Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Since Israel’s founding, one assumption guided its leaders: that America would always stand as the ultimate guarantor of its security. From Truman’s recognition in 1948 to Kennedy’s arms deals and Reagan’s intelligence coordination, this belief became almost sacred. Even moments of tension—such as Eisenhower’s rebuke after Suez or Obama’s Iran deal—were seen as temporary storms in a permanent alliance. By 2025, that illusion was fractured. The world has changed: Washington’s focus drifts between Asia and domestic politics, while Isr...
To the Jewish community of Central Florida: Where were you during the last two years of terror of the Israeli community? There were no rallies showing support for Israel, there were no fundraisers to financially support Israel, there were no parlor meetings (that I was aware of). Basically, nothing done as a community as in the past. As an Orlando resident for 83 years, I cannot ever remember when there was such a lack of open support for Israel by the Greater Orlando Jewish Community — no rallies, no fundraisers, no community action, nada. M...
(JNS) — Hundreds of thousands gathered in Jerusalem for what some called “Prayer for Shalom HaMedina” (Prayer for the Peace/Welfare of the State of Israel), representing a broad, unified front of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi), traditional and Religious Zionist communities. The massive demonstration, characterized by prayer only with no speeches, is a powerful expression of concern over recent arrests of Torah students and, more broadly, a perceived assault by progressive, left-wing forces on the nation’s traditional values and the role of the...
(JNS) — My daughter Alisa was murdered in a Palestinian Islamic Jihad-Iranian sponsored terrorist attack in Gaza on April 9, 1995. She was 20 years old, a college student studying at Nishmat in Jerusalem on a leave of absence from Brandeis University. She had worked hard at college for more than two years to take that leave of absence. It was her sixth trip to Israel. In that instant, my world was divided into “Before and After.” It has never returned to Before; it never will. I can’t read stories about hostage returns or terror victims without...
(JNS) — Fifty years apart, two disasters in Israel are bound by the same Hebrew word: conceptzia. Following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the term became shorthand for the conceptual failure that enabled Egypt and Syria to launch their joint surprise attack against the Jewish state. Translating to something between “governing assumption” and “preconceived notion,” it regained prominence in local vernacular following Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel five decades later. Since Oct. 7, 2023, conceptzia has become a polemical catch-all for blame ov...
As a physicist, lawyer, and late-for-appointments human, I have always grappled with the concept of “time.” Time is not a physical or spatial metric even though it is categorized as the 4th dimension in conjunction with the three physical dimensions of length, width and depth. In Genesis, the initial words of the first book of the Torah, are, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (emphasis added). Was that the beginning of time or was that a reference point to mark on the continuous time scale when the universe came into exis...
(JNS) — What has happened to the camps of sympathetic and understanding Christian traditionalists who had identified Israel, and its Zionist identity, as an ally against Islamism in the struggle against anti-Americanism in the world? Why are some leaving the cause? Why do others have doubts? And why are still others now turning virulently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, dog-whistling Jew-hatred? Is it an infection of xenophobic nationalism that can be argued, or is it a theological hatred that cannot be properly checked? Back in April 2024, in a...
(JNS) — As the plane touched down in Thailand, I received the check-in email for my journey back home. Despite the 11-hour flight, I could only stay one day. I had a wedding to officiate upon my return. As a “freelance rabbi” (meaning not the head of a synagogue), I serve in a few capacities. I help people join the Jewish religion, I help them marry, and I’m a mohel (ritual circumciser), performing the sacred ritual of brit milah (circumcision) in Israel and around the world. The latter was the purpose of my visit to the Far East. I make th...
(JNS) — One of the things that has made the Jewish people so unique and has led to our survival throughout history is the sanctity placed upon human life. In Deuteronomy (Chapter 30, Verse 19), it is written: “I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.” That is why the Jewish community has struggled with feelings of ecstacy at the homecoming of the remaining living hostages, who have been held for two years in the most brutal conditions imaginable, coupl...
(JNS) — On Oct. 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to “nation-build” Afghanistan. Now, 24 years after that anniversary and two years after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Right down to resurrecting former U.K. premiere Tony Blair to head it. Nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq failed for three reasons: 1. The Bush administration belie...
(JNS) — In his Knesset address on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of his first partner in his great utopian vision—a time of peace for the entire world: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. In an outpouring of shared enthusiasm at the Knesset during the return of the hostages, Trump placed Netanyahu in the circle of history’s great figures. “Thank you very much, Bibi. Great job!” he declared. “Without him, none of this could have happened. Without his courage and patriotism,” Trump said. “He’s not the easiest person to...
(JNS) — As Israelis continue to debate the release of convicted terrorists as part of the current hostage exchange deal with Hamas, they aren’t the only ones thinking about prisoner releases. American victims of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and their families are watching, too. For us, the prospect of seeing the murderers of American citizens walk free is not an abstract policy issue. It is deeply personal. Thirty years ago, my daughter Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old American college student, was murdered in a Palestinian terror att...
The past few days in Israel have been filled with heart wrenching euphoria mixed with cautious optimism, and foreboding. After two years in unspeakable conditions and captivity, Hamas has released all 20 living hostages who have returned home to begin a long process of physical and emotional recovery. Predictably, Hamas has also violated the terms of the agreement to release all the bodies of the 28 remaining hostages, as of this writing still 21 remain in the terrorists’ clutches. So far, one of the bodies that they have released has not b...
(JNS) — “Israel treats the Palestinians the way Nazi Germany treated the Jews.” Few slogans in modern propaganda are as powerful, emotional and poisonous as this one. In recent years, it has become a rallying cry at demonstrations and across social media. Gaza is depicted as the “Auschwitz” of the 21st century. Israeli airstrikes are labeled “genocide.” “Refugee camps” are likened to the Warsaw Ghetto. The nakba (the “disaster” or “catastrophe” of the State of Israel) is rebranded as the Arab shoah. Israel’s government is accused of pl...
(JNS) — At a time when America is still reeling from the murder of Charlie Kirk and anti-Jew and anti-Israel hatred is peaking, the Anti-Defamation League decided to put Kirk’s Turning Point USA in its crosshairs. Did the ADL think that would reduce Jew-hatred somehow? It seems likely it did just the opposite. As egregious and upsetting as that ADL action was, it was just another horrific misstep in the last decade of its misguided cultural crusades that have nothing to do with its core mission: protecting the Jewish people. The ADL was est...
What a week. President Donald Trump forced the prime minister of Israel to grovel before the Emir of Qatar—the same autocrat who bankrolls Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Jewish state, was compelled to apologize for Israel’s attempted strike on Hamas officials being hosted in Doha and to promise never to do it again. It was a humiliating spectacle: the sovereign leader of a U.S. ally bowing before the financier of the Oct. 7 massacre, at the insistence of an American president. It wasn’t Netanyahu’s first humiliation at the hands o...
(JNS) — A close look at the boats used by anti-Israel extremists aboard the so-called “Gaza Flotilla,” which attempted to evade Israeli navy vessels and land in the Gaza Strip on Yom Kippur, reveals much about their true motivation—something that both journalists and Israel’s supporters have missed, though should not have. You might have expected that the banners on the ships would feature messages like “Stop the Blockade,” “Feed Gaza” or even “Stop the Genocide,” but the boats I saw in the photos had no such messages at all. That’s because the...
I am writing this column on the morning of Oct. 9, 2025, a few hours since the announcement that an agreement has been reached between Israel and Hamas for release within 72 hours of all the remaining hostages; the 20 that are still alive and the remains of the 28 who were murdered by their captors. Along with my co-religionists in the Diaspora and the citizens of Israel, I am elated and excited about our hostages coming home; and momentarily dreaming that peace in the Middle East may finally be at hand. But I know better than to allow my...
(JNS) — Oct. 7, 2023, was the worst day in the history of the State of Israel and will be remembered as such for all time. But as New York Times columnist Bret Stephens noted in a column analyzing the lessons of that day and the war that followed, “For all its undoubted horrors, this war may ultimately be remembered as liberating.” Israel responded to Hamas’s day of genocide by waging war to destroy the Iran axis of which Hamas was a member. Stephens explained how Israel’s war had liberated the peoples of the region. In Lebanon, thanks to...
Sharm el-Sheikh, October 9 (U.S. time): Israel and Hamas signed a first-phase agreement that promises a pause in fighting, a partial Israeli pullback, and hostage–prisoner exchanges, with releases expected shortly after Israeli cabinet ratification. Much to hope for. But peace isn’t just paperwork — it rests on trust and, not to be forgotten, on what children are taught. As President Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” There are three sobering clues from recent history which explain why verification can’t be a footnote, it’s the whole bal...
(JNS) — As a law student at American University Washington College of Law in the early 1970s, I worked part-time as the administrator of the campus’s Abraham S. Kay Spiritual Life Center, a building in the center of the Quad, donated by the Jewish Kaye family and designed to look like a giant eternal light unto the nations. The Kay building’s use reflected its design, as its ground floor served as offices for clergy members of up to a dozen religious organizations and as a social hall. The main floor provided a nondenominational prayer and cere...
Watching Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian address the United Nations General Assembly was not only nauseating but also infuriating for millions of Iranians. To hear a man with the blood of countless citizens on his hands lecture the world about human rights, equality, and the rights of Gaza’s children is nothing short of grotesque hypocrisy. If the UN were to replace its teleprompters with lie detectors when Iranian envoys speak, the results would shock the world. These representatives of the Islamic Republic do not come to promote peace o...
(JNS) — While it has shown remarkable resilience, the economy has been one area where Israel has clearly suffered significant losses in terms of lost income from the collapse of the tourism industry, the cost of property damage, the cost of war materiel and the cost of rehabilitation. It will take years to recoup the losses, and even then, it is uncertain whether the economy will be as strong as it was before Oct. 7. One indication of the shape of the economy is the downgrading by major ratings services. S&P and Fitch both reduced the c...
(JNS) — When Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany were threatening to take over Europe in the 1930s prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain chose appeasement. On Sept. 30, 1938, the Munich Agreement was signed by Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, handing over the Sudetenland, a fortified region of Czechoslovakia, to Hitler. The agreement was signed without Czechoslovakia’s participation. Six months later, Germany invaded the rest of the country. The appeasement had failed catastrophically. App...
For over 75 years, the State of Israel has taken pride in protecting worldwide Jewry as well as its own citizens. The current surge in antisemitism, however, reveals a collapse in this dual promise and obligates Diaspora leaders to adopt a new assertiveness toward distracted decision-makers in Jerusalem. The Basic Law of the Jewish state establishes Diaspora well-being as a priority: “The State shall strive to secure the welfare of members of the Jewish People and of its citizens who are in straits and in captivity due to their Jewishness or d...
