Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Preaching at AmFest, Tucker Carlson displayed his lack of integrity, fueling speculations of being bought and paid for by Islamists in Qatar, and brandishing the crown with which he has been coronated as a dangerous antisemite. His voice rising like a pre-pubescent child, he attacked the invisible boogeyman, but everyone knew who and what he meant. “Attacking millions of Americans because they’re Muslims—it’s DISGUSTING. And I’m a Christian, I’m not a Muslim,” he shrieked in a room so silent that you could have heard a pin drop. Trying to rec...
(JNS) — New York woke up in November to a political earthquake. Zohran Mamdani is now mayor-elect. For years, he tested how far he could push extremist rhetoric into the mainstream. And this week, some told him he could go all the way. No one smoothed that path more than comptroller Brad Lander. Lander has perfected a certain New York political aesthetic: soft-spoken, earnest, quietly dangerous. In his eagerness to win favor with the loudest ideological blocs, he embraced Mamdani’s worldview long before New Yorkers realized just how truly rad...
(JNS) — I once heard a particular story from a colleague in Johannesburg, who, like me, grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. He said that his grandfather was once the victim of an attempted mugging on Shabbat. Calmly, he told his attackers that it was his Sabbath and that he had no money for them. “Come back on Sunday,” he said. They left him in peace. It seems a generation ago, even the muggers had some respect. How times have changed. And with it, our values. Today, Israel may boast the most successful and courageous defense force in the world; never...
As anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attacks skyrocket in the United States, their targets are increasingly synagogues. It should come as no surprise that nearly all high-profile attacks on shuls reported by mainstream media since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were orchestrated by so-called “Free Palestine” mobs. Such attacks, often disruptive and violent—and sometimes even deadly—dispel any excuse that protesters “do not hate Jews,” but only want to “free Palestine.” Let’s be clear: They have nothing to do with formin...
(JNS) — How many wake-up calls does anyone need? The cliché that the Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre was just that is singularly inappropriate. Australia and the West have had one wake-up call after another. Since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Australian synagogues have been firebombed; as elsewhere, anti-Israel marches have regularly chanted for the mass murder of Jews; and on campus, Jewish students and academics have been harassed and intimidated. The significance of all this has been ignored by Western governments, wh...
Scroll through X long enough, and you’ll see it: Muslim preachers denouncing America as corrupt, portraying liberal democracy as a fraud, and — most alarming — arguing that Sharia law should replace the U.S. Constitution. Some clips are foreign. Some are domestic. Some are deceptively edited. But enough are real, and enough are applauded, that dismissing the phenomenon as “rage bait” is no longer responsible. Let’s begin with a principle that should unite Americans across party and faith: Religious freedom is not the same thing as permission...
(JNS) — Jews worldwide and their supporters on the last day of the Chanukah holiday are still reeling with pain and horror from the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach during the first night of Chanukah. In Australia on Dec. 14, two Muslim father-and-son terrorists shouting Allahu Akbar! shot dead 15 people, including two rabbis, a couple soon to celebrate their 35th anniversary, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl. The Muslim terrorists wounded another 42 innocent Jews, many seriously, including human-rights attorney Arsen O...
(JNS) — In the mid-1800s, a rabbi was in the midst of making Kiddush on a bitterly cold winter Friday night in Poland, and stopped. Suddenly, he could not continue. His disciples around the table exchanged looks of concern. What was happening to their rabbi? What could make him so upset that he forgot the familiar words of Kiddush and could not go on? The rabbi then blurted out, “Is there no fairness in this world? Is there no judge?!” He threw down his Kiddush cup—wine spilling everywhere—and stormed up to the attic in his home, remaining...
(JNS) — There were many positive takeaways from the American Zionist Movement biennial meeting earlier this month in New York. Opportunities for face-to-face meetings with fellow slate members, allies, and perhaps, most importantly, those with whom one disagrees on political and religious issues, proved to be invaluable moments of getting to know one another without the pressure of WZO elections in the backdrop. The ability to build personal connections helps the AZM function with a wide consensus on most issues in non-election years. And g...
Following a recent anti-Israel/antisemitic rally of blustering, keffiyeh-brandishing, placard-hoisting men and women outside a prominent synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan while an aliyah-supporting conference was taking place inside, New York City’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, according to his press secretary, “discouraged the language” — including shouted obscenities, and “Death to the IDF” — used by the protestors, who were brought together by the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation. Mamdani, his aide said, “believes every New Yor...
Recently, CNN labeled a leader of the Hamas terrorist organization “a senior official.” This begs the question: When is a terrorist not a terrorist according to mainstream media? Far too often, news outlets like CNN apply titles and adjectives to terrorists or mention their profession as if these are the things that matter, rather than the fact that they belong to a group pledged to commit murder. This proclivity is not abstract or theoretical. It plays out in real time, in real headlines, from some of the most influential news organizations in...
I daily carry a Star of David metal keychain on my person made from a Qassam rocket. That rocket was once fired into Israel by Hamas. A piece of metal from a Qassam rocket artistically transformed into a Star of David keychain. No nation knows how to make lemonade out of lemons better than Israel! Hamas has been in the business of making and firing Qassam rockets into Israel for a quarter of a century. These deadly one-stage rockets are manufactured in underground factories, and in makeshift shops and garages. The Qassams are not particularly a...
One of my earliest memories is standing in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem at age 11, hearing how European Jews once believed that catastrophe could never touch them. They were successful, cultured, integrated—convinced that prosperity was protection. For me, the grandson of Holocaust survivors who lost more than 70 family members, that lesson was never theoretical. I grew up in a home shaped by my mother, Penina Waga, born in a Polish Displaced Persons camp before immigrating to Israel, who taught not only what the Nazis did, but what Jews did and d...
(JNS) — For too many naive, ultra-liberal European elitists who have clung to the belief that Muslim minorities would assimilate and integrate into their cultural and social fabric, a colossal surprise awaits them. They have ignored the undisguised Muslim Brotherhood motto that clearly states: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, dying is our highest hope.” European Jewish minorities relished the opportunity to integrate into European life at the beginning of the 19th century. They...
As a Jewish man, our tradition is that my job is to teach my children how to swim and a profession. We can explore what that means on a deeper rabbinic level, but simply to give my children the skills that they will be able to protect themselves from danger, and live and be productive self-sufficient members of society. Reading reports of the father-son duo, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, who perpetrated the antisemitic murder in Sydney, Australia on the first day of Chanukah, I was shocked to think that either the father had the evil...
(JNS) — To describe the state of American Jewry after the warm spring of the 1950s through the early 1970s is akin to watching a shriveled brown leaf fluttering aimlessly in the wind in the midst of a cold and bitter winter. At mid-century, the images of the Holocaust were still seared into the consciousness of the American public. Today, young students and even congressional staffers I meet on Capitol Hill dismiss it as “ancient history.” The moral memory that once anchored U.S. society has been steadily eroding. A major turning point came...
(JNS) — Every time antisemitism spikes abroad — constantly, these days — certain Israeli pundits, politicians and members of the public leap to the same ostensibly comforting conclusion: that it will finally spur Diaspora Jews to “come home.” The reference is to well-off Westerners, not members of the tribe escaping poverty and persecution at the hands of hostile regimes. The latter is and has always been a given. Anyone imagining that the former is about to follow suit is engaged in fantasy. Nevertheless, Israel’s Aliyah and Integration...
(JNS) — We live in strange times. Diaspora Jews in the West are wondering whether they should immigrate to Israel, while a growing number of Israelis insist they would like to leave. It is a fascinating juxtaposition that reveals Israelis do not grasp the extent to which Jew-hatred has been renormalized in the West, nor do they fully appreciate that Israel has a very bright future. It’s hardly surprising that many Israelis are dissatisfied. They are emerging from two years of incessant war, a prolonged hostage crisis, rolling terror attacks, co...
(JNS) — A recent article in The Jerusalem Post by Cookie Schwaeber-Issan (“Don’t ask, don’t tell’ aliyah,” Nov. 18) makes the uncomfortably true statement that “there is an unacceptable and antagonistic attitude present in Israel’s Interior Ministry [and the office of the Chief Rabbinate] who are discriminating against Jews who are not connected to the faith or even their community.” While the writer astutely points out that this is occurring “at a time when we are witnessing the worst wave of global antisemitism since the Holocaust, even aff...
(JNS) — Call it was it was. The attack on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, at the start of the eight-day holiday of Chanukah was not random. It was not a “disturbance.” It was not an isolated violent incident untethered from global events. It was not an unfortunate individual suffering from mental illness. It was a terrorist attack, carried out against Jews, on a Jewish holiday, in a moment deliberately chosen for its symbolism. Jews everywhere understood that immediately—because we always do. On the very first day of the “Festival of Lights...
(JNS) — How long have we been the “wandering Jews?” I imagine ever since Abraham, the very first Jew. His travels and travails are recounted in the Bible for all to see and our sages taught that the lives of our patriarchs and matriarchs would be a harbinger of the destiny of their descendants for generations to come. And the wandering Jew has also been the wondering Jew. We’ve been forever wondering about who we are and how we fit in with the countries we’ve migrated to over the centuries. I imagine it’s been one of the ongoing dilemmas of...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The scenes that everyone of us see throughout Europe cannot be obscured. From London through Paris. From Amsterdam through Brussels. The classic symbols of Western European capitals have undergone significant changes in the first two decades of the 21st century. A phenomenon that began mainly in the ’90s of the previous century has been changing in recent years, not only the appearance of streets and neighborhoods, but also the face of politics in Western Europe and, recently, in the U.S. Two years after the most bru...
(JNS) — Judaism is all about bringing light into the world — affecting and improving it through positive acts, awareness, kindness and compassion. This mission is especially meaningful during the darkest of times and in the darkest of places, when light is not just comforting but transformative. The notion that each person can contribute to the illumination of the world is central to Jewish thought and practice, and it is this principle that Chanukah, the “Festival of Lights,” so beautifully exemplifies. In the Jewish month of Kislev comes t...
(JNS) — Whether on Broadway or in City Hall, theatrics are a fixture of New York City life. But no performance — whether in Times Square or Lower Manhattan — rivals mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s outrageous campaign-trail promise and post-election reaffirmation that he would seek to enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he set foot in the city. The significance of Mamdani’s pledge lies not merely in its impossibility or illegality, but in what the promise and its later “cl...
You can be forgiven for thinking that the war is over in Israel and peace has broken out. Since President Trump’s October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, countless reports and headlines have presented this as a peace deal. Barring reports of daily conflict in Gaza or the return of the bodies of the remaining hostage in captivity for 26 months, “quiet” can be misperceived as peace. But the truth could not be more opposite. There are abundant examples. One recent one hit home personally. This week there was another terrorist attac...
