Torah is crystal clear that Passover...
Taglit-Birthright Israel announces the establishment of a unique training program for an elite cadre of American trip leaders through a partnership with the iCenter, a North American organization dedicated to Israel education. Taglit-Birthright Israel will dub the participants “Taglit Fellows” and expects to provide up to 200 trip leaders each year with intensive theoretical and practical training skills. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s three-pronged approach to trip leaders’ education will include a four-day seminar with Jewish and Israel studies...
(Haaretz) A group of 30 Palestinian students arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in what is believed to be the first organized visit by Palestinian students to a Nazi death camp. The students spent several days in Kraków and Oswiecim guided by two Jewish Holocaust survivors. A news blackout on the trip was requested by the organizers. In fact, the presence of the Palestinian group at Auschwitz-Birkenau was reported in Haaretz for the first time on March 31. The students from Al-Quds University and...
(MediaScan)—A visit by Palestinian students to Nazi death camps has stirred controversy among Palestinians, with some condemning it as a form of “normalization” with Israel. The visit to the Nazi camps has angered some Palestinians, prompting Al-Quds University to distance itself from the tour. The university and its outgoing president, Sari Nusseibeh, had often been criticized for promoting “normalization” with Israel. In a statement, Al-Quds University announced that it had nothing to do with the Auschwitz-Birkenau visit. The universit...
Letter by families of terror victims calls for Pollard release JERUSALEM (JTA)—Family members of terror victims killed by Palestinian prisoners released in connection with the current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations called on President Obama to free Jonathan Pollard. The letter, signed by 22 terror victim relatives, was delivered Sunday to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro to be passed on to the U.S. president, according to the Times of Israel. The letter was circulated by the Almagor Terror Victims Association. “Mr. President, wit...
(The Algemeiner) Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter confused Israel's demand for the Palestinian Authority to recognize it as a 'Jewish state' for meaning that all Arabs living there would need to convert. In an interview with the Associated Press, Carter said, "Israel can claim `We are a Jewish state.' I don't think the Arab countries will contradict that Jewish statement. But to force the Arab people to say that all the Arab people that they have in Israel have to be Jews, I think that's...
LOD, Israel (JTA)-Sitting in his sister's living room in this town outside Tel Aviv, Yuriy Yukhatskov says he's glad to be far from his home city of Kiev. Yukhatskov, 44, says that what he sees as the pervasive anti-Semitism in Ukraine's capital would grow only worse with the country's recent unrest. He fears that last month's revolution could lead to a government unfriendly to Jews. Israel feels foreign to Yukhatskov, but he's grateful to be able to walk to synagogue wearing his kippah without...
HAIFA—Suffering from acute kidney failure, 7-year-old “Y” needed a new kidney to survive. When the Jordanian boy’s parents learned that Rambam Health Care Campus had begun performing pediatric transplants—a procedure not available in Jordan—they contacted the hospital: “Please help us by doing a kidney transplantation on our son,” they asked the Haifa-based hospital. That surgery took place just days ago. Rambam officials were surprised to receive the request. The first pediatric procedure at Rambam, which had pioneered adult kidney transpla...
N.J.’s Christie apologizes to Adelson over ‘occupied territories’ reference (JTA)—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson for referring to the “occupied territories” in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Christie met with Adelson, a major GOP donor, privately on Saturday afternoon in Adelson’s Las Vegas office in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, which hosted the RJC meeting, Politico reported, citing an unnamed source. During his speech on Saturday, Christie spoke of his family’s trip to Israel...
(JTA)-Russia's annexation of Crimea, the strategically critical peninsula that dangles from Ukraine into the Black Sea, has drawn international condemnation. But for the leader of the All-Ukrainian Organization of Crimean Karaites-a group with an unusual heritage that draws from Jewish traditions-joining Russia is a welcome development. "In Crimea, the majority of Karaites support annexation to Russia, and voted for it," Vladimir Ormeli, the group's head, told JTA. "Culture and people connect...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower stretches 223 feet skyward, welcoming visitors in a bright, expansive lobby strung with banners celebrating both the State of Israel and its premier hospital, the Hadassah Medical Organization. Opened in late 2012 at a total cost of $363 million, the tower is the largest building project undertaken at Hadassah in 50 years and a symbol of the hospital’s ambitions for the future. Now that future is in peril as the hospital, saddled with nearly $370 million in debt and an annual def...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The battle between members of Congress and the State Department over tourist visas for Israelis features two competing archetypes of the young Israeli traveler. The lawmakers paint a picture of a world traveler, matured by service to country, who deserves a break from the stresses of the Middle East. U.S. consular officials, meanwhile, have warned of lawbreakers hawking dubious Dead Sea beauty products in malls and at rest stops. The debate surfaced publicly with a March 6 letter from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to Secretary o...
Obama administration not appeased by Yaalon clarification WASHINGTON (JTA)—A statement from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon clarifying his attack on U.S. foreign policy did not appease the Obama administration. “We are disappointed with the lack of an apology from Defense Minister Yaalon’s comments,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said last Friday. “His comments, as we’ve stated a couple times, don’t reflect the true nature of our relationship with Israel.” Psaki’s remarks to reporters came a day after Yaalon in a state...
While international attention continues to focus on the Iranian nuclear program and diplomatic efforts to address it, the Israeli Navy's March 5 interception of an Iranian ship full of Syrian-made missiles bound for Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza sheds new light on other dimensions of the Islamic Republic's strategy. "The nuclear program is the fast mover in international discussions, but the delivery capabilities are extremely important," Ilan Berman, vice president of the American...
(JTA)- When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin's office. But since the event was on Shabbat, Lazar initially declined the invitation, explaining he was prevented from carrying documents, among other religious restrictions. So Putin ordered his staff...
Tel Aviv makes top 10 in ‘selfiest cities’ list TEL AVIV (JTA)—Tel Aviv has the sixth-most selfie-takers per capita of any major city, according to a ranking in Time magazine. Among Tel Aviv residents, 139 per 100,000 frequently take selfies, or self-portraits taken with a cellphone, according to the “top 100 selfiest cities in the world” survey published last week. Time calculated the results by surveying 400,000 selfies tagged according to location on Instagram, a popular photo-sharing online social network. The survey looked at selfies f...
(JTA)- They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez expelled Israel's ambassador to Caracas, and when he called on Venezuela's Jews to condemn Israel for its actions in Gaza in 2009. They left when Caracas claimed the ignoble title of most dangerous city in the world-and when inflation hit double digits, food shortages took hold and the country's murd...
Israeli naval commandos intercepted an Iranian ship in the Red Sea weighed down with missiles that was en route to the Gaza Strip, the IDF said in a statement. The boat, named KLOSC, was stopped by the elite naval commando unit Shayetet 13 as it was heading to Sudan, 1,500 miles from Israel. Once on board the KLOSC Israeli soldiers found cement bags, behind which were hidden dozens of M-302 missiles, which, the IDF said, were loaded onto the boat in Iran. Had the boat reached the Port of Sudan,...
Close to half a million members of Israel's haredi public rallied in Jerusalem on Sunday, shutting down roads in and around the city, to protest a proposed bill that would mandate them to participate in the Israel Defense Forces and would criminalize those that refuse conscription. Some political parties-led notably by Finance Minister Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid-have made the issue of religious enlistment a focal point of their agendas, while religious leaders, who are conspicuously absent from the...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., that the "greatest challenge" facing their two countries is stopping Iran from gaining the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. "The greatest challenge, undoubtedly, is to prevent Iran from acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said, according to a transcript of his remarks released by his communications office. "I think that goal can be achieved if Iran is prevented from...
While visiting New York last week, Miss Israel, Yityish Aynaw, proved that not all Israelis love the country’s national chickpea spread, hummus. “In Israel, I don’t eat hummus,” she explained to a New York Daily News reporter during an interview at Hummus Place in the East Village, a popular stop for Israelis. “Now I come to New York and I’m supposed to eat hummus? It’s not tasty for me. I don’t like it.” During the discussion, Aynaw, 22, shared her dating preferences and admitted that she likes American men, as long as they don’t want to be...
(JNS.org) Following comments by President Barack Obama that challenged him to “articulate an alternative approach” to a peace deal with the Palestinians if he does not believe a deal “is the right thing to do for Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s “vital interests” must be upheld in such an agreement. “The tango in the Middle East needs at least three,” Netanyahu said March 3 upon landing in the U.S. for a six-day visit. “For years there have been two—Israel and the U.S. Now it needs to be seen if the Palestinians are also...
