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

(JNS) — The little blue box is no longer ubiquitous in Jewish households the way it once was. The symbolic pushke into which coins were collected in the homes of both the rich and the poor to help the Jewish National Fund redeem the land of...

Today marks the one-year anniversary since my wife and I attended our last Jewish social or religious gathering. That event was attending services to hear the reading of Megillat,The Book of Esther, and to enjoy the festivities, food and beverages...

When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the Jewish reaction was pretty well muted. We did not know a whole lot about the guy. Seemed pretty decent, had always been friendly to the Jewish Community. We should have looked under th...

(JNS) — A month has passed, 30 days, since our beloved Sheldon — a husband, a father, a grandfather, brother and close friend — was laid to rest. A month ago we were crying by his side atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and today the family...

(Jewish Journal via JNS) — When the top editor of the world’s newspaper of record flips and flops and flips again on a subject as sensitive as the use of the N-word, you know things are getting messy at The New York Times. And when a Pulitzer...

(JNS) — Coronavirus promised a lackluster sophomore year of college until it presented an exciting opportunity. At a time when millions were stuck at home, including me, the pandemic unexpectedly enabled me to travel to Israel for a long-term exper...

Dear Editor: I was interested in seeing how the Heritage would cover the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Would the stories on the week of the Senate hearings address all the incriminating evidence being presented? Would articles highlight...

Dear Editor: To feature a story regarding the nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize represents to me the epitome of journalistic political reporting. Especially, a few short weeks after that individual attempted, and is apparently...

(JNS) — Reading a biography about a friend is a mixed experience. On the one hand, the protagonist is familiar. On the other, he’s a complete stranger, whose story unfolds like that of a fictional character being introduced in a novel. This is th...

(JNS) — If any one thing has united Jews throughout the ages, it is anti-Semitism. Yet in this era of increased polarization and division, it seems that we cannot even agree anymore on what that constitutes. The 500-word International Holocaust...

Jewish tradition is to read the Torah, the first Five Books of the Bible, in an annual cycle so that every year we read and study it in its entirety. The weekly Torah portions, parsha, are divided into segments from Genesis through Deuteronomy, each...

(JNS) — President Joe Biden’s foreign policy and national security team reflects a resurgence of the U.S. State Department’s worldview. To avoid past mistakes, an examination of this worldview and its track record is thus in order. In 1948,...

(JTA) — Many industries were harmed in 2020, perhaps none as deeply as the hospitality sector. Nearly one in six U.S. restaurants had closed as of December, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. Kosher establishments were not...

(BESA Center via JNS) — The decision of the International Criminal Court in The Hague last week that it has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem is baseless but still...

(JNS) — International Holocaust Remembrance Day is meant to serve two purposes: to memorialize the victims of the Nazi genocide and help prevent future genocides. Last week, on Jan. 27, the day designated by the U.N. General Assembly for this annua...

As the Biden administration takes shape it is becoming increasing clear, through the president’s appointments to the State Department, White House staff and other federal bodies dealing with Middle East policy formulation, that he sees U.S....

(JNS) — For more than a-year-and-a-half, StandWithUs has worked tirelessly together with concerned citizens and partners to remove anti-Semitism, anti-Israel bias and other destructive ideas from California’s draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculu...

(JNS) — It took less than a week for the Biden administration to return to the Obama-Biden policy of moral equivalency, or what I prefer to call immoral equivalency — the policy of viewing Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and their...

(JNS) — The question now is not if the United States will return to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, but when. Notwithstanding reports that the Biden administration has too much on its plate right now to move up talks with Tehran as...

For the last two decades, American Jewish Committee has been blowing the whistle on the rising tide of anti-Semitism worldwide.  When asked the source, our answer has always been the same, depending on the specific circumstances: Look in one of...

Dear editor: In response to the article “New attacks on Israel and Zionism may fuel campus anti-Semitism,” (by Sean Savage, JNS, in the Jan. 29, 2021 issue), it is important that Tammi Benjamin [co-founder and director of the California-based...

(JTA) — On Jan. 6, a sea of heads bobbed and flags flew outside the U.S. Capitol. A closer look revealed a dark hoodie, skull, crossbones and large white letters: “Camp Auschwitz,” followed by “Work Brings Freedom.” That’s the phrase my...

(JNS) — I offered a relative a ride last week to and from Methodist Hospital in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, N.Y. I had the choice to wait in the area or drive home and head almost immediately back. I chose to drive home. In another era, I...

(JNS) — Following the U.S. Capitol riot, there has been a renewed emphasis on the threat from white-supremacist hate groups from the Biden administration, much of the media as well as the organized Jewish community. The anti-Semitic imagery seen at...

(JTA) — On Jan. 27, 1969, nine Jews were hanged in Tahrir Square in the center of Baghdad as half a million people looked on.   It was the climax of a campaign of persecution that followed the establishment of Israel, which in turn hastened an...