Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(Rabbis Without Borders via JTA)—The month of Elul is the season of repentance and forgiveness that culminates with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. In the rabbinic imagination, Elul is an acronym for “Ani L’Dodi V’dodi Li”—“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” This verse from Song of Songs is understood in regards to this season as reminding us that when we reach out to God, God in love takes us back. This culminates in the holiday of Sukkot, in which the fragile hut with the open roof symbolizes the marital home and the trust in it... Full story
The Southern Poverty Law Center admitted its fault and removed a town from its “Hate Map” this week. That map irresponsibly mixes religious organizations with violent hate groups, and this time it included the town of Amana because an unknown source alleged some people who might have been associated with The Daily Stormer met one time in a restaurant for coffee. This is one of many inaccuracies and gross over-characterizations that can be found on SPLC’s map. Amana, an innocent town, was then blacklisted by the SPLC. People living there were... Full story
Billy Joel’s decision to sport a yellow star on the front and back of his jacket during a concert this week was a nod to history that the singer may not have been aware of. The venue for the concert, New York City’s Madison Square Garden, was the site of pro- and anti-Nazi rallies during the World War II. In February 1939, as Europe teetered on the edge of war, 22,000 Nazi sympathizers gathered at the Garden for a rally organized by the German American Bund, during which swastika flags flew alongside a portrait of George Washington. “St... Full story
As a member of Houston’s Jewish community writing about a devastating flood for the third time since May 2015, I’m at a loss for words. Sitting in the comforts of my third-floor apartment, where I’m fortunate enough to view the unprecedented waters of Hurricane Harvey as a spectator, it feels trite to be putting on my “journalist’s hat” while countless others are either suffering or contributing to relief efforts. Yet as I’ve concluded in these situations before, the written word is a crucial part of the healing process when a natural disaster... Full story
The U.S. government’s reluctance to demand the immediate creation of a Palestinian state has sent J Street into a panic. With its candidates having been defeated in elections on both sides of the ocean, and its proposals crumbling in the face of reality, J Street is trying one last desperate strategy: rewriting history so that it appears Palestinian statehood has been supported by everybody, everywhere, for as long as anyone can remember. Asked by reporters Aug. 24 about the Palestinian state issue, State Department spokeswoman Heather N... Full story
MADISON, Wis. (JTA)—In March, the Israeli Knesset passed a law that denies entry to foreigners who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS. At the time, the law felt so insidious because it introduced a political litmus test designed to exclude those who object to Israel’s policies. It served to stifle legitimate political debate. But it was all so theoretical. Until last month, that is, when Rabbi Alissa Shira Wise, who was part of an interfaith delegation that had planned to meet with Israeli and Palestinian peace act... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—In July, five leaders of the virulent BDS groups Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine were barred at Dulles International Airport from boarding a flight to Israel. The move reportedly was the result of an amendment to Israel’s Law of Entry denying admission of senior activists of leading BDS organizations to the country. Predictably, the incident raised the usual hysterical chorus that Israel was attacking free speech, banning dissent and no longer a democracy. Despite these exaggerated charges, the dec... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—French historian Pierre Nora spent his life describing and explaining “places of memory,” sites commemorating significant moments in the history of a community that continue to resonate and transform from generation to generation. For the French Republic, the Arc de Triomphe is one such “place of memory.” Begun by Napoleon and completed in 1836, the Arc is a place of French pride and memory, where war dead from the Revolution to the present are recalled and military triumph exalted. Part of the power of this central place of... Full story
The scene is Paris in the late 19th century. At a glittering ball, a handful of eligible gentilhommes eagerly circled the charming Comtesse de La Rochefoucauld—something of an Ivanka Trump in her day—in the hope of being granted a dance. But when the comtesse finally took to the dance floor, the man on her arm was Arthur Meyer, the scion of a rabbinical family who had risen from modest origins to become a newspaper magnate. The spectacle of the comtesse dancing with Meyer the Jew was shocking to the anti-Semites in France—and, this being the t... Full story
On a recent Friday, several-dozen Jewish hikers happened to pass near the Palestinian village of Kobar. Some locals reacted to the sight of Jews by trying to stone them to death. News reports noted that Kobar is the home town of the terrorist who recently stabbed three Jews to death at their dinner table in the town of Halamish. On Aug. 12, Palestinians attending a funeral of a dead terrorist decided they would try to complete his life’s mission by murdering some Jews themselves. They gathered on the road near the Israeli town of Tekoa and bega... Full story
There ain’t much anybody can do. It’s one of our insoluble problems. For those of us outside areas of the Middle East and Africa where one or another radical movement established itself, the problem may grow with the defeat of the extremists in areas they had once controlled. The worry comes not only from individuals that had served in Syria or Iraq and then go home to wreck havoc among the infidels. Those can be identified and watched. Even that is difficult. Europeans have been killed by those who slipped through the cracks. And scr... Full story
We live in a time when, as the U.S. State Department has noted, a “rising tide of anti-Semitism” has swept across the globe. Anti-Semitism has crept into the mainstream from the margins of society in the West, as a coalition of intellectual elites and Muslims has produced a surge of venom against Israel and Jews who identify with it. That movement has found a foothold on American campuses and among left-wing groups, resulting in Jews being stigmatized and isolated in the public square, and students being subjected to violence and int... Full story
Jews are asking if we’re back in the 1920s. To me, the scene outside a Charlottesville synagogue is more like Odessa in 1905. Across from the synagogue stood three white supremacists with semi-automatic weapons. During the Friday night torchlight parade that passed the synagogue, the alt-right marchers, hands in the salute formation, hurled slogans reminiscent of the Nazi era. The armed men in fatigues looked as if they were ready to carry out the threats. The police were called. They did not show. Did the city council want blood spilled to adv... Full story
The stinging heat of anti-Semitism is being felt, yet again, around the world. Whether you live in Miami, Rome or Santiago, the goosebumps we all got when we heard the chants of the white supremacists in Charlottesville—“Jews will not replace us”—are the same. The lump in my throat when I learned that the pedestrians who were mowed down in Barcelona Aug. 17 were standing outside two kosher restaurants is the same feeling felt by Jews in Brussels, Sydney and Toronto. These feelings remind me of Robert De Niro’s character in the 1995 movie, “H... Full story
The newly appointed Middle East director at the State Department has a long record of criticizing and pressuring Israel. Isn’t anybody at the White House paying attention to who’s being hired over at Foggy Bottom? David Satterfield, who is slated to become assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs next month, played a significant role in U.S. policy and diplomacy concerning Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A look at some of his comments from that period reveals he repeatedly suggested a moral equ... Full story
Many Americans know that the sickness at the heart of our political culture stems from a spirit of intolerance that has become the keynote of discourse. Liberals blame it on President Donald Trump and his supporters. But few of us seem able to recognize this behavior when it comes from those who share our views—which means that if you think Dennis Prager must be boycotted or believe Morton Klein is as much of a threat to American Jewry as Islamist terrorists, then don’t blame Trump for how bad things have gotten. Prager, a Los Ang... Full story
I wrote a column about the extreme left and the extreme right. I did that before Charlottesville, the chants of “Jews will not replace us” and the murder of a 32-year-old woman. Still there is some validity to the following: The late Eric Hoffer, the “Longshoreman Philosopher,” in his book “The True Believer” wrote that if you push the philosophies of the Far Left and the Far right to their extreme there is little difference between them. Picture a circle. Start at the top and take one curve and go to the left—pull it around that circle to the... Full story
(JTA)—I was in Charlottesville on Saturday. I felt called to go because white supremacy is a hateful ideology that has murdered millions throughout history and continues to kill. I went because my family and ancestors suffered at the hands of anti-Semites throughout history, because I bear their scars on my DNA, because the Jewish day school where I teach received a bomb threat this spring, and I cannot let Nazi flags fly in my state without response. I needed to go as a rabbi because I am tired of conservative white Christians controlling t... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—There was a moment in his “neo-Nazi, neo-Shmazi” news conference where you might have found yourself thinking, maybe President Trump is right. On the narrow question of who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, a prosecutor might note that punches were thrown by white supremacists and left-wing activists, neo-Nazis and members of the Antifa resistance. “I think there’s blame on both sides,” is how Trump put it in his news conference Tuesday in New York. It’s the right answer if this is the question: “Who threw pu... Full story
On Aug, 11, an estimated 100 white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus with their tiki torches full of citronella and their hearts filled with hate. They were recorded shouting racist, anti-Semitic Nazi slogans—such as “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” The next day, counter protesters showed up to face the over 4,000 white supremacists who were gathered. The situation devolved into one of the saddest days for American democracy. Citizens were beating each other bloody, and the National Guard was ultimat... Full story
The newly appointed Middle East director at the State Department has a long record of criticizing and pressuring Israel. Isn’t anybody at the White House paying attention to who’s being hired over at Foggy Bottom? David Satterfield, who is slated to become assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs next month, played a significant role in U.S. policy and diplomacy concerning Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A look at some of his comments from that period reveals he repeatedly suggested a moral equ... Full story
As far as they are concerned, the U.S. Congress is just doing what it always does: pandering to the “Israel Lobby.” That’s how the foreign policy establishment and the left regard the bipartisan support for the Taylor Force Act, a bill named after a non-Jewish U.S. Army veteran slain in a Palestinian terror attack last year. The legislation would cut off American aid for the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless the PA stops funding terrorism. The bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Aug. 3 in a 17-4 vote, with all the commi... Full story
The latest acts in the long running saga of Elor Azaria emphasize the deep divisions among Israeli Jews. There are also sharpening gaps between Israeli Jews and those of the Diaspora. Especially prominent are those separating us from the large Jewish community in the United States. The Azaria problem is closer to home, but it’s not without overseas Jews signing on to one or the other side in our verbal warfare. Azaria is the young man, who when stationed with his IDF unit in Hebron, shot and killed an inert Palestinian who had been severely inj... Full story
We are now two years into the deeply controversial Iran nuclear agreement that roiled our community. And, like everything connected to the deal and the Mideast, it’s complicated, as even Jared Kushner would attest. During the many months leading up to the historic 2015 agreement between Tehran and the U.S. and its P5+1 partners—United Kingdom, France, and China, plus Germany—I was deeply critical of President Barack Obama’s approach, which I thought was too narrow and timid. I felt the U.S. wasn’t acting like the superpower it is in the negot... Full story
The Israel angle on McMaster’s purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds. McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews. Many of you will remember that a few d... Full story
