Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JNS) — In a hyper-partisan, highly polarized red vs blue America, the politics of Israel and the Middle East in general have always been complicated. Rather than breaking down neatly along party lines, there are profound divisions within both...

(JNS) — On his way out the door, the retiring U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, has belatedly acknowledged that he “screwed up” in one of his last major actions. He’s just the latest in a growing line of U.S. diplomats who have...

(JNS) — Do blessings and curses come from heaven or do we bring them upon ourselves by the way we live our lives? Last week’s Torah reading, Re’eh, from Deuteronomy 11, begins with blessings and curses. Moses is continuing his sermonic...

(JTA) — For those following the judicial reform crisis in Israel, this week’s Torah portion is almost too on the nose. For months now, Israel has been convulsed by protests in response to a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to...

(JNS) — Palestinian society is in disarray.  In two major West Bank towns—Jenin and Nablus—the Palestinian Authority has lost control, and rogue gangs rule the land. Last week, thousands of Gazans protested in the streets—risking brutal...

(JNS) — The heady excitement over the Abraham Accords overlooked Israel’s core strategic problems. The United Arab Emirates deal may have led to business ties and a certain amount of (mostly one-way) tourism, but then rockets from the terrorist...

(JNS) — I am not a comic book fan. I am not a superhero fan. I think comic book films are slowly demolishing whatever remains of American cinema. But, if I may be slightly hypocritical, I am a huge Superman fan. My love for the character goes...

(JNS) — “Sound of Freedom” is the film that the chattering classes are encouraging you not to see. NPR says its success is due to support from the shadowy QAnon extremist group. It’s been blasted by The Guardian as “QAnon adjacent...

The next day our positive energy experienced on the March of the Living quickly dissipated as we arrived at the site where an estimated 800 Jewish children are buried in a mass grave in the Zbylitowska Góra Forest. The gravesite is located deep in t...

(JNS) — In response to public outrage over the pervasive, systemic, years-long scandal of antisemitism at CUNY, the university formed its inaugural Advisory Council on Jewish Life. At first, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez refused the demands of...

(JTA) — The Orthodox Jewish community boasts a wide array of creative services providers. And, in keeping with the Jewish religious tradition over millennia, those vendors cannot, in good conscience, buy into elements of “progressive” social...

(JNS) — Once again, we are seeing Hezbollah threatening us, encroaching on the demilitarized area and daring us to retaliate. In Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has positioned thousands of rockets aimed at Israel in direct violation of the stipulation...

(JNS) — Last week, the Biden administration announced that it will no longer support scientific and technological research at Israeli institutions in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. State Department spokesman Matthew...

(JNS) — This is a really extraordinary article. All of these months the Israeli left and media have been howling that judicial reform, which means rolling back the unlimited authority of the country’s Supreme Court, is a coup and a threat to dem...

(JNS) — I was born in Syria, grew up in Lebanon and eventually moved to Brazil from where I made Aliyah. After nine months of learning Hebrew in an ulpan, I met my husband and moved to the United States. But I left my heart in Israel. Later, I...

(JNS) — The night before Monday’s Knesset vote on the first of the government’s proposed judicial reforms, a video filmed on the escalators in Jerusalem’s central train station went viral on social media. It showed a great tide of people...

The Zionist Organization of America strongly supports and praises Israel’s democratically elected Knesset for passing the first part of much-needed judicial reform. The new law prevents the Israeli Supreme Court from striking down or reversing...

Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz puts Israel’s judicial reforms into proper perspective in this discussion featured on J-AIR 88FM Radio and J-AIR Internet radio Retired US attorney Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz debated Eugene Kontorovich,...

(JNS) — Up until now, the legal battles being waged about tolerating dissent against support for gay marriage or gay pride events have been focused on conservative Christians. But a kosher baker in West Orange, N.J., is highlighting the fact that...

I have written before about how tough it has been for me to get used to the pace of things here in New Orleans. While publicity and television and the music might lead you to believe that New Orleans is one big party, it just is not so. When all is...

If weather can ever be a metaphor for emotion and feelings it certainly was so on the two days we visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps. On the first day, the weather was cold, damp, rainy and overall bleak. It mirrored perfectly the...

(JTA) — When the U.S. Supreme Court sided last month with a Colorado web designer who refuses to do work for same-sex couples because of her religious objection to same-sex marriage, it risked opening the floodgates to a host of discriminatory...

(JNS) — “Welcome to Apartheid.” That was the slogan on a placard brandished by a protester outside a home in Jerusalem’s Old City section, denouncing last week’s removal of illegal Arab squatters from the property. On one level, it was...

(JNS) — They say that diplomacy is the art of the possible. That is why, despite the conventional wisdom that Israel-U.S. relations have reached a dead end, the two sides can still find a way to move forward. There are even precedents for that....

(JTA) — In one of its most anticipated cases of the year, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Groff v. DeJoy last month, significantly expanding the federal protections afforded religious employees in the workplace. The decision itself...