Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Dear Editor: I once had a discussion with someone in the leadership division of Chabad, the world wide Jewish organization. I asked about Kabala, the Jewish mysticism part of Judaism, which has great powers. I asked this person, “Why didn’t the Jews familiar with Kabbalah not use it to destroy Hitler in the 1920s after what he said he was going to do to the Jews in Germany?” I didn’t mention the czar or the popes who instigated horrible pogroms against the Jewish people. He looked at me and said, “Kabbalah is not used for evil.” I was shocked...
(JNS) — Over the weekend, President Joe Biden finally conceded that what was happening at America’s southern border is a “crisis,” a word that his administration had consistently refused to use when referring to the situation there which appears to be worsening every day. By Monday, White House flacks were trying to walk back the admission as just another Biden gaffe to be ignored or reinterpreted, but no one is being fooled. Except that is, blind partisans or donors to HIAS—the agency that once played an essential role in aiding Jewish im...
I have been writing my Everywhere column for the Heritage Florida Jewish News for almost 20 years. It began in the early 1980s and continued until just after the High Holidays of 1997, when I suspended writing the column in favor of devoting more time to a growing family and law practice. I resumed writing the column in February 2018 after the kids were grown and well on their way to following their own dreams; and I entered the ambiguous state of semi-retirement. One of the great pleasures of writing this column is the feedback I get from read...
Jews and Blacks or Jews and African-Americans or Jews and voting. Plenty of causes. And Jews have been there. Time and time again. Are we ready for another rally to another cause? This one is right down our alley — but … are we up for it? This past summer the United States and the world for that matter became aware of the Black Lives Matter movement. It had been around for a while, but it took this year’s Black death count and the “Death by Cop” phenomenon to make all the headlines, the marches, yet another call to action. George Floyd, 13...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — For more than a year now, synagogues around the world have managed to continue their activities during the COVID pandemic with Zoom and similar services. There is, however, a problem. Zoom Judaism is not working. What Zoom provides is not real community. At the end of the day, digital fellowship is pyrite, also known as fool’s gold. Zoom meetings and rooms do not fulfill the fundamental needs of Jewish community, which are very much physical in nature. Judaism is a sensual religion, one that is based on our fiv...
(JNS) — On Dec. 11, 2008, one of the worst events to rock the organized Jewish world was revealed on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Few outside of the financial world had ever heard of him before that day. But when news broke that Bernard Madoff’s Wall Street investment firm was a Ponzi scheme and that some of the Jewish community’s richest and most respected individuals, as well as philanthropies and educational institutions, had been the victims of a gigantic fraud, the impact was devastating. More than $64.8 billion had disappe...
(JNS) — Illegal construction on public and private land is a national epidemic that has been ravaging the Israeli landscape for far too long. Each year, thousands of structures spring up in violation of Israel’s Planning and Construction Law; current estimates number them in the hundreds of thousands. This wildcat construction threatens the prospects for planned, organized construction and development, stymies formulation of long-range planning policy and stunts efforts to develop modern national and local infrastructure, but first and for...
(JNS) — Anyone who is willing to look up for a moment from the hardships of politics and the coronavirus and examine the success of the project called the State of Israel from a broad historical perspective knows that it deserves to be crowned a resounding success. Anyone who prefers—and there are quite a few—to assess the state of the nation based on the media headlines will soon find themselves longing for the Stone Age. It seems that complaining is very fashionable these days in the political-media sphere. I’m not the first one to say this:...
I have seen reasonable American citizens, who have families, who work hard, pay their taxes, serve in our military, belong to their PTA etc., become irrational and even crazy at times when it comes to political opinion. And I’ve observed, under the surface, there’s a hatred that’s ready to jump out when it comes to one’s opposing political views. I want to be clear: this is on both sides of the aisle. I understand that we’ve lived through a shut down due to the pandemic. People’s nerves are frayed, but all in all, I believe the American pe...
(JTA) — In the years following the reckonings with sexual harassment and assault prompted by the #MeToo movement, there has been debate over the correct communal response to those accused of sexual misconduct and whether perpetrators should be pushed to the edges of a community. Questions of sin, quarantine and repentance are central to this week’s Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora, prompted by the rules surrounding the metzora, a person afflicted with tzaarat. Sometimes translated as “leprosy,” tzaraat is a skin disease that, per the descrip...
(JNS) — In case you haven’t heard, people who want to eliminate Israel are very interested in stopping anti-Semitism. In other words, the same people who want to deny rights to the Jewish people that they don’t think of trying to deny to anyone else in the same manner believe they are entitled to declare themselves friends and protectors of Jews. And no, I’m not kidding about this. This goes for Jewish Voice for Peace and the participants in an online panel held this week about “Dismantling Anti-Semitism, Winning Justice.” The leftist group and...
As the Holocaust recedes further and further into the past, the anti-Semites of the future (and for sure they will exist) will have an easier time promoting the falsehood that the Holocaust never occurred. Who will replace the first generation of survivors to bear witness and to challenge the current and future Holocaust deniers? Who will perpetuate the truth that the darkest event in human history actually occurred? In order for “Never Again” to be a continuing reality, and not just a slogan, the World must “Never Forget”! Can World Jewry rely...
(JNS) — Yom Hashoah is a day when Jews in their homeland and around the world remember their 6 million brothers and sisters who were so cruelly persecuted, hunted and murdered during the Holocaust. As we contemplate the future of this solemn and meaningful day of remembrance, and how it may be maintained as the years and generations pass, we must look at how we educate the next generation about the events of the Holocaust. Critical to the future of Holocaust remembrance, education only works to sustain those lessons learned if students — now...
President Rivlin tapped Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government. He has 28 days to try to put together a coalition and if he doesn’t succeed, the president can designate another person with a period of two weeks to do so, and then yet another attempt can be made. A friend asked recently how anyone who supports the right-wing in Israel could advocate for anything other than two right-of-center parties headed by Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar to join a government lead by the Likud party with Benjamin Netanyahu remaining as prime minister. Combi...
(JNS) — Jordan’s recent domestic upheaval reportedly involved members of the royal Jordanian family and prominent Bedouin tribesmen, who were arrested and charged with an attempted regime change. Other Arab countries were also said to be involved. Regime change in Jordan could transform the strategically located country into another haven for Palestinian and Islamic terrorism. It would threaten the existence of the current regimes in Saudi Arabia, all other pro-U.S. Gulf states and Egypt, advancing the interests of Iran, Turkey, the Muslim Bro...
(JTA) — Not long after the gruesome reality of the Holocaust had burst onto the world’s consciousness, the philosopher and social theorist Theodor Adorno famously observed in 1949 that writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric — “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch.” Less well known but equally insightful was Adorno’s subsequent conclusion, expressed in a 1966 radio address in Germany, that Auschwitz itself constituted nothing less than a “relapse into barbarism.” Adorno understood that the Shoah’s calculated, systematic s...
I would like to respond to AP’s Deepti Hajela’s article “White People Seem Uninterested in Racial Talk” in the Daytona Beach News Journal’s Sunday, March 28, edition. I have no problem discussing racial questions in a country that has been literally torn apart racially through years of unrest. Names that contributed to this ongoing unrest mostly involved police interaction with Blacks, mostly males but the death of one female is listed among them for her accidental death at the hand of a police officer. For the record, I have been a Liberal,...
(JNS) — Iran announced this week that the severe economic sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump will force it to close the long-running Bushehr nuclear power plant, which produces electricity. The official explanation noted U.S. banking restrictions, which have made it difficult for Iran to transfer money and procure necessary equipment from Russian suppliers. Under normal circumstances, this announcement, which is essentially Tehran’s first public admission of the efficacy of U.S. sanctions, should have made officials in Wash...
(JNS) — The Palestine Society at SOAS University of London released an open letter earlier this year demanding that the university’s academic board reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism that the British government has asked universities to accept. Co-signed by a coalition of 50-plus SOAS student groups, the letter argues that the definition would seriously threaten free expression on campus by labeling any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. As SOASPS’ letter does not specify a probl...
(JNS) — Two weeks ago, the White House Passover seder was hosted by America’s Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born lawyer is the first Jew to be a spouse of a vice president, as well as the first male to occupy the role. Being a Jew in such an important place in American society is not quite as big a deal as it might have been in previous eras when most Jews were either immigrants or first-generation Americans. Nonetheless, Emhoff has become a symbol of the acceptance of a community that was once marginalized. The same mig...
(JNS) — While Israel was busy with the domestic political imbroglio surrounding last week’s Knesset elections, a strategic threat that could threaten the country’s very existence was developing. If the Iranian-Chinese alliance reaches its full potential, the Middle East could once again be dragged into a new cold war between superpowers. Soviet support for the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radical policies ensured him regional hegemony that threatened Israel for more than a decade. The American attempt to placate the Egyptia...
Dear Editor: There is a lot to like in the Heritage Florida Jewish News. The paper does an excellent job of keeping us up to date on the activities of Jewish organizations in central Florida, such as the Jewish Federation and the JCCs. Especially appreciated are the features on the kids at the Jewish Academy of Orlando and the seniors served by the Jewish Pavilion! I also enjoy the cultural and historical articles about Jews of central Florida and across the nation and the world. And I never miss reading Gloria Yousha’s “Scene Around” for f...
(JNS) — Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, was a senior foreign-policy adviser in the Trump administration. Now an op-ed by Kushner published in The Wall Street Journal has caused jaws to drop. Kushner was a key mover behind the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf States. This agreement, brokered by Trump, was the most significant move towards peace in the Middle East for the best part of a century. In parallel, Trump’s U.S. withdrawal in May 2018 from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, coupled with the re-imposition of s...
(JNS) — After four failed attempts, it’s safe to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rivals cannot depose him. He’ll be sticking around for as long as he wants the job. The left-wing camp’s struggle to replace him began with the boisterous raising of blue and white flags, and then black flags, and has now ended with the white flag of surrender. When those vying for the crown came from the right, Netanyahu was left the central actor in the arena. Many on the right, myself included, thought that Netanyahu, despite his s...
(JNS) — The Biden administration reportedly intends to demand that Israel return to the nine-miles-wide pre-1967 armistice lines. Should we be surprised? How dangerous would that be? And what should American Jews do about it? According to numerous media reports, an outline of the Biden plan has been prepared by Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs. Amr worked on the same issues during the Obama administration. So, it’s hardly surprising that the plan he has drafted reflects the same positions that wer...
