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

(JNS)—On the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, government officials and institutions throughout America commemorated the horror of that day. But after all these years, there is a sense that—other than for those who lost family...

WASHINGTON (JTA)—With the new election in Israel, it is worth reflecting on the last Likud leader, Ariel Sharon, and the decisions he made on the Palestinian issue. Sharon, the 11th prime minister of Israel, was a large man who did not think...

A few months ago, there was a slew of hopeful chatter in Israel that Eli Cohen would finally be coming home. This followed the return of remains of an Israeli soldier killed in battle in Lebanon in 1982 with help from Russia. The country couldn’t r...

Dear Editor: 1. A Jewish Democrat—you are Jewish and vote Democrat regardless of the democratic party’s discriminations against you. 2. A democratic Jew—you are a dedicated Democrat. Being a Jew doesn’t matter. By these two definitions,...

By Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)—For the overwhelming majority of Americans, Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer. But like other federal holidays, such as Memorial Day, which were once rooted in specific historical experiences such as the...

Congressional Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) along with two other freshman democratic congresswomen, have now been collectively tagged with the moniker, “The Squad.” The descriptive name for the four was quickly and...

(JNS)—In an interview with my colleague Benjamin Kerstein last week, Rabbi Eli Cohen, the executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council in Brooklyn, N.Y., said something about the state of anti-Semitism in America today that’s...

Netflix’s “The Spy” is a six-episode series about real-life Israeli Mossad hero Eli Cohen. “The Spy” stars Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for his 2006 adult-oriented comedy movie “Borat,” as the legendary Mossad agent. “The...

(JNS)—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commonly known as AIPAC, recently made headlines in almost every major media outlet when it wrongly and publicly criticized Israel’s just and proper decision to refuse to admit Jew-hating...

Dear Editor: Your discussion of the J-Street version of Birthright trip to Israel records at length the impressions of three young ladies of their visit to the Holy Land (see “3 participants share what they learned on J Street’s first...

JERUSALEM (JTA)—On Sept. 4, Israel commemorated the 90th anniversary of the 1929 Hebron massacre, during which Arab residents slaughtered their Jewish neighbors, leading to a Jewish exodus for the next half century.  Since then, Hebron has been a...

In case you missed it, Israel will be holding national elections on Sept. 17. Yes, this is the second time this year. Hopefully the outcome will not be a stalemate like last time. Please enjoy this series of articles offering insight beyond whether...

Last week, I had the honor and privilege of traveling to Israel for the very first time, thanks to the American Israel Education Foundation. Every two years, AIEF sponsors a trip for freshman members of Congress to educate policy makers about...

I cannot count my first 17 years as a Jew. My father inherited a hatred of Orthodoxy from his father, a dedicated Socialist. Therefore, I would not be bar mitzvahed until my 40s—but that’s another story. My Zionism and Judaism rose together in...

By Noa Lazimi JERUSALEM (JTA)—Fifty-two years ago, following the Six-Day War, Israel took control of the eastern part of this city. After annexing additional Arab villages to the north and south, it created what we know today as East Jerusalem,...

By Fiamma Nirenstein (JNS)—After Palestinian LGBT organization al-Qaws announced that it had held a gathering in the West Bank city of Nablus earlier this month to discuss gender pluralism in the city, the group was banned by the Palestinian...

(JNS)—Joint Arab List leader Ayman Odeh’s announcement that he would be willing to join, or at least support, a center-left government sent shock waves through the Israeli political system. The Zionist parties were predictably quick to discard...

President Trump took issue with continued American Jewish support for the Democrats after Tlaib and Omar gave a press conference libeling Israel in furtherance of their anti-Jewish, BDS agenda. For his actions, he is again being falsely defamed as an...

(JNS)—It’s more than 30 years since pro-democracy student demonstrators were brutally crushed by Chinese security forces in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square—a graphic sign that while communism was in the process of collapsing elsewhere in the world...

(JNS)—Jewish and pro-Israel students soon heading to universities this fall are invariably wondering about more than living arrangements and course loads. Will students and faculty take real steps to rehabilitate the politicized campus climate? Wha...

As the dust settles over the planned, canceled, re-scheduled and then canceled-again trip to Israel by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, one thing comes to mind offering perspective on how this played out: The scene from “Argo” when...

In an effort to cut carbon emissions from burials and cremations, the state of Washington, led by staunch environmentalist Governor Jay Inslee, became the first U.S. state to legalize human composting. To think, people can be criminally prosecuted...

First, they praised the terrorist who murdered a U.S. senator’s niece. Then they were chosen by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to organize her now-canceled trip to Israel. Tlaib’s outrageous choice of the pro-terrorist group “Miftah” to run her...

(JNS)—The furor in recent days over a viciously anti-Semitic article in a left-wing Belgian newspaper centered on the writer’s use of a mangled quote, attributed to the French-Jewish songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, about the impossibility of a God...

If I were Israel’s prime minister, I’d have let repugnant U.S. Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib come to Israel, despite their hateful agenda and itinerary that would have been an unabashed anti-Israel propaganda tour. Israel is a...