Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2634 - 2658 of 3706
The relationship between religion and state in Israel is stormy. Lately, it seems the ultra-Orthodox have launched a new offensive on several fronts. First, representatives of the ultra-Orthodox community went back on their Western Wall compromise agreement, a compromise that would give anyone interested in alternative prayer the option of holding services at the Wall’s southern section. Now, they are demanding that the Reform and Conservative movements be denied any official recognition in the new plaza at all. Further, judges from the P... Full story
The recent op-ed by Yair Sheleg, “Israel’s battle for peace between religion and state,” is troublesome in several ways. While he portrays himself as a dispassionate analyst, it is clear that Sheleg’s essay intends, on the contrary, to inflame passions. The editor’s note added by JNS.org is revealing. In lieu of “haredi,” the writer used the pejorative term “ultra-Orthodox,” prompting this editorial disclaimer. In an era when we express sensitivity and consideration toward minority populations, we allow them to choose the terms of their ow... Full story
The omission of Palestinian statehood from this year’s Republican Party platform is neither a radical change nor a departure from immutable U.S. policy, as some critics are claiming. In fact, both parties’ platforms have repeatedly changed positions on Israel-related issues over the years, in keeping with the preference of the presidential nominee or the changing mood among their rank and file. The first time the Republican platform mentioned a Palestinian state was in 1980. In that year’s race, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan positioned himse... Full story
Later this month the Republicans and Democrats will hold their respective conventions. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will officially become the presidential nominees. Ahead of the conventions, both parties selected delegates to draft their platforms. The Democratic platform committee convened late last month. As soon as the delegates to the Democratic platform committee were named, it was clear that the future of the party’s support for Israel would come under assault. After Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination with her primary v... Full story
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) sends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the 84 innocent people, including 15 children, who were murdered in the truck attack in Nice, France July 14 by radical Islamist Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. ZOA also sends prayers for recovery to the 188 injured, including the 50 people whom French President Francois Hollande stated were in critical condition “between life and death.” BBC reported that a witness who had time to see the terrorist’s face said that the terrorist-truck driver “appe... Full story
The pictures are fuzzy. Overt, explicit, and legally enforced racism is no more in the United States. Individual blacks, Asians, Jews, and other minorities, and women, can reach as high as the White House, senior governmental and corporate positions, and marry who they choose. Integration, human relations, political correctness, busing, and affirmative action accomplished a great deal. But not everything. A significant incidence of white-black violence associated with police, black activism said to paint an extremist picture, and the killing of... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Last week, we watched in horror and dismay as violent event after violent event unfolded, each amplifying and recontextualizing the one before it. By Friday morning, July 8, five Dallas police officers were dead, three black men had been killed by the police (including the Dallas shooter), and countless families were broken and traumatized. On Friday evening I was in the streets marching, chanting our movement’s simplest, yet most elusive assertion, “Black Lives Matter.” As a black person and a Jew, I was asserting the value o... Full story
I don’t know how to write a column on this theme except to say, stop, stop, please stop the killing. Killing somebody is the not the answer. Killing people because of race, gender, religion, or for any reason under the sun is wrong. Killing does not eliminate problems. Killing does not solve family or neighborhood squabbles. Yet, we kill all the time. America is a nation of killers. We’re all about killing, killing and killing. Do we want to start counting all the people killed in all the wars just in the last couple of hundred years? How many... Full story
Dear Editor: While I can certainly understand and appreciate Olga Yorish’s comments in the latest email FED Friday, dated July 8, 2016, I do not totally agree with these comments. With the tragic event that took place in Orlando, my hometown, last June, the dynamics have changed dramatically. An act of terrorism has become a reality here. As a result, the paradigm has also changed. What was acceptable behavior and response prior to this event is no longer valid. The reality is that yes there are bad people out there who “hate” for whate... Full story
Thelma Rosen, age 88, of Roswell, Ga., passed away on Monday, July 4, 2016, at Pruitt Health Care-Brookhaven in Atlanta. She was born in Bronx, New York, on Jan.1, 1928, to the late Joe and Bella Meyerson Berkoff. A high school graduate, Thelma worked for many years as a dental assistant. She married her late husband, George, in 1947, moving to Central Florida in 1976. In 1991, following George’s death, she relocated to West Palm Beach and then to Atlanta in 2008. She is survived by her daughter, Linda (Steve) Steinberg of Atlanta; and her s... Full story
These are the days that Vladimir Putin has been aching for since the end of the Cold War. On Dec. 5, 1989, three weeks after the Berlin Wall was torn down, angry crowds stormed the Dresden Headquarters of the Stasi, the brutal secret police of the Soviet puppet regime in East Germany. At the time, KGB officer Putin was based in the office across the street reserved for the representatives of the Soviet security apparatus. When Russia’s future president picked up the phone to demand military protection from the surging masses, he was told that n... Full story
We have reached the point where moral equivalence has become a moral atrocity. The smart set in the West has insisted for over a generation that Israel and the Palestinians are morally equal. There are extremists, on both sides, they say. Both sides are responsible for the absence of peace. The first serious outcry against this lie came immediately after the Palestinians began their terrorist war against Israel in September 2000. That war, incited, directed, funded, commanded and celebrated by Yassir Arafat and his henchmen, including his... Full story
A single page in the weekend edition of Yedioth Aharonoth captures the essence of where we are. One article on the page is a rational assessment of recent violence, its decline, and concludes with the point that there is no solution, other than the ceasing of incitement among the Palestinians, which no Israeli should expect. It was drafted before the weekend’s uptick in attacks, with two Israeli deaths in separate incidents in Judea and Samaria, three Palestinian attackers dead, and several Israelis injured. Without being sure, we can guess tha... Full story
The moment I finished reading “Night” many years ago, I knew that I had just experienced my personal Holocaust despite being safely tucked into, and protected by, my American way of life. The Holocaust was now mine to hang onto. Elie Wiesel gave it to me with his printed words that have left me beleaguered to this very day. Never would I have let it belong to someone else. It would have been like stealing my own soul and giving it to a stranger. It was too profound a moment in my personal psyche. No longer would my heart be the same. “Night” so... Full story
(JTA)—Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign never recovered after he was caught on video telling a group of millionaires that 47 percent of Americans will always vote for Democrats because they don’t take “personal responsibility” for their lives and are “dependent upon government.” The incident has become a case study not only in watching one’s words (and being nice to your waiters), but in spin control. Hammered by the media and the Democrats for sounding elitist and insulting half the country, Romney first blamed the listeners, sayi... Full story
(Kveller via JTA)—It finally happened. My son is almost 9 months old, and this week, for the first time, a stranger came up to me and asked me to “take him somewhere else.” Even worse, it happened at synagogue. The woman who approached me was quite obviously not a member of our congregation—and when some of the clergy and lay leaders later heard what happened, they were a combination of embarrassed, irritated and bemused. Each of them said to me, with a smile, “Well, clearly she is not a member here.” This was obvious to me, as it was to them... Full story
(JTA)—Last week Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said that if Hillary Clinton asked him to be her running mate, he’d take the job. “If Hillary Clinton came to me and said, ‘Al, I really need you to be my vice president, to run with me,’ I would say yes, but I’m very happy in the job that I have right now.” Although Franken, 64, has spent seven years in the Senate and proven himself to be a conscientious lawmaker—championing decidedly unfunny issues like health insurance, mental health services in schools and net neutrality—some still find it har... Full story
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas must be surprised at the international outcry over his accusation this week that Israeli rabbis are plotting to poison Arab wells. After all, Abbas and his colleagues have been making similar allegations for more than 30 years, yet the international community has hardly said a word. The best-known allegation was the declaration by Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, at a 1999 press conference that Israel was engaged in the “daily and intensive use of poisonous gas” against Palestinians, as part of a pl... Full story
Our flight returning from Europe occurred with the news of a multiple terror attack on the Istanbul airport, which has so far produced more than 40 deaths and 260 injuries. No organization has claimed credit, but the betting is on the Islamic State, or maybe Assad. Turkey has acquired numerous enemies domestic and foreign, including its Kurds and those living elsewhere. Experts on the subject are saying that this was not the style of the Kurds. Turkish Airlines has come into its own with lots of connections, good service, and pursuing a larger... Full story
In a remarkable turnaround, Democratic Party activists who are known to be pro-Palestinian are calling on their party’s platform committee to condemn the Palestinian Authority (PA). Or am I misreading something? Two pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, issued their call last week on the blog of J Street. It happens that Ellison and Gutierrez are members of that same platform committee, so it may seem strange that they are taking a public position before the committee has finished... Full story
It’s not the disputed occupation of the West Bank that convinced a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager to stab a 13-year-old Jewish girl to death while she was sleeping. Rather, it’s the corrosive and longtime occupation of Palestinian hearts and minds with vicious, genocidal Jew-hatred. “Hate has no place in the curriculum of schools, and the glorification of violence has no place in the education of children,” Sen. Hillary Clinton said in 2007, after a Senate hearing on Palestinian Authority (PA) schoolbooks and media presented by the watchdo... Full story
Recently I visited with Christian friends from Orlando in Jerusalem. We connected some time ago and became immediate friends, sharing our respective faiths, reverence for God, and love for Israel. They are frequent visitors, know Israel well, and we are in touch often. We’ve been planning an Israel solidarity event together and spent some time discussing details of date, timing, format, and how to involve both Jews and Christians. We also spoke about our respective families, ministries, and current events in Israel and the U.S. The week they l... Full story
In the days since the massacre of 49 people and the wounding of hundreds more by an Islamist gunman at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, America’s political leadership has sounded more discordant than ever. Never mind the absence of a bipartisan consensus about what we should do; our politicians are engaged in unsightly squabbling about the nature of the problem itself. In one corner, we have the Democratic Party, led by President Barack Obama, aggressively steering the national debate toward gun control. According to this camp’s account, the... Full story
The headline of this note, letting aspirations for an organized work rest in peace, may reflect more cynicism than reality. Colonialism began its demise with World War I, when the European powers that could carve up the world and color the maps as they thought best, endured economic and demographic catastrophes until then unequaled in world history. The European-centered world took a while to die. The U.S. opted out by putting domestic politics ahead of Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a League of Nation. Britain and France led the way to changing G... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you’re a supporter of Israel and of the Jewish community, you should be very worried about a new executive order issued by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 5. While billed as an initiative to prevent New York state from supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the law actually constitutes a frightening attack on free speech while likely creating a backlash that will do harm both to Israel and the Jewish community. Cuomo’s order mandates the creation of a list of every company worldwide that “enga... Full story
