Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(CAMERA via JNS)—Reflecting a total lack of self-awareness, the trite headline to Michelle Alexander’s 2,281-word op-ed, online and in print on Jan. 19, in The New York Times says it all: “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine.” The notion...

DEARBORN, Mich. (JTA)—On Jan. 31, we at the Dearborn Historical Commission adopted a resolution objecting to Mayor John O’Reilly’s refusal to allow the distribution of the new edition of The Dearborn Historian, which featured an article by...

(JNS)—As part of the Palestinian Authority’s latest ploy to avoid direct negotiations with Israel, it is now absurdly claiming that United Nations Resolution 181, passed by the U.N. General Assembly in November 1947, gave Palestinian Arabs a...

(JNS)—Is the effort to combat the BDS movement much ado about nothing? Given the abject failure of the campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel to harm the economy of the Jewish state or even to get American universities to endorse their...

(JNS)—More than three-fourths of American Jews want Israel to be reduced to just miles wide—narrower than Washington, D.C., or the Bronx. How can that be? The answer, of course, is that it can’t be. But J Street is now making that claim...

Dear Editor:  Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. is deeply saddened to learn of the sudden and untimely passing of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein z”l, founder and director of the International Fellowship of Christians & Jews....

This is part 3 in a four-part series. Unlike American two-party politics, Israel is more like a multi-dimensional chess game. People make moves in parallel planes that affect not only the game they are playing (their own political considerations)...

(JNS)—Organized disruptors, both students and non-students, who shut down a pro-Israel gathering at University of California Los Angeles last May might not be prosecuted, according to information from LA City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office....

On July 19, 2018, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament passed what is known as a basic law, declaring that the State of Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish people. Why did a majority of the 120 members of the Knesset feel it necessary to...

(JNS)—If there’s one concept in Western progressive circles that is deemed essential for a decent society, it’s “social inclusion.” The promotion of diversity is assumed to be morally unchallengeable. That’s also the prevalent attitude...

(JNS)—The Palestinian Authority last week removed a photo from the website of one of its ministries because it showed a meeting of P.A. officials in which bottles of a popular Israeli juice were visible on the table. For friends of Israel, it was...

This is part 2 of a four-part series. There have been investigations of Prime Minister Netanyahu on possible legal charges relating to four different cases going on for years. The attorney general has not yet indicated which, if any, of the charges...

(JNS)—Like so many other Jewish women, I grappled over the decision to attend the Women’s March on Jan. 19. I missed the first march because I was recovering from childbirth, and was overcome with exhaustion and uncertainties about how I was goin...

Where are our friends protesting anti-Semitism? Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we marked this last week, spoke powerfully about the danger and potential damage of silence. He once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent...

(JNS)—What the Jewish world needs most these days is inclusion. Yet the only sensible course of action open to Jewish community relations councils and other outreach groups is to set firm limits on who can or cannot enter the proverbial big Jewish...

(JNS)—Opponents of an academic boycott of Israel owe John Cheney-Lippold and Daniel Segal a debt of gratitude. Cheney-Lippold is the University of Michigan professor who agreed to write a letter of recommendation for one of his students last fall a...

(JNS)—Over the past several weeks, much discussion has been made about the events last spring on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Many have equivocated the actions of violent rioters inspired by Hamas (a terrorist organization) and...

As I mentioned in my column two weeks ago, whenever my wife and I travel overseas we always listen for the sounds of Jewish. In that column I described how, upon boarding our cruise ship on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, I was hoping to have...

Civility. It was something basic to our society. We were taught at home to be respectful of other people, specifically those older than ourselves. We were taught to listen to other peoples’ opinions, not interrupt and then offer our own take on...

(JNS)—It may be that supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump and those who back the Israeli government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are now so closely aligned that the latter have no qualms about the Jewish state being...

NEW YORK (JTA)—My dad, who grew up in a time and place where his Judaism only marked him as an outsider, never really got my professional fascination with all things Jewish. That all changed when nearly 20 years ago I got a job with the Forward, th...

(JTA)—Filmmaker Steven Spielberg told NBC News he thinks society must take the possibility of genocide more seriously now than it has in the past generation. In an interview marking the 25th anniversary of “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg...

Dear Editor: In the Dec. 28th edition, Jim Shipley states in his column that “So far, no Jew has run for president.” Anyone who is not living under a rock would immediately recognize the error of that statement. Several Jews have run for U.S....

By Kenneth Hanson Not long ago I was privileged to take part in a panel discussion on the history of anti-Semitism. The shared comments of the panelists, I felt, yielded a considerable wealth of insight, until the notion was advanced that anti-Semiti...

(JNS)—Ever since President Donald Trump astounded the world by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, commentators have been trying to work out the significance of this decision. Among those conservatives who believe America should ma...