Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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By Rhonda Forest “When is Federation going to issue a statement?” It’s a question periodically posed to me as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, usually when a national political issue dominates the headlines. And in the past several months, there has been no shortage of such issues. Just four months removed from one of the most contentious elections in modern history, our nation is polarized. To a lesser extent, our Jewish community is polarized. We see it, hear it and feel it almost daily at Federation. As presi... Full story
My time as a college student involved decision making. My Jewish observance was no exception. I had grown up in a traditional Conservative Jewish home. My four sisters and I attended Hebrew school beginning at age four through the eighth grade, and celebrated our b’not mitzvah. I attended Shabbat services several times a month and learned to read Hebrew, lead prayers, and take an active role in synagogue life. We had lots of Jewish friends in the neighborhood and at public school. At home, we kept kosher, enjoyed Friday evening Shabbat d... Full story
HIAS was established 135 years ago to protect Jewish refugees who were fleeing the pogroms of Czarist Russia. Today, we remain true to our original mission of refugee protection. We are helping people who have fled their countries because their lives were in jeopardy due to who they are or what they believe. When there are refugees who are Jewish, HIAS is still there to make sure they receive help. In the past year, HIAS brought Jews from Iran, the Middle East, Ukraine, and other parts of the former Soviet Union to safety and freedom in the...
Imagine you are an impoverished religious Jew living in Paris. You can no longer wear religious garb out of fear of being set upon by assailants from North Africa who will beat you to within an inch of your life, if not take it. Your children are bullied in school, as their teachers ignore their complaints, and might even take perverse satisfaction in their plight. Even though French political figures make speeches condemning anti-Semitism and police are routinely sent to protect Jewish institutions, the anti-Semitism grows on the body politic... Full story
To hear the news media tell it, Israel’s Knesset has approved extreme right-wing legislation that will steal Palestinian land by legalizing illegal outposts and thereby demolish the last hopes for Middle East peace. The truth, of course, is very different. The Israeli government has not authorized the establishment of a new Jewish community in Judea and Samaria since 1992. That was the policy decreed by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and followed by his successors, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But the 1993 Oslo Accords d... Full story
In 1950, my family moved to Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. It was a lovely, leafy area with stately homes and a storied history. Once my parents bought their home we were shocked to find that just shortly before we moved, a law was struck down that prevented Jews from owning homes in that lovely, leafy suburb. They actually had a LAW that prevented Jews and African Americans from buying a home in their town. We’ve come a long way, baby. Restrictive covenants have practically disappeared in the United States. You have the w... Full story
We are undeniably blessed to live in a first-world nation like the United States and it’s not because of the copious amounts of WiFi hotspots and unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden. Nor is it because of our incomparable military and massive economy. We are the most fortunate population of people to ever exist because of our access to the most important entity life has ever known: Water. It is absolutely intolerable that 660 million people or 1 in 10 live without access to clean water in the 21st century. What’s more outrageous is that thi... Full story
Dear Editor: I was delighted to learn that West Volusia County and the National Jewish Outreach Program rediscovered the fourth of the Ten Commandments. Now, let us remind the Jewish women who marched on Shabbat in Washington, D.C., holding up signs identifying them and their concern for “justice.” Were they concerned about the injustice experienced by our children and grandchildren through anti-Semitism and intimidation of their right to free speech in colleges all over this country? Our pro-Israel Christian friends help us in recognizing the... Full story
Dear Editor: In the Feb. 3, 2017, edition of the Heritage, Abigail Pickus gives a detailed argument in favor of expanding government support of Jewish days schools. While I certainly understand the source of this desire of additional funding I am not sure that in the long term it will service the Jewish community as envisioned. I should note that the assumption of the article that this is only an issue for the Orthodox Community alone is not correct. While certainly the percentage of Orthodox Jews sending their children to Jewish day schools... Full story
I will admit that this sounds perverse, but Iran’s recent ballistic missile test was welcome in one important sense. Let me explain. Just more than a fortnight into President Donald Trump’s administration, America and the world have been bombarded with all sorts of crises, to the extent that it feels as if two years of history has been packed into two weeks. Relations with Mexico are at their lowest ebb in more than a century. The administration continues to exasperate, most likely intentionally, European heads of state with its on again, off... Full story
Like schoolchildren everywhere, Palestinian Arab children occasionally are assigned by their teachers to write poems. But the poetry they produce is not like that of children in the U.S. or elsewhere in the free world. Palestinian Media Watch reports that twice in the past month, a children’s program on official Palestinian Authority Television (PA TV) featured children reciting their poems. Among the most common terms they used: “blood,” “slaughter” and “revolution.” The PA TV program is called “The Best Home,” and the children who were... Full story
Liberals are saying Trump Education nominee Betsy DeVos “wants to take money away from public schools” by helping parents use taxpayer dollars for religious and other schools. But under the current system, the government unfairly forces many parents to choose between an expensive religious education and a free education that stymies their religious observance. Since practicing one’s religion without government interference is a constitutional guarantee, America’s public school regime is unconstitutional, and should be upended by the coming... Full story
To say the implementation of President Donald Trump’s travel ban was clumsy would be an understatement. To say, however, that the principles involved were totally without constitutional justification would be unwarranted. Since Trump’s inauguration, nothing has dominated the political conversation as much as hatred punctuated by hysteria. The aspiration toward civility that once served as a norm for political discourse in this country has been consumed in conflagration, riots, mass demonstrations and physical attacks. In no other policy are... Full story
There are all kinds of sayings reminding us that if we fail to learn from the tragedies of the past, we are doomed to relive them in the future. We appear to have failed to heed that warning. On May 31, 1939, the German ship St. Louis left Hamburg for Cuba with more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives from Nazi Germany. They were offered respite in Cuba temporarily until their visa applications would be approved to enter the U.S. But anti-Semitic rallies of thousands of people were instigated throughout Cuba, demanding that these... Full story
Dear Editor: The spate of recent bomb threats at our Maitland Jewish Community Campus should not lead to making American Jewish life similar to Paris or other cities in Europe. Walking or driving through more security fences and being searched by security guards and monitored by more cameras will push only the strongly committed amongst us away from all our institutions. Better to use this crisis as an opportunity to make a broad outreach to the greater Orlando community. Holocaust Remembrance Day could have been such a date to hold a... Full story
It turns out, according to today’s JTA, that the Holocaust Statement was written—all or mostly—by Boris Epshteyn, a strongly identifying American Jew, of Russian Jewish ethnicity, who is in the Trump inner circle and who is a descendant of Holocaust survivors. I shall now place myself in Trump’s place, and I invite you to do so. I am a chief executive, and I want to issue a statement on Cesar Chavez Day, so I ask a trusted advisor who also is Chicano to handle the statement. Or I ask an African American close advisor to draft my Martin Luther... Full story
He came to Canada as a 16-year-old refugee from Somalia. He’s highly regarded across the Canadian political spectrum. He was just appointed as immigration minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now 40 years old, Ahmed Hussen has a promising career in front of him. And in these polarized, fragmented times, he is exactly the kind of public figure we need when it comes to clarifying the wider debate about immigration and Islamism, human rights and national security. Trudeau, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has often bee... Full story
Someday, perhaps, a team of sociologists and psychologists will examine the curious question of why Jewish ex-State Department officials are obsessed with Israel. Until that day comes, though, the rest of us will be stuck having to listen to those officials’ relentless harassment of Israel and promotion of the Palestinian cause. With the issue of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on the front burner, The New York Times trotted out two former State Department hands, both Jewish, to pour cold water on the embassy r... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—“Five million non-Jews died in the Holocaust.” It’s a statement that shows up regularly in declarations about the Nazi era. It was implied in a Facebook post by the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson’s unit last week marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it was asserted in an article shared by the Trump White House in defense of its Holocaust statement the same day omitting references to the 6 million Jewish victims. It is, however, a number without any scholarly basis. Indeed, say those close to the late Na... Full story
(JTA)—The world comes together every Jan. 27 to remember the most devastating tragedy in history: the Shoah. We remember the victims of the Nazi regime. The loved ones lost and the shameful treatment of human life and human dignity. We also make sure to remember our history, as painful as it may be, so we learn from it and never let it repeat itself. Most of all, we remember the bravery of the survivors. Those brave souls who are slipping away from us as they implore the next generation to heed the lessons of this darkest of periods with two s... Full story
Dear Editor: Needless to say, I was quite disturbed by the recent article in the Heritage, “Radical Syrian cleric comes to Central Florida—a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” Disturbed, why was I disturbed? Well, that’s easy to answer. The first thought was why did he even have to write such an article? What was the purpose? Why rile everyone up? Why stir up the pot ? Well, the pot needs to be stirred up in my opinion. This community has their heads in the sand so to speak when it comes to recognizing and accepting the fact that there is a threat to... Full story
By Dr. Yvette Alt Miller Aish Hatorah Resources No headline seems too far-fetched when it comes to spreading false news stories about Israel. Fake news about Israel went mainstream recently when a member of Britain’s House of Lords re-posted a “news” item on her Facebook page that came from an extremist, conspiracy website. Baroness Jenny Tonge has a long history of hostility to the Jewish state. On January 21, 2017, she posted an article with the shocking “revelation”: the President of Israel called his own country “sick” said that Israel w... Full story
Ahead of this year’s marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Jan. 27, new details have been revealed concerning how much the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration knew about the Nazis’ euthanasia policy, and why the U.S. failed to respond. German historian Thorsten Noack, writing in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, describes how famed journalist William Shirer first publicly exposed the Nazis’ systematic execution of individuals with physical or mental disabilities. In the pages of Life magaz... Full story
Obama’s strength is a capacity to speak, and excite many of us. Sometimes in support of what he says. Sometimes in frustration about his slippery superficiality. Sometimes with greater enmity. That he is also black adds to the appeal for many, and the antipathy of others. We should not expect that he’ll go quietly to the place where other politicians retire. His last days in office provide much to applaud or ridicule. Israelis and our friends have expressed enough, or may just be getting started about his last act with respect to the UN Sec... Full story
(JTA)—In the run-up to his swearing-in on Friday, President Donald Trump made a series of big promises to Israel. Aside from his oft-repeated pledge to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he has talked about reviving the peace process with the Palestinians, with a goal of achieving a deal before he leaves the White House. Undeterred by the failure of past presidents to achieve this dream, Trump has already tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with the challenge of brokering the agreement. Kushner inherits this charge at a time w... Full story
