Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 3951
(JNS) — Imagine that after Sept. 11, American and European leaders had proposed negotiating with Al-Qaeda rather than destroying it. The discussion would not have centered on dismantling its terrorist infrastructure, but on what concessions the West should make to persuade Osama bin Laden to stop attacking it. Perhaps recognition of a new Islamic caliphate. Perhaps acceptance of sharia law. The idea is absurd. No serious American leader suggested bargaining with Al-Qaeda or ISIS to moderate their ambitions. The United States hunted down and k...
(JNS) — Know anyone who walked on water lately? Throughout the Torah, we read about Moses and the elders of Israel, and their spiritual greatness, including prophecy. God spoke to Moses like no other prophet in history. But there are prophets … and there are prophets. This week in Re’eh (Deuteronomy 13: 2-6), we are told that there may well arise a false prophet in your midst—one who may perform miracles and wonders. And you may be very impressed and ready to follow him. But we are cautioned. Should he tell you to follow other gods and go down...
(JNS) — The significance of the victory by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic primary goes far beyond the particulars of the result. It’s a chilling indicator of the suicidal lurch of progressive politics, which has weaponized anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel to destroy America and the West. El-Sayed beat the moderate, Israel supporter Haley Stevens, to become the Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat in the November midterm elections. He wants a total U.S. military embargo on the “evil” State of Israel, which he believ...
(JNS) — In my new book, “Free Expression Under Fire,” I make an argument I’ve spent years defending: that free expression doesn’t just live in the courtroom or the ivory towers where I trained. My case is that the First Amendment’s 45 words have durable meaning when ordinary people take them out of litigation briefs and law reviews and into “kitchen table conversations, coffee shop debates and civic discussions that shape our communities.” I stand by that. But I left something out. This month, as Carnegie Mellon University investigated ei...
Dear Editor: We are becoming a nation of “Barnabys.” Let me share an analogy: “Barnaby was a dog with a big dream and a short nose. His owner, Leo, tied a plump, warm hot dog to a long string and dangled it right in front of Barnaby’s twitching snout. Barnaby trotted forward, his eyes locked on the bouncing meat, running and panting in an endless, joyful chase.” Look at us, well-informed American Jews falling for the empty promises on which communism is built. This ideology as a style of living is full of negatives, full of flaws, encouragi...
(JNS) — The contradictory accounts of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting (a public cold shoulder or “the best meeting ever”) and the focus on technical but important details (there was no one-on-one meeting, no journalists were invited) ignore a more basic question: What was its purpose? Why, in fact, did Netanyahu travel to Washington? In January, the goal was advancing what would later become known as “Operation Roaring Lion.” A year earlier, it was the strike on Fordow by American bombers and blocking bad hostage deals. But what now? Is the goal...
By Jonathan S. Greenwald (JNS) — “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.” Those may be among the most consequential song lyrics released this year. On July 27, Boy George released his newest song, “We Will Dance Again,” commemorating the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. He most likely knew it would be controversial. He most likely knew there would be a price to pay. In today’s entertainment industry, expressing solidarity with Israel or even with Jewish victims of terror is often met with criticism, pr...
(JNS) — Some European Jewish leaders are now calling for Europe’s Jews to be granted “special protected minority status” with a legal “metaphorical fence” placed around Jewish communities, institutions and religious practices. The concern behind this proposal is understandable. Antisemitism is rising; synagogues and schools require heavy security against awful, violent attacks; and many Jews feel far less safe than they did a generation ago. Governments have an absolute duty to respond. But there is a profound difference between protecting...
(JNS) — While speaking to Israel’s 103 FM Radio on June 17, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli warned that the formation of a Turkey-Qatar-Pakistan partnership is a growing strategic concern for Israel. “What we are witnessing before our eyes is the rise of a new axis,” Chikli said. He described this alliance as “a radical Sunni axis of evil, more dangerous than anything we have seen before.” Qatar and Turkey are the main state financial sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood, which operates globally. Pakistan is one of the world’s...
(JNS) — Around the world, headlines tell a story of rising global anxiety, tension and an increasingly fractured world fueled by conflict and political polarization. For Jewish communities across the Diaspora, these challenges are inescapable. They are deeply felt in our community centers and homes. Yet quietly, beneath all the noise and turmoil, a different reality is unfolding inside our classrooms, sowing the seeds of hope. At the Yael Foundation, we recently analyzed data from our global network of 145 Jewish educational institutions s...
(JNS) — It would be welcome news if Hamas had truly agreed to surrender its weapons as part of a proposed 20-point framework to end the war. Above all, it would offer hope to the people of Gaza, who have suffered under the terrorist group’s theocratic dictatorship. According to media reports, a new initiative helped secure a breakthrough in negotiations between Hamas and the U.S.-backed Board of Peace over a proposed postwar framework that includes Hamas’s disarmament. But there are good reasons for skepticism. Hamas’s ideology makes genuine...
(JNS) — “How do we make sure we never lose the land again?” This question caught me completely off-guard. I was attending the recent Zohar Conference in Tel Aviv when Yael Leibowitz posed it, saying it was the fundamental question facing the Jewish people. Every other issue, she suggested, was secondary. I have found myself returning to that question repeatedly. At first, it sounded like a question about military strength or politics. The more I reflected on it, however, the more I realized it was asking the central question of Tisha B’Av....
Across the world last week, Jews observed the saddest day on the biblical calendar, a day of mourning and fasting in commemoration of the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE) and the Second Temple (70 CE), along with other calamities that have befallen the Jewish people on the same day — the ninth of the month of Av — across millennia. These are not a coincidence, and our observance and mourning are with deep introspection. The destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem pulled the rug out from under the cornerstone of Jewish life, som...
(JNS) —The United Nations has been consumed by the Palestinian issue almost since its founding. Middle East Studies departments often question the legitimacy of Israel while devoting extraordinary attention to a state that does not exist. Professors with no expertise in the Middle East sign petitions condemning the State of Israel and repeating talking points by Hamas. Students paying exorbitant tuition spend more time organizing anti-Israel demonstrations and calling for boycotts than demanding lower college costs. Meanwhile, a global media wi...
(JNS) — Here’s a strange paradox of Jewish life: The words we probably recite more often than any other Hebrew prayer are ones we sing without thinking about. We rarely explore the deeper meaning of the Shehecheyanu prayer, although we say it at almost every Jewish celebration, gala and lifecycle event. So let’s slow down and ponder the ancient words our sages designated to show our thankfulness. In this prayer are three clusters of words we use to articulate the nuances of our gratitude. We say Shehecheyanu, “who enlivens us,” then Ve-kiyama...
(JNS) — So far, it seems like there is a dichotomy between the U.S. and the Israeli positions on the Islamic Republic of Iran. For better or for worse, Washington is adhering to what is left of the Memorandum of Understanding. The United States wants to “mow the lawn” and open the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, however, believes that the Islamic Republic and all its terror proxies have to be eradicated for it to survive. At one point, it will get down to either the Islamic Republic survives or Israel does. It will become a zero-sum game. Follo...
(JNS) — Israel has spent decades bracing for the enemies it can see: Iranian centrifuges, Hamas tunnels, Hezbollah rockets. It has built one of the most sophisticated defense establishments on earth to battle them. But the danger that may do the most lasting damage is growing inside the Knesset, the yeshivahs and the birth statistics themselves — and no missile-defense system can stop it. That threat is Haredi exceptionalism. And Israel’s leaders built it themselves. Haredim make up less than 15 percent of the Israeli population. Yet their...
(JNS) — We count incidents. We map incidents. We archive incidents. We convene conferences about incidents. We create databases, research centers, scholarly associations, testimony projects, reporting platforms, surveys, advisory groups, working groups and task forces devoted to explaining antisemitism, a hatred that has existed for thousands of years and has never been especially subtle about its purpose. At some point, we must ask an uncomfortable question: How much more studying do we actually need? This is not an argument against s...
Over the past week, I found myself thinking several times about one of the more curious episodes in the book of Exodus. The Torah tells us that during the plague of frogs, the frogs entered not only the fields and homes of the Egyptians, but even their ovens. The sages explain that this, too, was part of the miracle. Left to themselves, frogs do not voluntarily leap into burning ovens; it is contrary to instinct. The image has stayed with me because it captures something deeply unsettling: the experience of watching someone knowingly act agains...
(JNS) — Julian Casablancas, the frontman of The Strokes, one of the defining rock bands of the early 2000s, recently told a million YouTube subscribers on the popular web series SubwayTakes that American Zionists “get the benefits of white privileged people, but talk like they are black people during slavery.” This week, Oxford University released a video of Casablancas expanding on it. Yes, that Oxford. The Oxford Union, comfortably ensconced at the highbrow academic institution in England, invited him to speak, and he offered a clarification....
(JNS) — The spectacle of the United States turning 250 and hosting the World Cup brings to mind ancient Rome. Civilizations do not simply rise and fall. They either remain faithful to their mission or rot from within and hand the future to someone else. Greece gave the world philosophy. Rome gave it law and power. Britain carried Greek tools into the modern age. America inherited Rome’s burden. The United States is Rome’s successor in both symbolism and substance. It has a Senate, an eagle, Latin mottos and global reach. But it also inher...
(JNS) — The Institute for Science and National Security issued its “Analysis of IAEA Iran Verification and Monitoring Report: May 2025” by David Albright, Sarah Burkhard and Spencer August Faragasso on June 9, 2025. The report cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report dated May 31, 2025, that Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent highly enriched uranium amounted to 233 kg. Two weeks ago, the IAEA reported a slight increase of 60 percent HEU to 440.9 kilograms, enough to yield approximately 10 nuclear weapons. The finding reported that it...
(JNS) — Am Yisrael, the global Jewish people, stands at a historic crossroads. The challenges we face on a communal, social and national level are familiar yet somehow different. The Jewish experience of the 20th century and the establishment of the State of Israel have been game-changers. The question is: What are we doing about our current challenges? How should global Jewry leverage Israel’s success? For years, Israel’s innovation output has outpaced far larger nations across nearly every sector: transportation, aquaculture, climate, high-...
(JNS) — More and more information is surfacing to reveal that the Islamic holy war against the West isn’t just being waged on the battleground of the Middle East. Even more significantly, it’s also being waged through a trillion-dollar influence campaign to colonize and subvert the Western mind, organized by extremists from the Islamic world. These have tunneled into the West through a vast civic infrastructure whose real purpose and sources of funding have been as well concealed, and in their own way are just as deadly as the subte...
In these few days following Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden death after returning from Ukraine, I have heard Jews offering the traditional blessing usually spoken for one of our own: “May Lindsey Graham rest in peace. May his memory be for a blessing.” The words felt fitting. Graham was not Jewish, but he stood firmly with Israel and the Jewish people. He understood that Israel was not only defending itself but also standing against forces that threatened the region and beyond. He wasn’t alone. Some of the greatest friends the Jewish people...
