Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2901 - 2925 of 3650
I’ve been thinking for years about the best way to respond to the threat of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. I’ve read pretty much everything on the topic and brainstormed every possible idea, but I’ve never heard anything that really made sense to me. Until I heard from Hillary Clinton. Ironically, Clinton wasn’t trying to provide any answers; she was merely asking for assistance. In a letter this week to a small group of Jewish leaders, including mega Democratic donor Haim Saban, that was made public,...
The Iran deal is the worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history. The devil is not in the details. It’s in the entire conception of the Iran deal, animated by President Obama’s fantastical belief that he, uniquely, could achieve detente with a fanatical Islamist regime whose foundational purpose is to cleanse the Middle East of the poisonous corruption of American power and influence. In pursuit of his desire to make the Islamic Republic into an accepted, normalized “successful regional power,” Obama decided to take over the nuclear negotiations...
We should pity them, as well as oppose their wildest demands. Those claiming to speak for them (the terms “leader” or “leadership” are too grandiose for their history) have brought them to blind alleys. Demanding too much (it would not be an exaggeration to say “demanding everything,” or “everything imaginable”) have led them to one failure after another. You can start with their rejection of the British proposal to divide the area between Jews and Arabs, which would have provided the Palestinians (then calling themselves, for the most part,...
CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA)—My father died a few weeks ago. The hardest part of the shiva was when it ended. Friends and family were, by and large, no longer visiting. I was alone in pain and agony. I thought of this reality during my visit to the Emanuel AME Church in this city merely two weeks after the racially motivated massacre that killed nine people. Joined by Rabbis Shmuel Herzfeld and Etan Mintz, we approached the front of the church. The cameras, which had been everywhere for days, were gone. Only a couple dozen people were milling a...
Ralph Nader, the famous crusader against fraud and corruption, believes he has uncovered a horrific new injustice—and the perpetrators are “the Jews.” “You never avoid using the word anti-Semitism when Arabs and Arab-Americans are discriminated against, are arrested without charges, are exposed to all kinds of swears and bars against employment and all kinds of discrimination that goes on, and that is anti-Semitism. The Semitic race is Arabs and Jews and the Jews do not own the phrase anti-Semitism,” Nader declared at the recent annual co...
I had looked forward to my year in seminary with great anticipation because I knew that living and learning in Israel would open up a whole new world to me. In fact, everyone I encountered informed me that my “gap year” would consist of one life-altering experience after another and that I needed to make the most of every opportunity that came my way. But I was a little anxious about my ability to truly maximize the year. After all, I had only a few short months to achieve so many important things. In addition to increasing my Torah knowledge a...
Back in 2003, as some readers will recall all too clearly, the noted historian Tony Judt penned a searing critique of Israel in the New York Review of Books. Titled “Israel: The Alternative,” Judt, whose impressive scholarship was largely focused on Europe, depicted the Jewish state as a reactionary outpost of 19th century nationalism that bucked the trend elsewhere—exemplified most of all by the European Union (EU)—toward “individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. Judt’s argument struck a wide-ranging, resonant chord. Inso...
Does it matter how we define our words? Sometimes it does. The U.S. Department of Education understands this point, as do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Universities need to learn it, too. Last year, the Education Department paid CDC to develop a uniform definition of the word “bullying.” Both agencies recognized that a uniform definition was needed to assist schools to understand what bullying is, when it occurs, and whether efforts to prevent it are successful. This is a basic point, and yet it is lost on many peo...
In January 2011, with the U.S. trying hard to convince the Palestinians to withdraw or moderate a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, President Obama called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to make a deal. The White House did not want to find itself in a position of having to veto its own settlement policy. In the course of a 50-minute conversation, Obama offered to support a U.N. investigation regarding settlements, renew a U.S. demand for a full-scale freeze on Israeli construction in the West Bank an...
NEW YORK (JTA)—My father passed away nearly 13 years ago, and while I think about him daily, every so often there are moments when I especially miss him. Last week’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage was one of those moments. You see, my father, Rabbi Steven Dworken, was the longtime professional leader of the Rabbinical Council of America, the country’s main modern Orthodox rabbinic association, until his untimely death in 2003. While perusing my Facebook feed after the Supreme Court decision, I belatedly came across the RCA’s...
(JTA)—Michael Oren is my friend. During his nearly five years as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, we’d speak on an almost daily basis. Often those phone calls would come at 3 or 4 a.m., Washington time, and Michael, enduring another sleepless night, would share his fears about how the Obama administration was compromising Israel’s safety. While too discreet to reveal confidential information, he’d repeatedly say: You won’t believe what the administration is doing. It’s worse than you can possibly imagine. But I can’t talk about it.....
Sheldon Adelson’s goal to “put more boots on the ground” to fight BDS on college campuses is right on, and his recommendation to form an army of college students, dubbed “Campus Maccabees”, is essential. However, the only way to rapidly recruit and train an army of Campus Maccabees is for Birthright Israel to lower age of eligibility to 16, thereby attracting teens, en masse, to go to Israel. Just as an army needs boot camp to prepare for active duty, so, too will Adelson’s Campus Maccabees. Providing teens with an Israel experience...
By Ben Cohen JNS.org Bear with me, please, while I attempt an answer at the following question: What is a conspiracy theory? Generally speaking, a conspiracy theory is a theory that directly challenges the conventional, widely accepted, or official account of a particular event or series of events. If a politician is murdered, or if a public figure dies in an accident, you can be certain that someone, somewhere, will insist that what occurred was the work of a shadowy, unseen cabal. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, to...
By Stephen M. Flatow JNS.org A new study has found that many of the children who were educated in Nazi Germany retained, for the rest of their lives, the anti-Semitic attitudes they learned in school. What does that portend for Palestinian children, who are likewise inculcated with hatred of Jews? After surveying some 5,300 German citizens, American and Swiss researchers found that those who were educated in Germany in the 1930s, under the Hitler regime, are much more likely than other Germans to still cling to anti-Semitic beliefs. “It’s not...
By Ira Sharkansky It’s not easy—it may not be possible—to identify the real Barack Obama. We can say the same about other, perhaps all, politicians who reach the top of a steep climb. Yet the Obama puzzle is especially daunting, given his position at the head of the most power country of them all. His power up there is also something of a mystery. He’s not alone. An antagonistic Congress may provide us with a dramatic demonstration of the separation of powers and checks and balances. It’s best to put aside assertions about missing or faulty bi...
There’s a lovely Jewish tradition of honoring the dead by engaging in Torah study. You can devote any number of mitzvot in the memory of the departed, but studying Torah is said to have particular mystical power. Tradition says it elevates the neshama, or soul, of the dead, helping them reach a higher connection to God in the world to come. I can’t vouch for what happens in the world to come, but I can testify to the power of study for those of us left behind. Group Torah study creates a particularly intimate fellowship, where both vet...
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how President Barack Obama feels hurt and misunderstood by Israel and by many Jews in the pro-Israel community. The storyline is that those Jews simply don’t appreciate how “Jewish” the president really is and how much he cares for the Jews and for Israel. “He’s deeply offended by the notion that he’s anti-Israel or anti-Semitic,” former diplomat and Washington, D.C., insider Martin Indyk told JTA. “He’s hurt by it now. It’s finally got to him, the ingratitude of Israelis to this president.” In essenc...
“The great powers had photographs of the railway routes that the trains took to... Auschwitz,” Pope Francis remarked this week. “Tell me,” he asked, “why didn’t they bomb them?” The pontiff’s question is not merely a matter of historical curiosity. It raises issues of morality, diplomacy, and American foreign policy with profound implications for our own times. The reason the Allies had photos of the railways leading to Auschwitz is that throughout the spring of 1944, Allied planes conducted surveillance of the area in preparation for...
With the June 30 deadline for a deal with Iran over its nuclear ambitions looming ominously, the Obama administration is having a hard time persuading a skeptical public that these negotiations are going to tame the Tehran regime. On the two critical issues—preventing Iran from weaponizing its nuclear program and rolling back the expansion of Iranian political and military influence throughout the region—all the evidence suggests that the White House is engaged in what Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the U.S. Defense Int...
My grandfather, Abraham Shiplacoff, was a proud Jew. He was a Socialist labor leader in Brooklyn who led the Ladies Garment Workers’ Union into the American Federation of Labor, believing that Jewish workers should have the same rights and protection as everyone else. He went to Palestine in 1930. He saw that even under the British Mandate, there were Jews dedicated to having their own country. When he came back he wrote me a letter about this, even though I was not yet born. When my dad thought I was old enough to understand, he gave me G...
This is what it boils down to: Either relinquish some of our freedom of speech or offend fanatic Muslims who are willing to kill anyone who does not obey the Islamic faith. I am disgusted with the main street media and politically correct politicians for finding fault mainly with the intended victims, and not drawing more attention to the two blood thirsty Muslims who attempted to murder those they disagreed with. Islamic Imams, without a trial, issue verdicts of death to those whom they feel offended their faith or their prophet Muhammad. Thes...
(Kveller via JTA)-It's the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and currently burning up other social media as well: Rachel Dolezal, who resigned on Monday as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and who teaches African-American studies at Eastern Washington University, has allegedly been passing herself off as black, despite having been born to two white parents. This story struck a particular nerve with me because my oldest son, a high...
Now it’s almost official, having become the subject of a detailed article in The Economist. Barack Obama has produced a New Middle East, but it ain’t the one he intended. Democracy has not blossomed as called for in his Cairo speech of 2009. The new Egyptian government that the American president cheered and supported, is now in the dust. Its president, Mohamed Morsi, is facing a death sentence, imposed by a court under the newer Egyptian government, and hoping for a reprieve to life in prison. The newer ruler, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, operates in...
The world-famous Louvre art museum stands accused of discriminating against Israeli students, after being exposed by some clever amateur investigative journalism that echoes a 1940s incident involving the father of Israel’s current prime minister. The episode began last month when Prof. Sefy Hendler, who teaches art history at Tel Aviv University, contacted the Louvre’s reservation department to arrange tours for 12 of his students during their trip to Paris in late June. Hendler proposed three different dates that his students would be ava...
Some words are laced with extra meaning, built on levels of nuance and implied messages. Words like turning. If you’re “turning a corner” in your life you’ve gotten around some obstacle and are heading towards something better. If you’re “turning over a new leaf” you’ve gotten rid of an old habit or promised to be better on a going forward basis. If you know someone who’s “turning over in their grave” they’re so upset at something someone close to them has done they can’t keep still...even...
