Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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I followed reports of Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent exchange with a student at George Mason University with great interest, and dismay. In many ways, she reminded me of an incident with Hillary Clinton, not in a good way. Harris addressed students at George Mason to mark National Voter Registration Day. Following her remarks, she opened the floor for questions. During questions, one student commented to Harris, “You brought up how the power of the people and demonstrations and organizing is very valuable in America. But I see that over t...
(JNS) — On Sept. 23, 2021, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) introduced the “Two-State Solution Act” to “to preserve conditions for, and improve the likelihood of, a two-state solution that secures Israel’s future as a democratic state and a national home for the Jewish people, and a viable, democratic Palestinian state.” Yet, news coverage of Levin’s proposed legislation omitted crucial details and relevant history. POLITICO, hours before the bill dropped, offered an “exclusive look.” Writing for the magazine’s National Security Daily brief, report...
(JNS) — At the risk of putting a target on my back, it has occurred to me that the proper response for much of the anti-Israel activity on and off campus should be a combination of derision, counter-attack and neglect. I’ve been dealing with anti-Semitism, Israel denial and Middle East issues since my college days and, after more than 40 years, I have concluded that too much time, money, and energy is being spent responding to the latter. Instead, we should simply say, “who cares?” Who cares, for example, what Peter Beinart and others of his...
(JNS) — It’s been a year since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and many fans still mourn her loss. That’s not just because a true pioneer for women in the legal profession deserves to be honored as a role model or even because of the odd — and not entirely apt — pop-culture-icon status she achieved late in late as the “notorious RBG.” The recent passage of draconian restrictions on abortion by Texas in a piece of questionable legislation designed to evade judicial scrutiny has sent many of her liberal admirers into a state of panic. The “p...
(JNS) — The United Nations held a major international convening on Sept. 22 to mark the 20th anniversary of its World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. In many ways, that conference has marked us more than we mark it. For supporters, it was an epoch-making event: an awakening about racism for a world then not yet “woke.” At the same time, it was what we might now call a super-spreader event, causing a new anti-Zionist variant of the world’s oldest hatred to go viral. This month, as we observe this anniver...
(JTA) — We are in an era of multiple interlocking crises. From record-breaking heat waves to wildfires to water shortages, from rising authoritarianism to a pandemic rampaging across the world, it is clear that, to survive, human beings will need to make urgent, major changes to how we live. Bold policy proposals already exist to address these problems, both nationally and in different states. Additionally, we — one of us a politician, the other a rabbi, and both progressives — want to suggest another possibility, gleaned from Jewish tradi...
Award-winning TV and radio host Larry King, with Rabbi Irwin Katsof, wrote “Powerful Prayers: Conversations on Faith, Hope, and the Human Spirit with Today’s Most Provocative People” in November 1999. King’s book examined the lives that were suddenly and permanently altered through prayer, and lives that are sustained by its everyday practice. I never read his book as I have always believed in the power of prayer, but I was happy to see that such an influential person took the time to draw attention to how powerful prayer is in a person...
At least twice this week, far-left Jew-hating Congressional Squad members again endangered Jewish (and Arab) lives. On Sept. 21, Squad members ― led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), and also including Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) ― coerced the Democratic House leadership to remove $1 billion of funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, by threatening to vote against a key Democratic bill to increase the debt ceiling and continue funding the...
(JNS) — The heroes of our generation are slipping away. And unless you were among the fortunate few to have gone to meet them in the former Soviet Union during the decades from 1970s to the 1990s, you probably don’t know about those Jewish heroes and heroines whose actions defined moral courage and stamina in the face of relentless government persecution. But for those Americans who did travel to the USSR, meeting with Jewish refuseniks denied the right to emigrate had a profound impact on them. Just ask anyone who ever met Ida Nudel. With her...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Shortly before he died, my dad gave me a trove of family documents, some dating to the 19th century. For the first time I had confirmation of what our family name was before a great-uncle changed it to Carroll when he and his brothers immigrated to America. My father’s parents moved from Russia to Paris before coming to the United States. Among the papers is a yellowed French immigration document signed by my grandfather on March 13, 1913; there he spells his last name Karoltchouk. On my grandmother’s “Perm...
It was a warm summer day in June 1968 when California Democrats went to the polls in the presidential primary and delivered a resounding victory to Senator Robert F. Kennedy over democratic rival and then vice president Hubert H. Humphrey and Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy. America was well on its way, moving toward the presidential conventions, to select the respective Republican and Democrat nominees who would face each other in November in the 1968 presidential election. The no nonsense senator from New York was in a close national...
So, here I am in New Orleans, Louisiana — NOLA. The Big Easy. This is where the people eat more fish than meat. This is where if it isn’t spicy it doesn’t pass muster. So, what’s a guy in search of a good bowl of chicken soup or, oy vey: Kosher cooking, to do? Well, Thank God and providence and a good Yiddisha Kup, I found it. It’s a restaurant/grocery store/chochkie shop called: The Kosher Cajun. The Kosher Cajun is the creaion of an Orthodox Southern Jew named Joel Brown and his family. New Orleans, Louisiana is not what you would call a Je...
(JNS) — Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem portfolio, gave an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001 in which he exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yasser Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the “peace process” as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo, for them, was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, “from the river to the sea.” Husseini described the Oslo process as a “Trojan Horse.” Arafa...
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — When Orthodox Jewish clients approach local real estate agent Sharon Brandt looking for a home in this South Florida area, she tells them to make sure they have spots for their children in school before they buy. When Rabbi Yoni Fein, head of school at the Brauser Maimonides Academy in Hollywood, gets inquiries from prospective parents from out of state, he asks them to make sure they can find a house before enrolling their children. This Catch-22 of a simultaneous housing shortage and waitlists at area schools is no c...
(JNS) The humiliating Gilboa Prison escape is nothing but a symptom. The flaws that led to it will be investigated, found and corrected, but to rectify the broader structural failure will require Israel to shake up the current law-enforcement system and its security policies. What constitutes this structural failure is the system’s addiction to maintaining “peace and quiet”—at the expense of the appropriate response exhibited by a society that cherishes life—in the face of reckless and violent citizens, criminals, terrorists and enemies a...
“Who shall live and who shall die … who by water and who by fire … who by earthquake and who by plague …” (JTA) — Twenty years ago, people cried when they said these words on Rosh Hashanah, six days after the attacks of Sept. 11. The ancient words suddenly held intense contemporary force. Twenty years later we are being bombarded by climate-related disasters, one after another — each year worse than the last — and again our ancient machzor, the High Holidays prayerbook — carries fresh, urgent force for all of us. Who by water? On the 16t...
(JTA) — On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, in my second year of rabbinical school, while working at my first-ever High Holiday pulpit, I accidentally conceived. I had my first bout of morning sickness in our introductory Talmud course, and my first pregnancy craving during Hebrew Literature and Grammar (I still swear that pickles on pizza is a million-dollar idea). I took my pregnancy test on Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, and whispered the blessing “asher yatzar et ha’adam b’chochmah,” who created human beings with wisdom, when it read positive....
(JTA) — Deborah Lipstadt, recently named by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, won’t just combat anti-Semitism but may well eliminate it. And that would be a mistake. To be clear, the Emory University historian is a fierce opponent of Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial, having vanquished the Holocaust denier David Irving in a British court, among other triumphs over bigotry. But over the past few years, Lipstadt has led a campaign to eliminate the hyphen in the word “anti-Semitism,” preferr...
(JTA) — Two nights after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, we were instructed to evacuate our building. There was talk of a potential attack on the nearby Empire State Building. My roommates and I covered our mouths and noses with towels to protect against the still fetid air and walked east from our midtown Manhattan Stern College apartment to get out of the danger zone. Every telephone pole was plastered with hastily printed “MISSING” signs, each with a different smiling face and a phone number to call. When we reached the barricades, staffed by...
Dear Editor: As we approach the holiest period of the Jewish calendar, it becomes increasingly difficult to control one’s reaction to the noisy pronouncement of “progressive Jewish leaders.” As specifically named by Mr. Sales in his article in the Heritage (August 27) these anti-Zionists condemn AIPAC ads targeting the ‘squad” members of congress about their enthusiasm for Muslim terrorists and condemnation of Israel. These well-financed J-Street associates and “spiritual leaders” (i.e., rabbis) want to delegitimize the Jewish State just li...
(JNS) — The reviews at home were mixed for Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s first meeting with President Joe Biden. Many of those who despise Bennett’s right-wing principles thought he did a good job, while most of those who share his views were appalled by his performance. The disconnect is understandable. The drumbeat of personal invective against Bennett from former allies and friends has been constant since he assumed the role of leader of the current coalition in June. For those who think Bennett “betrayed” the right by joining w...
As America licks its wounds and wrings its hands at the debacle of the last several weeks in the humiliating retreat and defeat at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan, let us pause to remember the brave and courageous men and women of our armed forces who returned to the battlefield in the waning days of our retreat from Kabul. They returned, not to battle a barbaric enemy, but to rescue and save American citizens, Afghan allies and citizens who embraced freedom, modernity and equality. These are the Afghans who rejected the inhumane,...
(JNS) The obvious lesson for Israel from America’s abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban is that it can’t count on the U.S. to protect it from the consequences of ceding more territory. This reality, however, is a disaster for those who have been banking on the idea of offering “American security guarantees” to facilitate additional Israeli withdrawals. It explains the recent flurry of statements from the think-tank crowd and Jewish former officials of the State Department trying to undercut the notion that the Afghanistan mess demonst...
(JTA) — We are, once again, in a season of reckoning with sexual abuse in the Jewish community and in the country. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned after a state attorney general investigation found that he sexually harassed at least 11 women, aided by networks of complicity. In the Jewish community, the Reform movement, which represents the largest and most diverse Jewish movement in North America, has initiated three separate investigations — one each for its rabbinical seminary, rabbinical association and synagogue network — to look...
(JTA) — Over the past year, I have led efforts to teach, guide and coach rabbis and other clergy of every Jewish denomination. We have worked with over 500 individual members of the clergy, serving hundreds of thousands of people since the COVID-19 pandemic began. So let me say this to my dear clergy colleagues: As we celebrate another High Holiday season under the shadow of the pandemic, I know that there is nothing you need more than support in making (or when prevented from making) impossible decisions about vaccinations, masks, social d...
