Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — This past Shabbat, we read the Torah portion of Shemot, where Moses is asked by God to go to Pharaoh and demand that he “let my people go.” It is Pharaoh who recognizes that the Jews are a nation. He is the first to call us Am Bnei Yisrael. He recognizes the unity and destiny that the people of Israel share, and he is afraid of our strength. Today, we see the reverse situation happening in Israel. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many restrictive regulations and the latest Omicron variant has seen the skies of Israel once again closed t...
Last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul blocked what would have otherwise been unanimous passage of the Iron Dome funding bill, HR5323, providing Israel with $1 billion to replenish its Iron Dome system following the war Israel endured with Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza this past May During the 11-day barrage, Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terror groups fired over 4000 rockets at Israeli cities. The Iron Dome is a defensive system that shoots down short-range rockets with a 90 percent success rate, saving both the lives of countless...
(JNS) — Jerusalem’s security outlook, which goes back to the days of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, is focused first and foremost on responding to existential threats. In the past, this meant regular Arab armies that threatened to invade its territory. Today, the country is investing great effort in thwarting the Iranian nuclear threat. The arsenal of missiles at the disposal of Hezbollah and Hamas may not constitute an existential threat but could result in loss of life and material damage, disrupt the lives of Israeli citiz...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — While tens of millions of poor souls are dying and starving under brutal regimes in places like Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Congo and Somalia, among others, the United Nations decided last Thursday that only one country merits an open-ended investigation. If you haven’t been living on Mars the past few decades, you’ve already guessed the name of that country — Israel — the recipient of more U.N. condemnations than all other countries combined. So, what did the world’s only Jewish state do this time to deserve...
(JNS) — Looking back at 2021 in the hope of having something sensible to say about the past year, I found myself musing on a perennial question. Is history a story of progress, in which greater numbers of human beings become healthier, happier, more affluent, more tolerant and more educated with each year? Is it a story in which we learn from our past errors and those of our predecessors in order to not repeat them? Or is history a series of random cycles, in which health, happiness and wealth are at best fleeting experiences in a world w...
As the holiday season concludes with this evening’s New Year’s celebrations and tomorrow’s recovery, the same old problem of 2021 confronting the Jewish people is carried over into 2022, namely global antisemitism. As we move into the new year, virulent antisemitism continues to grow unabated here in America and throughout the world. How long must we deal with the endless and meaningless apologies for the use of antisemitic tropes, for physical attacks on Jewish citizens and for attacks against Israel based on knowingly false accusations that...
Antisemitism is alive and well in the United States. Everything from shootings in a Kosher food market in New York to marches with Neo-Nazis chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us” to cold-blooded killings in a synagogue. Now it has entered the halls of Congress. Meet “The Squad” (although I’m sure you have heard of them): From New York, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez; from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar; from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib. And on the Right we have the Supreme Whacko: from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Interesting that they are all women. And excep...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s announcement on Sunday evening of additional steps to confront the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus illustrates how easily government policies can be inherently contradictory. Even when giving the benefit of the doubt to hysterical health authorities — and refraining from the natural inclination to suspect ulterior motives for fanning the flames of a crisis — it’s hard not to be disdainful of the double-speak surrounding anything coronavirus-related. This isn’t exclusive to Israeli dec...
(JTA) — When I finished rabbinical school in 2018, I entered the “real world” with $40,000 in student loans. I acted fast, prioritizing repayment over everything else. Within six months, I paid nearly $10,000 to eliminate interest, and I continued allocating three times my expected monthly payment. Interest didn’t get much chance to build, and when we hit the pandemic pause, I was on track to clear my loans in two years. I am unbelievably lucky. My parents were able to help me with undergrad (due to generational wealth resulting from many Jews...
(JNS) — To the casual observer of news from the Middle East, it would appear that the biggest story coming out of Israel lately is what some outlets are describing as a surge in settler violence against Palestinians. According to B’Tselem, an anti-settler group that is nonetheless treated as if it is an impartial and objective source by Western publications, the number of attacks by Jews living in West Bank settlements on neighboring Arabs is allegedly up by nearly 50 percent in the previous year. In this telling, radical Jews — motiv...
(JNS) — On an average day in December 2015, Rabbi Reuven Biermacher finished teaching Torah to his students in Aish Yeshiva’s Spanish program in the Old City of Jerusalem. He walked out of the building and through the Jaffa Gate. While on his way home to his family, he was suddenly attacked by two terrorists who stabbed him repeatedly. He was evacuated to the hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds. This month marks the sixth yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. I wish that we lived in a world where this tragedy was a unique, sol...
With the passing of Sunny Mandell z’l the Orlando Jewish community has lost one of its most significant matriarchs. I would guess that the vast majority of Jews living in Orlando today did not know Sunny. For sure, most never met her. I wish that they had the experience of knowing and working with this unique and wonderful person. Sunny was the first woman to chair the Major Gifts Committee of the Federation’s campaign. She was the first woman overall Campaign chair, and she was Federation president from 1981 to 1983. Sunny’s commitment to th...
(JNS) — The loudest Israeli message to the Biden administration was sounded by Defense Minister Benny Gantz during his appearance last week at the Israeli-American National Council Summit in Hollywood, Fla. Gantz said that he had notified his counterparts in the U.S. government that he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is far from the first indication that Israel is stepping up preparations for acting on its own to prevent Iran from attaining the status of a nuclear power. But for...
(JNS) — ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt deserves credit. On Dec. 7, he posted two tweets. He urged CAIR to condemn their San Francisco Bay area executive director Zahra Billoo for her “textbook vile, #antisemitic, conspiracy-laden garbage attacking the mainstream U.S. Jewish community” and sounding like a white supremacist. Unsurprisingly, CAIR stood by Billoo. They condemned Greenblatt instead. Days later on Dec. 12, Greenblatt expanded, tweeting about Billoo’s “classic conspiratorial antisemitism,” noting that Billoo’s sp...
B(JNS) — The Oct. 9, 1982, Palestinian terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome, in which two-year-old Stefano Gaj Tachè was killed, and the blood of 37 others who were wounded flowed on the stones of the building that should have been the safest refuge for Jews in the Italian capital, was a double slap in the face — not only by the murderers, but by those who didn’t lift a finger to defend their victims. According to a front-page story in the left-leaning Italian daily, Il Riformista, Italian authorities had been warned that an attack...
(JNS) Diaspora Jews have a collective history of constant migration. Ethnically cleansed hundreds of years ago from their ancient homeland in Israel, they wandered between continents that periodically persecuted them, threw them out or barred them altogether. How, then, should Jews approach today’s phenomenon of the mass migration of peoples? All over the world, millions are on the move from the impoverished and violent developing world to the West in search of a better and safer life. On America’s border with Mexico, tens of thousands are try...
(JNS) — A Knesset committee headed by Meretz Party member Moshe (“Mossi”) Raz recently sounded the alarm — sirens, even — over a supposed rise in settler violence against innocent Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. The figures provided by Yesh Din, which calls itself a non-governmental organization, do seem alarming. Of course, Yesh Din only deals with violence against Palestinians, not against Israelis. The organization has counted over 1,400 acts of violence since 2012 — 416 of them in the first half of this year. However, neither the...
In October, I wrote about the president’s announced shift from a foreign policy strategy of military intervention to a policy of “relentless diplomacy”; and the challenges he will face in dealing with Iran and with increased Palestinian intransigence toward any concessions in the conflict with Israel (“Everywhere,” Oct. 22, 2021) I also opined in that column, that the president conveyed a subtle message of reluctance to back up his “relentless diplomacy” with hard power coming on the heels of the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan....
Recent reports have slammed Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert for comments that were offensive to her colleague, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Boebert shared a security-related incident in the U.S. Capitol, quipping that she saw Congresswoman Omar, noticed she didn’t have a backpack, so everything would be fine. Since her comment, Boebert has been slammed by the media, other congressional members, and more. There have been calls for her to be censured. Omar herself called out Boebert for “real consequences” of her “anti...
In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s-hole of a city.” The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger. Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times, but thought little of it. Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder — the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Ang...
Dear Editor: It is not surprising that anyone who subscribes to all Democratic narratives would advocate that all high schools should receive the Critical Race Theory — the pseudo-intellectual formula for anti-white racism and continuation of the war on the American Experiment that motivates the “progressive” element of the Democrat Party. This “theory” is the brilliant condemnation of our historical development by tenured professors in social sciences whose teaching careers featured Marxism for students from wealthy homes in elite colleges...
(JNS) — Though Palestinian leaders are sworn enemies of Israel—and have vowed to destroy the Jewish state — they still have many supporters among radicals on the far left in the United States and Europe. Much of this support comes not from a factual analysis of the issues surrounding this hundred-year conflict, but rather from sympathy for the perceived “underdog.” In many cases, Israel’s enemies are misinformed; others cynically support the Palestinians by telling lies about Israel’s “apartheid,” “genocide” or “occupation of Palest...
The major instigators of antisemitism today come from the radical right, radical left and radical Islam. Even though these three major groups despise each other, and would like to destroy each other, they are united in their irrational hate of the Jewish people. These haters of Israel and Jews, are distorting and manipulating the important concepts of advancing human rights, fighting foreign occupations, pursuing peace and equality, in order to make them fit into a new narrative of “intersectionality.” Meaning, antisemites and ant...
(JNS) — Renewed negotiations over a return to or revision of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 — kicked off in Vienna on Monday with feigned fanfare. The Islamic Republic has made it clear that no agreement can be discussed, let alone reached, unless all sanctions hindering the regime’s operations are removed. It has also been engaging in double-speak, bragging about its strides in uranium-enrichment, on the one hand, while i...
(Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security via JNS) — Ahead of the return to nuclear talks in Vienna, the Biden administration declared that the United States would not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and that the preferred way to achieve that goal was through a diplomatic solution. If negotiations fail, the United States has “other means” at its disposal, according to the administration, but unfortunately, it has not elaborated. These statements by the administration have hindered rather than encouraged efforts to block Iran...
